Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Join us on our quest for the extraordinary!
Sam McKee (@polymath_sam) has 9 university qualifications across 4 subjects including doctorates in history and philosophy of science and molecular biology. He researches both at two British universities and contributes to both space science and cancer research. Meet fellow polymaths and discipline leaders working on the frontiers of research from all over the world. Be inspired to pursue knowledge and drive the world forwards.
Watch and share interviews with professors, lecturers, researchers, engineers, scientists and astronauts, right here! We talk to the most extraordinary people working on the frontiers for humanity, driving research forwards and changing the world that we live in. We dive deep with thinkers, academics and true icons - many of whom you won't yet have heard of.
Listen to us here and on podcast whilst you drive, exercise, do chores, and be inspired to pursue extraordinary in your own life.
www.sam-mckee.co.uk
Polymath World (00:01.106)
Hello and welcome to the Polymath World channel and I'm delighted to be joined by a really amazing woman who's doing some incredible research that I've really enjoyed getting acquainted with. I've had the pleasure of working with her at our I-Set with young people in space science for the last few years. It's wonderful to be joined today by Dr. Julie Keeble from King's College London. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Julie Keeble (00:23.342)
It's great to be with you, Sam.
Polymath World (00:24.764)
Yeah, it's always great to see you and it's wonderful working with you at Mission Discovery each year. And it's really exciting to jump into pharmacology. It's not a topic we've really discussed on this channel before, but obviously it's so important to the world and so important, so interesting. Everyone's connected to it. So could you tell us about how you got into it in the first place?
Julie Keeble (00:49.358)
And I agree to begin with pharmacology is a great subject. It is around us all the time, whether we're aware of it or not. And I happened upon pharmacology by chance. So when I was at school, I very much enjoyed science. I actually very much enjoyed art related subjects as well. And I did at one point have a fork in the road where was I going to go the art direction or would I go down the science route? And the science was what eventually it grabbed me.
I did biology and chemistry as two of my A levels and actually when I was doing my A levels my teachers at school had persuaded me that I should apply for medicine and it never occurred to me in years before but I did feel it could be a positive career path for me at the time I did a lot of activities that very much supported applying for
medicine and I did apply. I got offered at conditional places to study at a couple of establishments and when it came to my A level grades I actually missed one of the grades that I needed to do medicine and I defaulted to what was my insurance offer at the time which I wasn't entirely sure what it would involve when I put it down on my UCAS form but it was physiology and pharmacology.
Physiology I was more aware of through my A-levels, the pharmacology lesson. I went to King's to study Physiology and Pharmacology after about half of my degree. I realised that I really enjoyed pharmacology and perhaps I should do just a degree in pharmacology. So I switched to Single Honours Pharmacology. I did an experimental project in my final year.
research totally grabbed me. I loved working in the lab so very much and made a decision really whilst doing that finding your research project that I wanted a career in pharmacology. I wanted to be a research scientist and that was the way I was going to go. PhD, here follow.
Polymath World (03:01.563)
What was your research project? I'm interested to what your research project was on.
Julie Keeble (03:08.91)
I was looking at pharmacological responses in the trachea. So trachea is an example of smooth muscle in the body. And I was looking at pathways that involved nitric oxide. Very interesting gas that is present in our bodies that has so many useful functions. At that point in time, it was the heyday of nitric oxide. Lots of people were looking into it.
And so I was looking at pathways involving nitric oxide in the trachea, how it could be involved in airway responses.
Polymath World (03:47.259)
Wow, so did you stay at King's for your PhD?
Julie Keeble (03:52.236)
I a year away. I worked for a little bit of time out in Vancouver, a pharmaceutical company there at the time. wonderful experience. Science is so international. It's one of the great benefits of my career so far is that it's given me so much opportunity to travel. And that was the start of it really. One of my lecturers at King's helped me arrange a placement in the summer at the lab that he did his PhD at.
And so I spent three months in Vancouver working, exploring, had an amazing time. Then I spent some time at the University of Edinburgh and then about a year later I came back and started a PhD at King's. So yes, my PhD was at King's, but I had a gap in between.
Polymath World (04:40.282)
Terrific, sounds like an amazing experience. What did you focus your PhD research on?
Julie Keeble (04:47.828)
So the title of it was quite long. It was the metabolism and cardiovascular effects of nitric oxide releasing non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. So the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in pharmacology were shortened to the NSAIDs and they are drugs that we know of every day. They include aspirin and ibuprofen as classic examples and these drugs have
side effects that people that take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for a long period of time often end up with gastrointestinal upset. And a drug company at the time was exploring a new class of compounds that would take the original non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug and add a nitric oxide releasing variety to the original drug.
that led the drug to slowly release nitric oxide. And that slow release of nitric oxide, it enhanced the anti-inflammatory effect of the original drug, but also helped to counteract the gastrointestinal side effects that you would see with the parent drug. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator. It can help enhance mucosal blood flow that is a problem.
with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and in animal models and in vitro experiments and so on the drugs looked very promising. They unfortunately never made it to human use but we learnt some very interesting pharmacology in relation to slow releasing drugs. Because with nitric oxide a lot of the drugs before then were very fast releases.
fast release of nitric oxide isn't so great because it has such a profound effect on blood pressure and other things. So to have a chance to look at truly slow releasing drugs and how they could affect the body was really, really very interesting.
Polymath World (07:03.879)
So what's your role at King's now and what does your research look like today?
Julie Keeble (07:09.806)
I have multiple roles within King's at the moment. I'm director of biological services at King's, still alongside it holding a career focus capacity, especially in relation to space-related research. So launching experiments to the International Space Station on behalf of ICET, which has been so rewarding over the years and a unique area of science. Not many people get to be.
launching experiments to the International Space Station and especially not on behalf of school children around the world. having that opportunity to support research but also use that platform to empower young scientists and give them a chance to do some groundbreaking work is wonderful, very rewarding.
Polymath World (08:05.597)
Yeah, I'm so excited to talk about that. Let's get into that and I'll come back to pharmacology later. How many experiments have you launched to the International Space Station?
Julie Keeble (08:16.398)
This is always a tricky question for my head, because I never quite keep track of the number. It's over 40 to date, but I get so wrapped in the science that the number almost doesn't count in my head. So it's the science that inspires inspires me more than the number of the experiments themselves. I need to excited at 30 and get excited.
Polymath World (08:36.315)
Yes, yeah of course. How long have you been doing this?
When was your first experiment?
Julie Keeble (08:50.702)
I first started, so the first experiment launched in January of 2014. The initial concept for that experiment happened in July 2012. So it was 2012 that I became very much entwined with space experimentation. And when I relaunched the experiment in January 2014,
Experiments take a long time to develop to launch the International Space Station. It's not a case of just getting the idea and then setting it up in the lab and then launching it. We spend many months working through the best design to be able to send it to the ISS. And also just the amount of paperwork preparation that needs to be done before launch, all the safety checks that have to be done and so on. We have to be ready to launch an experiment about six months before the launch itself.
very, very different to doing experiments on Earth where you usually have the experiment prepared by maybe the morning of the experiment, you finally have everything all together and ready to go. Whereas for space station research, you have to be ultra-organized and know many months in advance exactly how you want that experiment to be executed when it finally comes to launch and being carried out by astronauts on the International Space Station. It will open eyes on me in life more generally.
Polymath World (10:15.869)
So.
Polymath World (10:19.257)
I bet it does, yeah. So, can you explain your process in this? You've got the experiment designed, it fits really strict parameters. I it's got to be small, it's got to be unpowered, it has to be totally safe on every level. How do you get from the two years of you've decided on the experiment to it getting on the rocket?
Julie Keeble (10:44.472)
So choosing a winning experiment on the mission discovery program is obviously the biggest step. We always have to have an experiment that has a very strong hypothesis because sometimes we need to change the actual method in fairly big ways. But the hypothesis must always remain the same and be interesting and novel. Usually we'll start very, very close to the initial experimental design that was delivered during mission discovery.
and if it all goes well we'll keep that design but if not we will keep tweaking and tweaking may seek advice from elsewhere on how we can actually make this hypothesis testable. It's not only about making sure the experiment works when we deliver experiments to International Space Station that experiment will go on top of the rocket and then take about a week before there's any interaction again with that experiment so yes it does need to be very safe we won't get an experiment to
the International Space Station unless it is safe. The durability is a massive factor in terms of the development though because we need to make sure that that experiment will survive its trip to the International Space Station and still be aware of the experiment at the point that it reaches there. And our durability studies in the lab are lengthy so it's not about just testing it for a week. Sometimes launches get delayed. They might be delayed by
a few days, they might be delayed by a week, they might be delayed by a month. And at which point do we know that our experiment is no longer going to work? Well, the only way that we know that is if we test it in the lab before it launches. So we set up many, many experiments and initiate them and watch them for different... Well, we set them up, don't actually initiate them because until we've allowed a durability period. So we might leave it in storage for...
a week, we might leave it in storage for a month and then test at the end of that period, does the experiment still work? And that is one of the most time consuming parts of the whole development process. But if we don't do that, then we can come unstuck later. When we first launched experiments back in 2014, we had two experiments in the module. One involved the effectiveness of antibiotics and one of them involved
Julie Keeble (13:06.446)
3D growth of slime mold in microgravity. And when we went to set up the experiments, all was fine, all was looking on target. But then there was a failure of the cooling system on the International Space Station, which meant that the space station couldn't accept any more science. And we, at that point, were more naive to the experimental process. So we hadn't done durability testing as we would do these days.
and it made it a very difficult decision making process. Actually, serendipity, we found out some very interesting information about the experiments by leaving them that long. Because with the slime mold, the slime mold that was our Earth controls that offer, we do need to have the experiment running at the same time on Earth as we have an experiment running on the International Space Station. The slime mold on Earth didn't grow when the experiment was initiated.
But the slime mold on the International Space Station did. And it really told us a message at that time that science on the space station is different, that things do happen differently to on Earth. And really just how much microbes loved the microgravity environment of the ISS.
Polymath World (14:26.749)
Gosh, that's fascinating. That's really surprising. It's not what one would expect. But that's the joy of science, isn't it? I've got to ask you here, because I imagine you've done a lot of animal experiments or sent animals as part of experiments to the space station, know, insects or bugs, as well as maybe things like yeast. You've mentioned slime mold, obviously. But how is the process different when you're using animal models?
Julie Keeble (14:56.814)
So we don't use any animal species that would be regulated under the Animal Scientific Procedures Act in the UK. The animals that we use are at the insect size. So Daphnia and Drosophila are wax worms, are examples of species that we have sent to the International Space Station. It would not be ethical to send anything larger, so we make it very clear.
to students on the programme that we can't send mice, can't send rats, that we don't send fish. The space that we have for the experiments isn't big enough. The capacity that we have to provide them with the right environment isn't sufficient enough. And so by ethical standards, even if feasibility wasn't such an issue, we don't allow larger species to be launched. But for smaller species,
we have been able to carry out experiments. And in terms of earth-based research involving experiments, we do have the principle of the three Rs, so the replacement, the reduction, and the refinement of the use of animals in research. So people should use animals that are not regulated wherever possible. So where there is an alternative to the use of regulated species, people should use that alternative.
And I think that the ISS is a real example of how the 3Rs can be achieved. People are more creative about the way that they can do science. It is so difficult to send larger species anyway. I think it's a great work that has been done in the past on rodents on the International Space Station. They're very good models that the microgravity environment can provide. But the smaller species have...
provided some excellent information as well in terms of science on the ISS. So in terms of replacement of regulated species, the International Space Station really works and can be used as an example of the science back on Earth.
Polymath World (17:12.229)
I'm curious as to if you have any particular favourite experiments that have gone up or any that are particularly striking and memorable.
Julie Keeble (17:21.198)
I love every experiment that goes, we always learn something even if experiments don't work out the way that we expected them to, it's still a whole learning process. But always say that slime mold is dear to my heart. We've learnt so much from it over time, we've launched more than one experiment that involves slime mold. All of the experiments that we launched are different. But slime mold has, and it's
behaviour has been so fascinating in microgravity. As mentioned before, it was one of the first experiments that we launched and it's experiment that didn't work on Earth, that didn't work so well in space. Slight mould is a survivor and it goes seeking for food. So if you have a food source for it to move towards, it will move towards that source. And you can see it happens so neatly.
and the way that it uses a microgravity environment so effectively really intrigues me. It's hard to send any experiment to the International Space Station, let alone keep on investigating the same thing. At the end of the day, we've got one orbiting laboratory working on behalf of the entire planet, and it's certainly not a cheap space to do science either. But if the opportunity were there to learn more,
about slime mold and why it behaves the way does. I think it would be really interesting to do.
Polymath World (18:53.199)
I love slime mold. I find them so interesting, not just evolutionary for evolutionary reasons, but the fact that they can solve problems and have memory and yet they don't have a brain is just incredible.
Julie Keeble (19:06.658)
Yes. Chemicals are so important in this world.
Polymath World (19:11.441)
Yeah, it's just fascinating in the history of life and what they can do. But people do, I think the general public is woefully ignorant and unaware of the science going on on the ISS and how it's changing the world and what it does. And people do comment to me fairly often that why are we doing stuff in space is so expensive. Could you just, I'll give you the floor here just to defend space science experiments and
just its immense value for life on earth.
Julie Keeble (19:44.55)
from multiple levels that certainly benefit. We have the key element, how much research on the ISS can benefit life back on Earth and how many inventions from the ISS have actually impacted themselves on Earth, probably even better than they have in space. We have the element of space research where
In the short term, obviously life on Earth is very comfortable in so many ways, but for a long term vision, life beyond our planet may be increasingly important and the ISS is a hugely important lab for being able to investigate how life beyond our planet may work. There's also another element I could mention many Sam.
But in terms of the work that we do with ICESAT, people may ask why are we sending student experiments to the International Space Station. Space is one of the most inspiring aspects of science that I think that we have available to us. And we do want to have a next generation of people who are inspired to become scientists. Science is a way forward in so many ways for what we can do better.
future. And the people who are the students who send their experiments to the International Space Station aren't necessarily going to be our next generation of astronauts. think the next generation of astronauts would be maybe too limited. But we do want a next generation of scientists, whether they're working in the space industry or not, who have been inspired to go down this career path. The classic phrase space inspires, think the science in space is an inspiration.
to the planet and we can use that to better us off and on the planet in the future.
Polymath World (21:46.368)
I've never been around a program that's inspired young people as much as I set. I've never seen anything that can do what it does in terms of inspiring young people and students to pursue science and engineering and mathematics and computer science and all of those things. I'd love to tie this back to your own research because pharmacology is fascinating and people can see a pretty straight line between
pharmacological research and real world help. But you study peppers and chilies, which is amazing. I find that fascinating. Can you tell us about your particular research on capsaicin and how studying chilies can help develop the next generation of drugs?
Julie Keeble (22:36.072)
I spent many years studying capsaicin, not so much the chilli peppers themselves but capsaicin as the pungent component of chilli peppers that has so many interesting effects pharmacologically. Capsaicin is a wonderful drug as we'd call it in pharmacology because it is so selective in what it does as well and selectivity
I mean, it has a target. It's called the transient receptor potential vanilloid one protein, otherwise called TRPV1. And my key research was really the TRPV1 receptor, but we would use capsaicin to modulate that receptor. So if capsaicin binds to TRPV1, then it activates it. TRPV1 is predominantly found
on sensory nerves, so the nerves that can call us to feel pain, as a classic example. And I looked for a few years at the role of the TRPV1 receptor in arthritis. So TRPV1 is activated. It can lead to pain and inflammation. Obviously in arthritis, other forms of joint inflammation, then there is pain and inflammation. So we looked at whether
The lack of TRPV1 would reduce the amount of pain and inflammation seen in arthritis. There's different ways that you can do this. So one way, you can use mice that completely lack functional TRPV1 receptors. And then you're able to see whether joint inflammation is the same in TRPV1 knockout mice, as we call them.
versus their normal wild type counterparts. Or you can give drugs other than capsaicin that also modulate the TRPV1 receptor. Well, what we did find is that the TRPV1 receptor is involved in joint inflammation. And around the same time as I was looking deeply into its role in the joint, drug companies were developing drugs
Julie Keeble (25:01.442)
that could block the TRPV1 receptor. So if you block TRPV1 and stop it being activated, then by default you would stop the subsequent pain and inflammation. And drugs that block TRPV1 were called TRPV1 antagonists. These drugs were effective at reducing pain and inflammation. But a hidden side to this receptor that wasn't seen during the earlier stages, if you block it, what would also happen?
is that body temperature would also rise. This effect of the TRPV1 antagonist was found across species from mice to humans. In fact, in one of the humans that was given a TRPV1 antagonist in the early stages of clinical trials, developed a fever level body temperature. So it is very much involved in our thermoregulation. And actually following that, I spent
at many years looking at the role of TRPV1 in thermoregulation and published some work showing that the inhibition of TRPV1 can actually unleash the sympathetic nervous system that would lead to a rise in body temperature.
Polymath World (26:15.744)
I think people quite instinctively associate chilies and hot peppers with body temperature going up. But there's two things... Sorry, go ahead.
Julie Keeble (26:24.15)
Well actually, Kepsaeusin itself would not cause body temperatures to go up directly, it would cause it to go down. And when you're talking about the heat, would feel, sometimes when having a hot chilli pepper, like you've got hot. That is a trick of the mind. Trick V1 is also activated by temperatures above 42 degrees Celsius.
Polymath World (26:44.162)
Right.
Julie Keeble (26:52.438)
which our bodies would detect as noxious. So when we are exposed to capsaicin, our tri-V1 receptors will tell our brains that we are burning. So that is what we feel heat, not because there is heat, but because it's a trick of the mind that exactly the same protein is being activated by capsaicin as would be activated by noxious heat. And our brains can't tell the difference.
Polymath World (27:18.766)
Wow, that's fascinating. There's a couple of things you said there that I'd like to pull out. One is this premise underlying pharmacology and things like the development of antibiotics that within nature are all the elements and compounds that we would need. If we can find them, if we can isolate them, nature itself has sort of given us everything we need in life, in proteins, in...
in plants, microbes, we can find the treasure to fix really complex problems. And that sort of seems to be part of the joy of discovery of pharmacology.
Polymath World (28:03.992)
Is that how you feel?
Julie Keeble (28:07.436)
Yeah, that nature has played such an important role in pharmacology over the years. Chinese medicine is a big area, where natural compounds have been so interesting pharmacologically. Lots of natural products have been adapted by chemists to make them better at doing what they do, pharmacologic...
interest in that compound started from the natural substance. I do think, yes, there is such a resource out there. And as we move forward with artificial intelligence, we've already seen some size of people being interested in using artificial intelligence in drug design. I think that will only increase in the future where we can take a whole array of products and use more and more artificial intelligence to determine.
where they could be used most effectively pharmacologically.
Polymath World (29:07.564)
Yes, that's a good point. And I suppose synthetic biology here is going to change the future as well, thanks to things like gene editing and other sort of synthetic biology processes. We can develop new things that maybe don't exist in nature. Has that got any part in your work?
Julie Keeble (29:29.494)
So around and around with all the time people are designing new drugs. It's an important part of the whole drug development spectrum. And with my role within biological services at King's, there's a lot of people working on different drugs in a whole lot of areas. So I'm going to take a spectrum moment to space because I think we started to hit upon something that's interesting here pharmacologically in terms of drug design.
The space station has been used in more recent times to do protein crystallization to better determine the three dimensional structure of proteins against which drugs can be better designed. So it's not necessarily even just about using resources available to us here on Earth. We've been able to use the International Space Center as a platform of microgravity where protein structures can form so beautifully without gravity on Earth to squash them.
then drugs can be better designed against that three-dimensional structure to improve pharmacology of the future.
Polymath World (30:36.101)
Yeah, this was quite a controversial debate when I was at Birkbeck actually, because it's sort of well known that protein crystals can form much bigger and more beautifully and like purer in space and microgravity, which is obviously very desirable. And those sorts of experiments have been going on from the very early days of even the shuttle before the space station, but also the amount of money it costs.
Julie Keeble (30:36.27)
That's it.
Polymath World (31:04.347)
to spend send them to space. I had some professors who were very pro and some who were really against, who sort of wanted that money more for themselves on earth, think, for their own research.
Julie Keeble (31:14.862)
Yeah.
Julie Keeble (31:23.094)
Of course, there'd always be some debate around that. And of course, just sending proteins to space doesn't mean to say that you're going to have a successful experiment first time over as well. When I first went out to Houston to set up the experiments for our first launch, we were working with a scientist who just had a module back that involved a protein crystallization, but it was the third attempt. And so it's not a case of just sending them and you get lovely crystal.
crystals actually if you don't do it properly you can end up with a protein gloop and that's obviously not good for any form of drug discovery. So if you get protein crystallization variety microgravity it can be great, if not you won't get what you need in order to design a better product. So there is certainly a time a process investment that needs to be done, it's a whole experiment in its own right and so I can see if someone wants to move forward quickly with their design.
Perhaps it's not the most effective way to do it. But if you really want to push boundaries or that there's some complexities to the structure that need to be overcome in terms of knowledge, the International Space Station could be a very good lab in which to make progress. So maybe it's not the lab for every drug discovery project, but I think there is a place for it.
Polymath World (32:48.248)
In theory then, could much higher quality medicine be developed in space? mean, if money was no object, if you had the facilities.
Julie Keeble (33:02.648)
So in terms of the drugs themselves, for most drugs, that's probably not. It's the design of drugs that's probably more effective in the space environment than the actual effectiveness of drugs. It could just be a personal knowledge thing, but I don't know of the results of any study where a drug has been producing space where, is it proteins, would a protein...
that's made in space be more effective if used to treat a human back on Earth. I'm not sure that anyone has done that. I'd be pleased to know. I'll go in and look deeper. But for normal, simple molecules, there isn't necessarily a benefit from using an environment without gravity because there isn't such a gravitational impact on the quality of their production anyway.
Polymath World (33:53.959)
That's an interesting question.
Julie Keeble (33:54.702)
but for the design, absolutely.
Polymath World (33:57.809)
Right. Gosh, okay. That's very, very interesting. I'd love to look into that. In terms of pharmacology, again, it seems to be about five years from successful concept and design in the lab to hitting the market shelves. All there about, obviously for some it takes longer than that. yeah, how could that process ever be brought down?
Julie Keeble (34:21.762)
I'm to go.
Polymath World (34:27.567)
made quicker.
Julie Keeble (34:30.978)
Maybe this is where I come in again at Sammers. We know better and better how to predict the effects of drugs, then steps in that development pathway could be simplified or even removed. But at the moment, those steps take so long to achieve individually. you can't achieve one step until another has been completed that it can slow the process down. But...
I think there are already simplifications being made that have been based upon AI and how we are able to predict drug effects rather than having to do mass analysis of across different possible effects. So, yes, it could become faster, but also the market has become so much tighter and the margins of improvement that we get.
are smaller, which don't necessarily mean that those drugs that take so long or so much money to develop that they are going to have enough benefit over existing treatments to actually make a life for themselves in the market. So yeah, I do totally believe that the pipeline could become faster, but competition will also become greater.
Polymath World (35:50.855)
What's the future of pharmacology looking like? You've mentioned AI and how it could change things, but for students who are looking to get into the field now, what's the next 10, 20 years going to look like, do you think?
Julie Keeble (36:07.898)
I think that there is many a great career path to have in pharmacology. Yes, there is an evolution, but it is such a relevant subject to society. As I said right back at the beginning, it's all around us. Not only do we need to learn more about pharmacology, so drugs and medicines and how they work, but also
When it comes to AI, we need to train AI tools. We need to train the next generation. There's the whole teaching aspects of it too, to be able to move on better. But there's so much that we don't know. It's that we can say with animal models, hopefully one day we'll reach a point where animal models are no longer required at all. But we know that we don't know everything. And there are...
still so many aspects that we need to look at integrative whole body systems to be able to determine their effects because we don't have the information to input into those AI tools and we can use individual tissues and we can use cell cultures but we know historically from drug development that you don't necessarily know the effect of a drug until you put it into a whole body integrated system.
where you can look at how it's being metabolized, the way it's being absorbed at the same time as how it's having its pharmacological effects. And also in the case of adverse effects, adverse effects are a really hugely important part of drug development and whether they reach the market in the first place. Adverse effects often aren't expected when you put a drug into a body system.
the adverse effects are so often a surprise and they have resulted from it being in an integrated system rather than an isolated system. So we need to make sure we keep building up as much information as possible to make the AI processes as effectively as possible. And hopefully one day so much will become AI predictive because we have learned so much using our current processes valuably.
Julie Keeble (38:33.152)
I can't get the word out now.
Polymath World (38:38.311)
What advice would you give to someone in their teens who's interested in getting into pharmacology as a career?
Julie Keeble (38:49.326)
so this is a good question and I could show all the enthusiasm in the world but at school you don't necessarily learn so much pharmacology but I'd say look around you and see its relevance, look at where drugs and medicine sit in society. Think about a situation where you know about how they work, you know where the boundaries of knowledge are and you know, you get to a point where you can see how we can take drug development.
forward. So one of the most inspirational moments I had was when I realized I was on the boundary of knowledge and I realized what wasn't known and it's fascinating what isn't known and how we can work towards finding that out and I think pharmacology is a wonderful subject because not only is it relevant to your day-to-day but there is so much to learn and if you can
If we can learn that, we can make the world a whole much better place.
Polymath World (39:52.207)
You really do work at this wonderful intersection between space science, pharmacology, so much of what is booming in the biological sciences right now, artificial intelligence, computational biology, the advances in genetics. It's just such a rich, interesting world I feel like you're in. Thank you so much for your time today. If people want to know more about your work or your research, where should they look?
Polymath World (40:25.243)
have I lost you there? If people want to know more... Sorry, I was just asking if people want to know more about your work, where should they go?
Julie Keeble (40:28.11)
Just for a moment.
Julie Keeble (40:37.454)
I can easily be found on the King's pages. if anyone does want to get in touch about pharmacology, then please do so. I'll always be happy to discuss anything you're interested in and hopefully inspire you further.
Polymath World (40:52.145)
Thank you so much today, Dr. Keeble. It's been such a pleasure talking to you.
Julie Keeble (40:57.246)
Thanks for talking to me. Always a joy to share. Thank you.