AsianScientist (May 3, 2017) – Ask many a researcher what they dislike most about their job, and you run the risk of having to listen to a rant about the bane of their existence: grant and manuscript writing.
Dr. Audrey Poon has built her own business around helping researchers address this pain point. Her scientific consultancy, which she started in 2013 after more than a decade of studying respiratory disease genetics in the laboratory, helps time-starved researchers navigate the grant application and peer review processes.
“I really enjoy having the chance to be impactful,” she tells Asian Scientist Magazine. “I help scientists to structure their ideas in the right way, so that they increase their chances of getting funding.”
Living and breathing genetics
Poon did her Ph.D. degree at McGill University with Dr. Erwin Schurr, working on the genetics of respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis and asthma.
One theory, known as the hygiene hypothesis, proposes that reduced childhood exposure to microorganisms, including the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, may increase susceptibility to allergic diseases such as asthma. For this reason, many immunologists are interested in genetic links between the two diseases.
For example, some variants in the vitamin D receptor gene are known to increase risk for tuberculosis. In a 2004 study, Poon found that certain variants in the same gene were also associated with increased susceptibility to asthma.
“This was one of the first studies which pointed to a plausible relationship between vitamin D and asthma,” she says. Today, evidence from several clinical trials suggests that vitamin D supplements may help reduce the risk of asthma attacks.
In 2006, Poon won a highly competitive fellowship from the Hong Kong-based Croucher Foundation, established in 1979 by the late philanthropist Noel Croucher to promote science, technology and medicine in the territory.
“The Foundation enabled me to do my research at a world-class research institute,” she says.
She moved to Harvard University’s Channing Laboratory (now known as the Channing Division of Network Medicine) to take up a post-doctoral position with Dr. Augusto Litonjua, working on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) genetics.
Taking advantage of the Channing Laboratory’s extensive collection of samples from longitudinal cohort studies, she found that variants in several genes associated with asthma and COPD were also linked to lung function decline in healthy men as they aged. This suggested that the mechanisms involved in these diseases were also at play during the normal process of aging.
From gene hunter to scientific consultant
After Harvard, Poon moved back to McGill, this time on a fellowship from that university, to work on asthma under the guidance of Dr. Qutayba Hamid and Dr. Catherine Laprise.
“It was during this fellowship that I expanded my research on asthma from genetics to disease pathogenesis,” she says.
In a 2012 study, she and her co-authors discovered links between genes involved in autophagy—a biological process by which cells degrade damaged proteins and other cellular components—and asthma susceptibility. It was one of the first studies to implicate this fundamental cellular process in asthma pathogenesis.
It was also during this time that Poon started brokering joint studies between her former supervisors and private industry, she says. This experience now comes in useful in her business, part of which involves helping researchers apply for grant funding from pharmaceutical companies.
In 2013, she took the plunge into scientific consulting, drawn both by the business opportunity and the chance to have more control over her schedule.
Poon’s Montreal-based consultancy helps clinicians who want to get into research, but who may be unfamiliar with grant application processes such as proposal writing, obtaining informed consent or liaising with private industry. She uses her own wealth of scientific expertise to help them structure these ideas into convincing, fundable grant proposals.
Keeping things boutique
Despite having left academia, Poon continues to publish on the work she did previously. Most recently, she and her co-authors reported that expression levels of a gene involved in autophagy were correlated with collagen deposition in the airways of asthmatic people—a hallmark of the disease.
Poon’s consulting business also keeps her in touch with scientific discoveries in diverse fields.
“I don’t have to go out and search for the latest trends—they come to me,” she says. “It’s fascinating to read about what people write, and you’re not limited to one field.”
“As an entrepreneur, I have started to leverage my status as a Croucher fellow to see whom my consulting business can reach in Asia,” she says.
But despite these efforts to expand her business, Poon values quality over quantity. “I want to grow into more of a boutique consulting firm that has a nice niche and a high success rate.”
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Audrey Poon.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
