{"id":26136,"date":"2020-07-01T06:22:57","date_gmt":"2020-07-01T06:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org\/?p=17728"},"modified":"2024-11-03T15:16:45","modified_gmt":"2024-11-03T15:16:45","slug":"covid-19-it-could-take-months-to-build-research-up-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/covid-19-it-could-take-months-to-build-research-up-again\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19: \u201cIt could take months to build research up again\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

Professor Richard Gilbertson and his lab, before the COVID-pandemic<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There\u2019s an atmosphere of excitement in Cambridge. After months of not being able to get into labs for anything other than COVID-19 research, universities are beginning to discuss how to reopen facilities.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a conversation that Professor Richard Gilbertson, a children\u2019s cancer researcher and director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, is particularly pleased to be having.<\/p>\n

\"Professor<\/p>\n

Professor Richard Gilbertson.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cLockdown has meant that lab research is essentially halted.\u201d With universities and other institutions closing their facilities at the beginning of lockdown to all but COVID-19 research, scientists haven\u2019t been able to get in the lab for a few months.<\/p>\n

As many researchers in the centre work with cells to study cancer, Gilbertson says their work has quite literally been frozen in time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you shutdown, you have to take the cells and freeze them to minus 80. And then they stay in suspended animation for the period of the lockdown.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while a lot of researchers have been able to analyse results and plan future experiments at home during lockdown, they\u2019re itching to get back in the lab. Which is starting to become a reality. Universities are now looking at how to reopen facilities as lockdown rules relax, but it\u2019s going to take scientists a while to get back up and running.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of experiments can take up to a year to build up again. So the shutdown is pretty devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gilbertson says the cells researchers use to study cancer can take weeks or months to grow. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit like a garden, you plant seeds and tend the garden and watch things grow in it, and only then are you ready to harvest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists have to carefully grow their cellular garden, making sure they\u2019re healthy before they begin their experiments. And while they still have the seeds for their research in the freezer, it will take a while before they\u2019re ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why shutting down and then reopening is not an on off thing, it will take us a while to get back to previous productivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

This lag time is particularly problematic for early career researchers, who train in short bursts. \u201cYour average PhD is somewhere between 3 and 4 years, so you can imagine why a year out of that can be absolutely devastating for someone\u2019s training.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uncertain times<\/h2>\n

But it\u2019s not just lab research that\u2019s been affected, it\u2019s everything. \u201cPatients are always first and foremost in our minds,\u201d says Gilbertson, which is why the impact of COVID-19 on clinical trials<\/a> is particularly worrying.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost clinical trials stopped with COVID-19, we stopped enrolling patients onto clinical trials. And that was partly because the \u2018machine\u2019 that supports clinical trials was switched to COVID-19, and partly because of the capacity of hospitals. So that\u2019s had a devastating effect for patients who would benefit from those trials.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while the immediate impact of COVID-19 on labs, clinical trials and cancer services<\/a> is clear, it\u2019s likely to be just the beginning.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother obvious area of impact is the economy,\u201d says Gilbertson. We announced last week that because of the devasting impact of COVID-19 on our income, we could be forced to cut \u00a3150 million per year from our research funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a country that has fabulous cancer research, which is why I moved back here from the US. And yet most of that is funded by the generosity of the public. So periods like this can be devastating, because it can have a long-term knock on effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

And this uncertainty could have unseen consequences. \u201cIf you\u2019re a new junior investigator, or a post doc, you\u2019re getting to a point in your career where you need to decide if you\u2019re going to stay in science,\u201d says Gilbertson. \u201cIn a time of uncertainty, when you don\u2019t know whether there will be grants available, that could sway people\u2019s decisions, and they may go after a different career paths.\u201d<\/p>\n

This could mean some of the brightest scientists leave academic research, which would be a huge loss to cancer research.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you put all those things together, you can start to see how potentially devastating the pandemic has been for cancer research and cancer patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Together we will still beat cancer<\/h2>\n