This summer, we invited cancer researchers at all levels to write a blog post for the fourth EACR Science Communication Prize around the theme ‘Keep Research Curious‘, highlighting the multifaceted nature of curiosity-driven research and its indispensable role in the ongoing battle against cancer. Like the previous awards, researchers from around the world sent in a great number of high quality original entries. Thank you to all who took part!
Today, we are delighted to announce that Valentina Clausi is the winner of the EACR Science Communication Prize 2024 for her thought-provoking piece on the value of curiosity in driving exploration and the importance of resilience and precision in applying discoveries.
You can read Valentina’s winning entry below, and we will also publish our shortlisted entries over the next few weeks.
Be Curious like a Child; Be Ready as a Pro
by Valentina Clausi
“her unstoppable childlike curiosity led the 31-year-old scientist to build a laboratory in her bedroom”
During my last year of high school, I read ‘In Praise of Imperfection’, Rita Levi Montalcini’s autobiography. I firmly recommend reading it, in case you haven’t already done so. From that moment, her idea of imperfection remained engraved in my mind.
For the Nobel Laureate, imperfection is more in keeping with the human condition, which is flawed by nature, than perfection. Despite the tough historical moment in which Rita Levi Montalcini lived, her unstoppable childlike curiosity led the 31-year-old scientist to build a laboratory in her bedroom to study the motoneurons of chicken embryos.
A few years later, she was invited by the embryologist Viktor Hamburger to the USA, where she stayed for 30 years. There, she had the opportunity to keep on her research in a real laboratory driven by a pro’s strictness and a child’s curiosity. These two attitudes have been a winning combination. In 1986, crowning years of work, Rita Levi Montalcini, together with the biochemist Stanley Cohen, earned the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the nerve growth factor.1
Dear reader, although this is a story with a happy ending, I’m not telling you that you can set up a laboratory in your bedroom driven just by your passion and curiosity. First it is unsafe, and also it’s not the 1940s anymore – a bedroom laboratory could be considered a little “old fashioned” by today’s standards.
This anecdote about Rita Levi Montalcini is extremely inspiring, and it discloses how curiosity and passion – the child’s attitude – are the fuel of the research machine. However, when the engine of this machine is not working for some reason, research needs resilient scientists – with the ‘pro’ attitude – who try to understand critically what is not working and why.
Since the Second World War, research has changed… a bit. Technology moves on really fast, and it gives us the opportunity to explore huge amounts of data. Now, more than ever, curiosity enters the game, and asking the right questions is the key to success. But what kind of questions? I think that beginning with fundamental queries is a great starting point. Indeed, even if translational research leads to practical outcomes, basic research remains a pillar of science.
In case I need to convince you of this, let me tell you an example. In a compendium of 28 selected most impactful drugs, approximately 80% of them were developed thanks to a fundamental discovery. Among these, Imatinib, the first tyrosine kinase inhibitor was approved by the Food and Drug Administration after 40 years from the first basic discovery related to it.2
I know, you are wondering whether to wait 40 years for a drug or to study a topic in the hope of finding some application that is worthwhile for funders. Ask the funding agency of the National Institute for General Medical Science (NIGMS). NIGMS decided to support basic biomedical research with less than 7% of its total budget and as a result, NIGMS projects led to 94 Nobel Prizes in the fields of physiology and medicine and chemistry.3 Not bad, right?
Yes, basic research implies a risk of failing but I am certain that it is worth it, especially in cancer research. Cancer is a plethora of diseases, each one with unique features. Thus, figuring out how each and every cancer works is the best way to find new therapies.
Therefore, accommodate your innate curiosity by exploring the unknown, but also be ready to catch up with the relevance of a discovery to find useful applications!
Header image and image in text created by AI
About Valentina Clausi:
I’m a first year PhD student in Molecular, Cellular and Environmental Biology at University Roma TRE (Italy), and I work at a research hospital for heath in Rome, Gemelli Hospital. My PhD project investigates the role of autophagy, a cellular cannibalism process, in the most aggressive type of endometrial cancer (EC), Type II EC. Since my first year of university, I was fascinated by the molecular and cellular processes underlying cancer biology. Therefore, following my Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at Sapienza University of Rome, I decided to start my journey in cancer research.
References
- Rita Levi Montalcini. In praise of Imperfection: My Life and Work (Basic Books, 1989)
- Spector, J. M., Harrison, R. S. & Fishman, M. C. Fundamental Science behind Today’s Important Medicines. Sci. Transl. Med vol. 10 www.sciencetranslationalmedicine.org/cgi/content/ (2018)
- Lehmann, R. Basic science is not just a foundation. Nature Cell Biology vol. 26 8–10 Preprint at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-023-01308-4 (2024)
