Saving Lives - All in a Days Research
After completing his PhD at KAUST in 2016, Dimi made a shift in his career to bioinformatics. This career path has taken Dimi from his home in Greece to Saudi Arabia, and eventually onto Norway, where he currently works as a cancer researcher, and lives with his wife Matina Isari, a former postdoctoral fellow in KAUST's Red Sea Research Center. Dimi and Matina, also from Greece, met while they were both at KAUST.
A passion for research and discovery
What is a liquid biopsy you ask? Well, in cancer diagnosis and treatment up until fairly recently, biopsies would be taken either through an operation or with a needle, both of which can be invasive and painful. Liquid biopsies on the other hand, are as simple as having a blood test. They also make it easier to detect cancer earlier, and since cancer is best treated the sooner it’s diagnosed, this type of biopsy could be a game changer. Liquid biopsies can provide valuable information to help an oncology team decide more precise treatments for patients battling cancer. However, currently, liquid biopsies are expensive and tend only to be offered to patients undergoing clinical trials; the good news is there are companies starting to offer them.
Dimi’s passion for this field is palpable. “Cancer is a very complex disease which changes all the time,” he says, “and as a scientist you carry your research in your brain in every moment.” Dimi’s research supports both the labs and the oncologists who deal with patients. “In order to undertake cancer research, you have to be in a university that is attached to a hospital,” says Dimi, explaining that since cancer mutates there is a need for precision medicine but there is often technical difficulty collecting material. As Dimi points out, “material is often collected at the beginning of the disease and then again after two years. In this gap you don’t know exactly what is happening and cancer can metastasize during this period undetected.”
Applying knowledge from KAUST to a global, scientific career
Dimi graduated from KAUST in 2016 with a PhD in Computer Science. “KAUST was such a unique experience because it offered the opportunity to learn things not only about science but also in terms of culture. Spending time with people from all over the world broadened my horizons in the way I see things.”
KAUST was also the place where Dimi met his wife Matina Isari. “It’s a KAUST story,” Dimi laughs. “I was finishing up my PhD when she came to KAUST. After I left, we were often not in the same place at the same time but more recently we’ve managed to be in the same time zone.” Dimi and his wife both now work in Norway.
While Dimi shares his story, it is clear that he felt very supported during the years he carried out his PhD. “In KAUST research is supported in a way that is different elsewhere. When I got to London afterwards, I discovered you have to fight to get funding for research.”
Dimi also attributes KAUST to helping him learn to communicate more effectively in a multidisciplinary environment like the one he’s in now. “It was thanks to KAUST that during my PhD studies I went to Singapore in 2013 for the first time because my supervisor Professor Panos Kalnis believed in the importance of networking within the field.”
The importance of mentors
Dimi made the shift to bioinformatics from computer science once he’d completed his PhD. “You cannot follow the same path all the way, you have to grow,” is his advice to other graduates considering a shift to something new. He is also outspoken about the support he received from Professor Vladimir Bajic who “encouraged me to write and publish papers.” In fact, Professor Vlad was one of the people who inspired Dimi most, “he was an amazing academic and quite a father figure.”
Once Dimi began working in London at the
Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), he was profoundly inspired by
Professor Mel Greaves or “Sir Mel” as he is now known after being knighted in 2017 for his pioneering work in child leukemia. “Professor Greaves was the first cancer researcher I met after I’d completed my studies at KAUST,” Dimi explained.
Professor Greaves also pioneered the knowledge that cancer evolves leading to drug resistance. This insight links to Dimi’s research of liquid biopsies because they can monitor closely what the cancer is doing. “Of course, there are challenges,” Dimi adds, “for the computational scientist must develop methods to detect the cancer above the noise of the other organs. Once you’ve collected lots of data you have what is called Big Data. From there you can start to identify patterns. Developing frameworks to process the data and then applying corrections to clean it. When analyzing the data, you get codes.” Dimi prefers to think of these codes as having personalities, since it reminds him that these are people not just data on a computer screen. “Doctors see faces, but we don’t.” For Dimi, remembering that the codes represent people is what pushes him to achieve more in this work.
Life now and in the future for a cancer research scientist
If you're curious to know what a normal day for Dimi as a cancer research scientist looks like, he explains that once he receives the data from the lab, he begins to process it. Depending on the funding and the projects, every two to three months they receive a new batch of data which can then be worked on. In between this there are workshops to attend and papers to write.
As to his plans for the future, Dimi wants to stay in cancer research. Within the next five years, he hopes to gain funding to start his own project in the field. While he does admit to sometimes being tempted by the perks of working in industry rather than academia, for Dimi it’s the interaction with students and the importance of the work that, for now at least, will keep him where he is.
We invite you to take a look at Dimi's Sciencetown podcast interview to learn more about the impact he's making as a cancer researcher.
Leave a Reply
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *