British Heart Foundation Research Fellow
Dr Blerina Ahmetaj-Shala is a British Heart Foundation Research Fellow within the Cardio-Respiratory Interface Section at the National Heart and Lung Institute.
Becoming a scientist was a gradual process, not so much an epiphany! At school I enjoyed a range of subjects, it's not like I said, “I want to be a scientist”. However the older I got, the more I appreciated the importance of medicine, science and research. The impact that science can have on society appealed to me and led me to where I am today.
For my undergraduate degree I studied Pharmaceutical Sciences, I was really interested in how drugs work and how they’re made. Then I looked at the Chemistry and Management of drugs for my Master’s, and finally, my PhD focused on the Biology. So as with any path, it's not like it was set in stone. However all the parts of that journey have come together and made me a better scientist today.
The more I learnt about biology and how diseases progress and can be treated, the more I was intrigued and questioned how we can prevent them. Cardiovascular diseases are one of the biggest killers worldwide – we often don't know how they develop or how to treat them. I was drawn to working on blood vessels to better understand how they’re affected by disease.
I want to understand how blood vessels work, by mimicking in a dish what happens in the body.
I supervise students and teach. I am trying to be a role model for others.
Having a good work life balance is important. Family and friends bring you back down to what it's all about, and ultimately make you more productive at work.
My research is on blood vessels, they’re everywhere in the body. I’m trying to recreate, or mimic, what happens in the body in a dish, so we have a better model to study disease. The difficulty with people studying blood vessels outside of the body is that they're very complex - made up of different cell types. The cells that line blood vessels are called endothelial cells and the cells that make up the tube structure are called smooth muscle cells.
We can now grow the cells that make up blood vessels from a simple blood donation, and so far these behave like you would expect them to in the body. So I could come to you and take your blood then grow the endothelial cells and muscle cells that make up your own blood vessels, to form a 3D model. And this is really important, because it's a way of getting these cells from people that are healthy, to understand blood vessels in health, but also to understand disease. There are a lot of different cardiovascular diseases, and respiratory, where blood vessels are affected, or the cells contribute to disease. So we are using these 2D and 3D blood vessel models to study the mechanisms of disease.
Looking forward in terms of personalised medicine, drug testing is an area where this research could have an impact, as we can see how drugs work on a person by person basis. We can test new drugs, but we can also investigate current drugs to identify if they are useful for other diseases – ‘repurposing’ is the term we use. With regards to exploring mechanisms of disease I’m particularly interested in diabetes, atherosclerosis and pulmonary hypertension. Many patients, who have diabetes - up to 80% in fact - die from cardiovascular complications and there's a lot we don't know about why this is happening.
I do a lot of teaching and also supervising students. I was recently speaking to my student and she said “The reason I chose you as a supervisor, was because I saw your picture, and I saw this young woman. I thought to myself she's female, she's quite early in her career, and she's doing something that I’m interested in”. It is great to be a role model for the younger generation – showing them that you don’t have to be a particular type of person to succeed.
I enjoy working with students, I understand it's not easy for them. Especially international students that have come so far to study at this fantastic university. They deserve to get the help and support they need to work towards what they hope to achieve. Students don't know everything, we need to guide them. Even now I'm still learning and sometimes need help from the people I work with. So it's an opportunity for me to pass on what I've learnt so far and it's great when you see your students succeed - I feel proud to have contributed to that success.
Having a good work life balance is really important. I remember an NHLI Science and Culture talk on mental wellbeing where they spoke about ‘filling the bucket’ with tasks, and making sure your bucket is not overfilled. This highlighted to me the importance of finding ways to release your stress, whether you like to go out for dinner, or spend time with your family, or something else. Balance is important, it's important to look after yourself. For me, I have two kids, they drive me crazy, but really they are my safe place to go to where I don't need to think about work. And I can always destress myself. Family and friends bring you back down to what it's all about, and ultimately make you more productive at work.
We are all part of the Imperial community, but there are also communities within that. Perhaps you are also an academic or student. But of course it’s the same outside of Imperial where you will belong to other communities. All of these communities contribute to who you are at work. And having a good balanced work life system is really important to being successful at work - and in life in general!
I came to the UK from Kosovo with my parents in 1992 due to political unrest. At that time everyone in Kosovo was worried that war was going to break out, and of course – it did. My parents are Albanian, but they lived in Kosovo, they were my age when they left. It wasn’t an easy transition. They had good jobs back home they had to leave behind. Then they came to the UK where they didn’t speak the language or know anyone, and obviously, they were worried about what was happening back home. Their intention when we arrived was to only stay here for a few years - but 30 years later, they're still here!
They worked hard to keep our cultural heritage because, I think they always wished they were back home, but they weren't. So they tried to instil that in us, which I think is great. I describe myself as Kosovan Albanian. I'm trying to keep my culture, because I think it's important if you're blessed to have different cultures, to keep and showcase them.
I've grown up here in central London and living in such a multicultural and diverse area has made me the person I am today. I like speaking to people and I can appreciate that not everyone comes from the same walk of life or has the same opportunities. Sometimes that makes you stronger as a person, you have to fight to get things. Sometimes our stories make us stronger.
What I enjoy most about Imperial is the interactions with different people. As much as I love science, I feel like I'm also a very people person, I like speaking to people and getting involved in different things. This means I have good friends in a range of avenues at work. Our office is very open so you can just speak to your students, or lab managers, and everyone else! This makes collaborating easy. There are fantastic people here in so many different fields, it’s great to be able to share ideas. I collaborate a lot with engineers, chemists, and clinicians. With the clinical collaboration I get to actually meet the patients behind the research - I've done that recently with my diabetes group and honestly, it makes such a difference.
I am trying to make a difference where I can, even outside of Imperial. I started a charity after my father-in-law was diagnosed with a blood cancer in 2018 – Cancer Support Community of Kosovo. We have three main aims - providing information for patients, improving dialogue between patients and clinicians, and getting access to treatment.
I feel I have this fantastic opportunity being at Imperial surrounded by world leading scientists in my field and I want to take full advantage. In the future I see myself leading a progenitor cell network - I'm still quite junior but if I could lead a network where we are driving research in this area, and contributing to understanding a range of different cardiovascular diseases - that would be fantastic.
I think if I could change anything it would be changing people’s overall perception. We tend to underestimate what we have - I do it myself all the time! But if you sit down and reflect, nothing is perfect, but we have many things to be happy for especially at Imperial. We have fantastic facilities, amazing teaching staff and wonderful students – we can all work together to make a real impact on the world. Trying to appreciate what you have is important.
Visit my portrait in the Guy Scadding Building
on the Brompton Campus
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