Double honour for scientist in successful second career
25 November 2009
A University of Aberdeen research scientist, Alex Brand (53), who only entered the profession at the age of 40, has been awarded the Medical Research Council New Investigator Grant. The microbiologist also recently received another prestigious funding award, the Royal Society University Research Fellowship.
The combined awards totalling £894,326, will allow Brand, who completed her PhD five years ago, to set up her own research team and equip a new laboratory to further her studies into a fungus that can cause fatal infections in people with weakened immune systems.
Brand is conducting research into Candida albicans, a fungus which normally lives amongst the bacteria in our gut but can sometimes escape to cause bloodstream infections.
This can be deadly for hospital patients whose immune system is suppressed by cancer treatments or drugs associated with organ-transplants. Without a healthy immune system to mop up stray fungal cells, they can become lodged in the blood vessels of internal organs. Once attached, the fungus grows and penetrates into the tissue below to form fungal masses.
Brand’s specific area of work is investigating how the cell tips of this fungus navigate and steer around their environment in order to grow and thrive.
She explained: “We don’t know what external signposts fungal tips follow but they could play an important role in tissue invasion. Because human biology is quite similar to that of fungi, it has proved difficult to develop new antifungal drugs that target C. albicans without also harming the patient.
“The research I am doing is exciting because it will help us to understand the disease process and suggest new targets for the treatment of C. albicans infections.”
Dr Desmond Walsh, Programme Manager for research on virology and mycology at the MRC, said: “This award recognises Dr Brand as being in the highest calibre of new investigators with enormous potential for the future. It is particularly significant in that she came to a science career relatively late in life so her achievements in this field of science are all the more remarkable.”
Brand originally left school with secretarial qualifications, a few ‘A’ levels and a wish to “do something exciting”. Following a successful career in the advertising industry where she worked her way from trainee to account manager, she left advertising in 1983 to travel the world with her oil industry husband, picking up diverse jobs along the way, ranging from running a poster agency in Qatar to announcing the sports news for Voice of Indonesia Radio in Jakarta.
Nine relocations and two children later, the family moved from Glasgow to a small-holding in Aberdeenshire in 1990, where Brand became the ‘Shire’s only registered goats’ milk producer’ as well as a full time mother.
In 1995, Brand embarked on a new career in science and, on completing an Access course, began a full time biochemistry degree at the University of Aberdeen. She graduated with First Class Honours in 2000 and then completed a PhD in Microbiology under the supervision of Professor Neil Gow, graduating in 2004.
Brand, whose project has previously received funding from the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council), is delighted to receive the two research awards.
She added: “I have always had my eye on the next step.By combining my previous experience with a keen enthusiasm for science, I am proof that it is never too late to take on new career challenges.”
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