Podcasts

Podcast – AAIC 2018 Day Three

Hosted by Adam Smith

Reading Time: 29 minutes

This is the third and penultimate of our podcasts recorded on location at the Alzheimer Association International Conference (AAIC) in Chicago. Each day we will be bringing you news and information from our panellists who are all presenting and attending the world largest dementia conference.

Adam Smith the Dementia Researcher website Programme Lead for the NIHR is again hosting and today is joined by Oz Ismail (aka Birthday Boy) and Yolanda Ohene both PhD Students at University College London and Isabel Castanho a PhD Student at Exeter University Medical School working in the Genomics of Alzheimer’s Disease.

The panel discuss their own presentations, and just how much the brain is like a fantastic water park. We also discuss their highlights from the third day here at the AAIC, including sessions on ‘Microbiome and the brain’ and the latest research on the impact of circadian rhythms. Oz and Isabel also share their experiences as ISTAART volunteers, whilst also encouraging others to consider supporting AAIC19.

Tune in again tomorrow for day four, and our next panel.


Click here to read a full transcript of this podcast

Voice Over:

Welcome to the Dementia Researcher Podcast. Brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk, a network for early career researchers.

Adam Smith:

Hello, my name is Adam Smith. Welcome to the third of our podcast recordings for the NIHR Dementia Researcher website, on location from the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Chicago. For those who are late to the party, this week we have been recording podcasts at the end of each day reflecting on what we’ve discovered at the AAIC that day and sharing with those early career researchers who haven’t managed to make it out to Chicago. Today’s panel, I know a couple of you are ISTAART volunteers, as well as early-career researchers, so I’m pleased to welcome Yolanda Ohene?

Yolanda Ohene:

Ohene.

Adam Smith:

Ohene. Right, sorry. Yolanda Ohene from University College London. We’ve got Oz Ismail from UCL as well, and Isabel Castanho from University of Exeter. I did get your name, right?

Isabel Castanho:

Well, close enough.

Adam Smith:

This has been my challenge every day this has come up, and I failed miserably yesterday. And Isabel you’re at Exeter not at UCL, because I work at UCL as well. So, you’re a bit outnumbered today.

Isabel Castanho:

Apparently I am. Yes.

Adam Smith:

Have you thought about moving to UCL? It’s quite a cool place.

Ozama Ismail:

I mean, it’s the place to be. I think you just should.

Adam Smith:

It’s in London.

Isabel Castanho:

I know. So, it’s really hard because London is such an amazing city and I know so many amazing researchers at UCL. But currently, I’m really happy in Exeter.

Adam Smith:

Well, you’ve also got the beach. And to be fair, I’ve seen so many people at Exeter. Exeter is where it’s at. There’s a lot of stuff going on at Exeter Medical School.

Isabel Castanho:

I wouldn’t say I’m excited about the beach. I am excited about the science happening in Exeter, that’s why I’m happy in Exeter.

Ozama Ismail:

[crosstalk 00:01:54]. And no one’s excited about beach in the UK. So that’s fair.

Isabel Castanho:

Exactly.

Adam Smith:

You can surf near Exeter. I remember that colleague who’s just, “Come on we had a whole surfing week long course.” I don’t think he can surf at the end it, he had one. Pius that’s you if you’re listening. So, before we get into this, why don’t we find out a little bit more about our panellists? Yolanda, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Yolanda Ohene:

My name’s Yolanda and I’m a PhD student at UCL as you know, and I work at the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging. So my PhD focuses on developing a new technique to look at the brain and specifically how water moves in the brain. And so this could be one of the clearance mechanisms that help to get rid of those waste products that everyone produces. But unfortunately there’s more of them in Alzheimer’s patients than the healthy brain. So I’m just looking at new techniques to investigate those mechanisms.

Adam Smith:

That’s sounds great. I can imagine kind of a cartoon on that, about the brain being flushed out, you’re going to be able to explain your research so simply to people with dementia in the future. Flushing it out, that’s perfect.

Yolanda Ohene:

I like to think about it as a waterpark, and how the water moves in a water park and maybe those things that you don’t want to be, that you find in the swimming pool. That you don’t want to be there. So I’m looking at that using MRI.

Adam Smith:

That’s cool. That’s going to be… Yeah, I like that. How about you Oz?

Ozama Ismail:

Hi, I’m Oz. I’m also a student at UCL. I work in the same lab as Yolanda, in the same group as Yolanda. So I also look at a similar area of research, we’re looking at how the brain cleans itself. So I study this system called the glymphatic system. And I don’t do as clever physics as Yolanda because I’m not that clever. I’m more of a biologist, so for me MRI is a tool to image the glymphatic system in the brain. And I do a bit of that, a bit of histology just to try and understand what role the glymphatic system has in clearing out amyloid and tau from the brain.

Adam Smith:

So you’re playing in the same water park.

Ozama Ismail:

We’re playing in the same water park.

Yolanda Ohene:

[crosstalk 00:04:23] in the same water park.

Ozama Ismail:

So yeah, that’s me. And also it’s great to be at AAIC because a couple of years ago I was an ISTAART student volunteer in Toronto, and then last year I was the lead volunteer in London. So it’s just great to keep coming back to this conference.

Adam Smith:

Thanks Oz. Isabel.

Isabel Castanho:

So my name is Isabel Castanho, that’s with a Portuguese accent. I’m a third year PhD student at the university of Exeter, working with Professor Jonathan Mill and Professor Katie Lunnon. So in our group we are highly interested in changes in gene regulation, including epigenetic changes, so things like DNA methylation, histone modifications. And in my research specifically, I’m interested in understanding changes that happen in gene regulation in Alzheimer’s disease, but due to the progression of the disease.

Adam Smith:

That’s over my head. I’m not that technical, but that sounds fascinating. And you’ve presented as well, I think while you’ve been here, have you had a poster?

Isabel Castanho:

A poster, yes. I had a poster today where I brought part of the story. I think I tried to put a lawn in my poster, I wanted to show the world everything I’ve been doing. But so today I presented changes I’m seeing in gene expression due to the progression of amyloid and tau pathology. And I hope I shared my excitement with everyone and I got really good feedback. So that was great. Yes.

Adam Smith:

And because you’re also an ISTAART volunteer, did you still get time to go stand by your poster?

Isabel Castanho:

Yeah. So today was very challenging, like Oz, I was an ISTAART volunteer last year. And every year they bring someone back and like Oz was last year, he was an amazing lead volunteer, so it’s been hard. It’s been hard to keep up.

Adam Smith:

You’re doing a great job.

Isabel Castanho:

But I am the lead volunteer this year. So the United Kingdom is very well represented, apparently. And it is a great opportunity. But today, especially focusing or trying to balance between helping the association and promoting my own work was very challenging, but the day’s almost done so yeah. So far so good.

Adam Smith:

It is. And Yolanda, did you have an oral…

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah. So I presented at the pre-conference, the Alzheimer’s Imaging Consortium, which is just before the main conference. And so that’s the day which focuses on all of the different imaging techniques. So that was really interesting to see all of the developments in the many imaging techniques that can be used to investigate Alzheimer’s disease.

Adam Smith:

And we’re not embarrassing you by saying that you won a prize?

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah, I did win a prize.

Adam Smith:

And this is your first Alzheimer’s conference as well?

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah, it’s the first AAIC that I’ve been to. And I was really honoured to get the best oral presentation of the day. And I was quite surprised because the work that I’m doing is quite new and a bit removed from the usual amyloid pack or tau pack that people are presenting. So it’s really nice that the work’s been appreciated by people in the community.

Adam Smith:

So did they have like a vote? How did they decide?

Ozama Ismail:

I think she’s knocked out of the pack with just her talk. Everybody was stunned in the room, everybody was paying attention when you gave that talk. And I think it’s just Yolanda is just such a great presenter and she’s knocked out the pack.

Adam Smith:

[crosstalk 00:08:15]. And you got a certificate.

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah, they gave me a certificate so that can go on our wall of fame in CABI.

Ozama Ismail:

The CABI wall of fame.

Adam Smith:

And you put on your CV as well as coaster.

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah, which is really great. I was really shocked to receive the award.

Adam Smith:

That’s cool, congratulations.

Yolanda Ohene:

Thank you.

Adam Smith:

Sounds really interesting. I wish I’d been there, I went to the technology in dementia, which sounds less exciting. Oz, you’ve been presenting and you’ve still got another presentation tomorrow as well you-

Ozama Ismail:

Yes. So I presented at the imaging conference, I presented a poster which I then also present another main conference. So that poster was showcasing some of my recent work where I imaged an amyloid mouse model and tried to image glymphatics in the J20 amyloid mouse model. And the aim of that was to try and understand by looking at a very early time point if lymphatic clearance is impaired before the onset of amyloid pathology. And from my work, what I found was that wasn’t the case. And comparing it to other work that people have done using very late stage amyloid mouse, they found glymphatics impairment in their mice. So it suggests that it’s actually the accumulation of amyloid that is causing this impairment perhaps. So we need to look into that a bit more. So that was the poster that I presented a couple of days ago, and then tomorrow I’m presenting a poster on behalf of my colleague Ian Harrison, who couldn’t be here unfortunately because he’s just had a baby.

Adam Smith:

He had a baby?

Ozama Ismail:

He had a baby, he’s defied biology. So Ian’s a bit busy. So his work which I did-

Adam Smith:

Breastfeeding.

Ozama Ismail:

The usual stuff. So with his poster, it’s also a study that we did together. Ian and I, we investigated the role of this water channel called aquaporin-4, which Yolanda works on as well, and aquaporin-4 moves water around the brain. And so it has a very key role to play in glymphatics because glymphatics is his movement of fluid around the brain. And we blocked aquaporin-4 in the mouse brain using a pharmacological agent to see if we can then stop glymphatics in the mouse brain. And we were able to do that. So that’s the data I’m going to share tomorrow at the main conference during the post session.

Adam Smith:

That sounds cool. And that sounds like a type of satellite or a rocket or something, the aquaporin-4.

Yolanda Ohene:

Aquaporin-4. We’re all over that in our group and because it seems to play a key role in clearing out waste from the brain.

Ozama Ismail:

But what’s interesting is at my poster… Because glymphatics and CSF, cerebral spinal fluid, interstitial fluid exchange within the brain is a growing new area of research. But that also means it’s quite controversial, there are some people who have different opinions on how things move around in the brain. There are some people didn’t believe it. Most of the feedback I got at my poster was broadly positive, but there was also some people who didn’t necessarily believe that aquaporin-4, this water channel had a real role even though they believed in glymphatics but they weren’t sure if this water channel was actually even involved in it. So it’s going to be interesting tomorrow presenting this poster where I’ve blocked this channel and show that I can stop the inflow of fluid into the brain.

Adam Smith:

This is going to prove climate change deniers are wrong.

Ozama Ismail:

I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t want to piss anyone off. But no, I think it’s, a very interesting field of research to be in at the moment I think. And the AAIC itself, last year they introduced session, so every year they have a specific slot called emerging concepts. And last year that emerging concepts, one of the sessions was cerebral spinal fluid clearance in the brain, and that was really well received. So this year they had a focus session on that, so it’s kind of almost promoted itself within the meeting. So it’s really nice to see that people are starting to pay attention to this field of research.

Adam Smith:

And if it was nonsense, you wouldn’t have even been allowed to present it. Because they don’t let nonsense stuff be here.

Ozama Ismail:

As far as I’m aware they do. Everything is very solid.

Adam Smith:

Sorry I couldn’t help but get that in there. Thanks, Oz, I’ve had a poster as well. I’m certainly going to sound far less scientific than you because my poster was on how we’ve used… I work in a team that created Joint Dementia Research, which is a UK wide initiative to enable the public to get involved in research. And we tried out a new way of using this last year, to recruit to a particular pharma trial where we centrally recruited using this service rather than sites using themselves and prove that the system itself could potentially recruit three times as many people as it is doing, if only it was used in a slightly smarter way. So that was my presentation today. So if you want to know more about my presentation, I’m on Twitter and I’m always happy to, my poster, I’m always happy to talk about that. I’m @betterresearch on Twitter. How about you Yolanda?

Yolanda Ohene:

I’m on Twitter too but I’m a bit of a Twitter phobe, but you can contact me on there, it’s @y_ohene or also our lab GABI has a Twitter account as well. So do get in touch.

Adam Smith:

If you want to know more about water parks.

Yolanda Ohene:

Yes, exactly.

Ozama Ismail:

Water parks in the brain that’s what we’re going to call it.

Adam Smith:

That’s good. That’s the title of next year’s poster. What about you Oz? You’re on Twitter as well.

Ozama Ismail:

I am, I do have a Twitter presence. But then, that’s also because it’s not just science, it’s not just science communication, I also do a bit of comedy on the side, it’s just a bit of a hobby.

Adam Smith:

So this is where you’re worried that people are going to go looking for you and find things that they wouldn’t have expected?

Ozama Ismail:

There isn’t that much to find, they just need to come to my shows.

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah. Do go to his show.

Adam Smith:

He’s going to get [inaudible 00:14:23] later.

Ozama Ismail:

But I do tweet about science and about all sorts of things. I’m on @O-Z-Y_I-S-M-A-I-L that’s @ozy_ismail.

Adam Smith:

That’s cool. And I can totally see a pint of science presentation that uses the water park analogy next. That’s born for next time.

Yolanda Ohene:

We do quite a lot of scicomms in the lab in CABI but haven’t ever doubled in pint of science and maybe that might be next in the list.

Adam Smith:

I’ve just had a moment there. I was in Sydney when they did them. I think they happened at the same time across the world. Cool. And Isabel, last but not least, you are on social media as well, and you’re happy to talk about your work too, I hope.

Isabel Castanho:

Yes, I do go in waves on Twitter. So sometimes you-

Adam Smith:

Are we sticking with water here?

Ozama Ismail:

[crosstalk 00:15:13]. Water is the theme of this podcast today.

Yolanda Ohene:

You want to go to our lab Isabel.

Isabel Castanho:

And science communication. Well Oz won’t be able to do that, but at least you Yolanda, you should do soapbox science.

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah that’s true.

Ozama Ismail:

So you were doing that here in Chicago, weren’t you?

Isabel Castanho:

Yes. So I arrived on Thursday so on Saturday I could help on the first soapbox science event in the United States, in Chicago. And this was actually organized by a previous speaker in Exeter. So she’s from the US but she was a speaker last year in Exeter. I was a speaker two years ago and now I’m one of the organizers in Exeter. Going back to Twitter, I do have a presence on Twitter, I am @isabelesct. But like I said, I do go in waves, so sometimes I spend weeks without tweeting anything and then all of a sudden there’s a lot of papers, and especially if there’s a conference, I will tweet a lot about it.

Adam Smith:

As long as people can reach you there, I suppose it’s just-

Isabel Castanho:

Yeah, definitely.

Adam Smith:

That’s fantastic. We’ve spent a lot of time getting to know each other. I feel like maybe we should talk a little bit about what’s been going on today other than your own presentations as well. So today was the third day, and I’ve spoken to a lot of people today who thought that this was the best day, although I think you’d say the same if you’ve been following social media. I know Henry Brodaty did a presentation this morning, which I know some of you didn’t manage to make it to, but I’d suggest anybody who’s interested in what he had to say, follow on social media because I swear every single thing that came out of his mouth was tweetable. He’s just quoted so much using that hashtag #AAIC18 this morning. So why don’t we just go around and just have a chat about what you’ve seen in the last couple of days, what you liked. Isabel, would you like to go first?

Isabel Castanho:

Yeah. So today I woke up really excited, nervous because I had my poster as well, but really excited about the first session which I went to, which was on omics genetics. And funny thing is I woke up this morning thinking about an example that was given by someone in a previous AAIC about all these scientists, blindfolded scientists trying to find or understand an elephant when, it’s an elephant and we should be looking at the bigger picture. And then here I am in the session and one of the presenters, Burcu Darst from the University of Wisconsin has this beautiful cartoon in one of her slides which shows exactly that, all the blindfolded scientists trying to understand the elephant, to make the point that we should be all trying to put effort together to see the elephant as a whole. So that was an excellent session with excellent talks and research.

Isabel Castanho:

And I was so happy to see so many scientists trying to put different levels of knowledge together. So using complicated statistics, network analysis, systems biology, and also going back to what Professor Julie Williams said yesterday from Cardiff University that I completely agree, it’s not enough, it was never enough, especially now it’s not enough to look at only one thing. We should all be holding hands and trying to look at the problem as a whole. So I’m really happy and excited to see more and more scientists collaborating and asking this complex question at so many different layers and levels. So for me, between that session yesterday and today, that was definitely the best two half days since I’m here.

Adam Smith:

I think we did touch on that yesterday and I think we’ve talked about this before with our podcasts on this. It comes out as a theme throughout again, and every podcast we’ve done so far this week has talked about the importance of collaborations between people working in areas that we wouldn’t traditionally have necessarily thought of as colleagues.

Yolanda Ohene:

Being the first time at this meeting, I think it’s really exciting to see research from a different angle. Because before I’ve been to MRI conferences, but coming here to the Alzheimer’s Association and it’s really nice to see that there’s so many angles that you can actually approach the topic from. And the quote I heard today was, everything touches everything. I was like, “Oh, okay.”

Adam Smith:

Actually while I’m talking, I realised I skipped before because one of the main plenary sessions today was microbiome and the brain and I know you managed to make it to that.

Yolanda Ohene:

I was really interested by this topic. Not that I do so much research in this area, but I thought it was really interesting, the link between the microbiome and the brain. And so there’s been lots of research which shows that there’s a co-morbidity between gastro intestine disorders and the central nervous system. And I thought because I’m looking at how water passes into the brain, here they were talking about how the microbiota can pass light through the cell walls and the toxicity that there is here, and how changes in the microbiota, you can see correlations in disease. So they were looking both at Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. So I suppose it was really important what goes in our body and how that affects our brain as well.

Adam Smith:

Did you make a note on who did that talk?

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah. There were actually four scientists. So, it started with Dr Jack Gilbert from Chicago, and then it moved on to Dr Kathleen Shannon and then another professor from Chicago called Sangram Sisodia, and then finishing with Giovanni Frisoni, I think.

Adam Smith:

You did so well at those pronunciations.

Yolanda Ohene:

I might have got them all completely wrong, but give it a go. So all of that talk was really interesting to see that crossover.

Adam Smith:

I know I put you on the spot there, but have you picked up on a few things that interested you in your…

Yolanda Ohene:

Sometimes I question my diet in general.

Adam Smith:

Yesterday was about TV. That was by yesterday’s with fizzy drinks and TV yesterday, wasn’t it?

Isabel Castanho:

[inaudible 00:22:18] use your second brain.

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah, exactly. And that is really important. I thought what was quite interesting was actually they were talking about that there’s different groups of people and the preposition they have to get different diseases because of their diet, and so that was interesting. Unfortunately, they said that the American diet is, the studies that actually there’s no protective effect on getting obese whereas in I think an African diet that they had seen that some cohort of people do have a protective with that. But even depending on what they eat, so I thought that was really interesting.

Adam Smith:

And every time you share these podcasts, we’ve been trying to pick on something that might be of interest to the public. And it sounds like that’s another one that would have, reinforces that view again that we are what we eat and diet can have such a big impact. So Isabel coming back to you, did you mention everything there that had caught your eye this week? Did I miss anything? Today rather was there anything else that you’d wanted to add? I realized that I jumped from you and I wounded across to Yolanda, I didn’t mean if I ticker you off.

Isabel Castanho:

The other thing more in general about the conference I would say, and why I find it, so it’s my third time I come to the AAIC and it’s so massive and overwhelming. I remember the first year I went I was not a volunteer and I felt completely lost because there’s so much going on here. But now over the years, I remember Professor Kai-Tin Lan mentioning how good this conference was for networking. And back then I didn’t realize that, because again I felt so lost and now as the third time I come here it is, so that’s maybe more general, not so sciency. But it is a great conference to network, to meet other people. And also there are a lot of opportunities to meet big people in the field. Oz and I before coming here just had an amazing conversation with Dr Sue Griffin. Which was an honour, but we do have these opportunities to network with people that we look up to.

Adam Smith:

That’s a good point. And that’s actually one of the main aims of the Dementia Researcher website, was to try and connect people more. So everybody who contributes to the website through the bio, through the podcasts, and through our blogs all has a bio on there with some information about their research area, what interests them, and there’s usually their Twitter feed if they’re on Twitter, and then you can add comments and post messages to them as well. So hopefully we will encourage networking through that as well. But I agree which we also have the, ask the expert section where we bring more senior people to take questions on particular things.

Adam Smith:

So it’s not mentoring because clearly we’re not going to mentor through a website. But it’s the whole idea is to try and connect people with more senior people to inspire their careers and to help them in any way they can. And I’ve heard that so many times today is that the senior people are so approachable, you definitely shouldn’t be afraid to just go chat to people, mostly I’m sure, there might be the odd exception. Oz, coming back to you, what have you seen? I know you’ve had a chance this year, for once, to actually get round and go see all the talks.

Ozama Ismail:

It’s interesting, this year I have been, coming as a regular delegate again, I’ve been able to immerse myself fully into a lot of the talks. I could go on and on about the stuff that I’ve seen, but I think specifically the highlights for me today, I would echo what Isabel just said. Firstly about this conference, when I first came here a few years ago it was overwhelming, but then I realized that there’s this feeling of nurturing if you are a student and especially through schemes like the volunteer program. But also the other things that this conference does, for example, today I got the opportunity to meet Harry Johns who’s the CEO of the association because he came to chat to the people in the student and postdoc lounge. So that’s specifically a space that the association have created for early career researchers first of all to network or to chill out or to do some work quietly and then they bring experts into that room.

Ozama Ismail:

So it was great to hear from Harry John the CEO of the association who, it’s quite inspiring to hear from these people to say, they’re not going to stop until we, the researchers… They’re going to do everything they can to support us to find the cure that you’ll need. The other opportunity, so Isabel and I we just went to a session called Ask, where we met Maria Carrillo and she… Again to be able to meet the people behind the association, running the association, coming and talking to us, it’s unusual I think. I’ve not been to any other conference where you can just go and ask them a question or there’s a platform to ask them any question we want to ask them. And it was very inspiring to hear her trajectory into dementia science and the challenges that she faced.

Ozama Ismail:

In terms of the science, William Klunk, he was the guy who 18 years ago was involved in the team that discovered Pittsburgh Compound-B. So that was the first PET imaging compound, and he gave a nice talk about the history of PET imaging. And in fact he said that it was exactly 2002 today when they first presented the first PET images from the Pittsburgh Compound-B that they did. And it’s just crazy to think like 2002, sounds like a long time ago but also, it’s like was eight, no sixteen-ish years ago, and between now and then, the amount of stuff that has changed. On one hand we know so much more about disease, but on the other hand, I think the session was posing this question about whether PET imaging is forever going to be a research tool. And he said it probably is, it’s still a very strong research tool, but until we find that compound that is going to make a difference, at that point it would then become more than a research tool.

Ozama Ismail:

But again, it was just nice to see the greats of Alzheimer’s research talking about it. And like Isabel said, they’re very approachable. And I think the conference creates that atmosphere where you can approach them and gives us, because we feel intimidated by these people, but it gives us the opportunity in these small environment to go and talk to them and ask them any question we want. So those have really been the highlights for me today.

Adam Smith:

Thanks Oz. I was talking to an older person today who was making the comment how many young people that there are in the last couple of years, that they’ve noticed that everybody’s a young person. And this is my fifth year coming and I can see that myself actually you could see there were a lot of more senior, older neurologists and neuroscientists a few years ago and now it’s changing. I think we’re seeing so many, there’s been an explosion of early career researchers in the last few years, driven by this fantastic funding that’s come through charities like the Alzheimer’s Association and back in the UK of course Alzheimer’s Society, Alzheimer’s Research UK and I have to get the plugin because they fund me, the National Institute of Health Research and the government funding’s made such a massive difference. Yolanda was there anything else before we move on?

Yolanda Ohene:

I think that one of the interesting session that I went to was the link between sleep, so the circadian rhythms and Alzheimer’s disease. And I’m interested in the blood brain permeability and the links that has to the disruption there. I was like, “Oh, this is cool, need to get some more sleep.”

Ozama Ismail:

I think the sleep angle is definitely, I’m hearing more and more about it every year I come to this conference. You hear more people talking about their research and I was in that session as well. So I thought it was really interesting, the guy presented the stuff on this gene called BMAL 1, which is a gene that is linked to modulating circadian rhythm, so very important in sleep. And they showed this knockout of BMAL 1, knockout mouse which then showed increase in amyloid beta deposition. So I thought that was really interesting because I didn’t know about that side of sleep research at all.

Adam Smith:

Another stuff I’ve seen there’s research, there’s quite a focus on circadian rhythms at Oxford, it wasn’t Oxford. Who was presenting today?

Ozama Ismail:

It was from a couple of days ago. I can’t remember the presenters name.

Adam Smith:

Yolanda’s got a big book full of OBCRs in front of her. She’s-

Ozama Ismail:

Just like replicated the program.

Yolanda Ohene:

They’ve got drawings and everything in here. Eric Musiek was a circadian rhythms. Check him out.

Adam Smith:

We’ll Google him. I’ll Google Oxford and circadian rhythms. Because I’m sure, I know that they’ve had research going on there. So we’re running out of time but before… I’m going to take advantage of this, I know both Isabel and Oz, you’ve talked about your experience as ISTAART volunteers. So while I’ve got you, I’d really like to just pin you down a little bit more to tell people what it’s like. So what do you really do as a volunteer? You can both jump in no particular person that’s questioned. So what’s it like?

Isabel Castanho:

I-

Ozama Ismail:

I-

Isabel Castanho:

Go ahead.

Ozama Ismail:

Sorry. I was going to say the same words together because Isabel and I are the same person.

Isabel Castanho:

I’m Oz 2.0. I’ve been seeing this.

Ozama Ismail:

Isabel has been called Oz 2.0. Which is really funny. So Isabel and I can both tell you about it. first of all, you’re the eyes and the ears of the conference because the association have this group called ISTAART which is a professional membership group that you can join. And as part of this, the students who are part of ISTAART are offered the opportunity to apply to this scheme. Every year they invite students from all over the world to apply. You write a short essay, right?

Isabel Castanho:

Yeah, pretty much justifying why you would like to volunteer.

Ozama Ismail:

Justifying why you would make a good volunteer. And they go through loads of these applications and they select, I think every year they select more and more. So anything between 12 and 16 students across the world are offered these spaces. And the expectation is that you just keep an eye on the sessions, there’s some paperwork that you have to do to make sure that the chairs sign off on the sessions, the sessions on to time, if there’s any technical problems, Isabel can tell you about some of the dramas that happened in London last year, where rooms got plunged into darkness. And you just have to make sure that you can relay the information back to HQ so that-

Adam Smith:

Do you get a walkie talkie?

Ozama Ismail:

You get a walkie talkie, you walk around like bounces.

Isabel Castanho:

And if you are the student lead, you get a walkie talkie for the whole day. Every session you go, you always have the walkie talkie.

Adam Smith:

And the purple, you can be found in-

Ozama Ismail:

The purple, beautiful purple t-shirts.

Isabel Castanho:

You get five purple t-shirts each year.

Adam Smith:

So either you get [crosstalk 00:34:03] make that last.

Ozama Ismail:

And also I think you get to work with a great group of people, and you make some really good friends. Like I met Isabelle last year and we’ve been great friends since then, I met some people the year before in Toronto and I’ve been, hands down I talk to them regularly even though they’re in a different country. We understand each other because we’re in the same level in our PhD trajectory.

Isabel Castanho:

That was the best part actually. And I felt I joined a network of volunteers so it’s interesting how I instantly connected with some of the previous volunteers through Oz. And the thing I remember saying last year was, and it may sound a bit crazy, but it was so nice to discuss the challenges we all face, and that we are all there, we all suffer from impostor syndrome, we all don’t know exactly where we don’t feel prepared for the next steps. And then like Oz said, there’s the friendship part, for some reason we connect instantly.

Isabel Castanho:

The other thing as well that is great, it’s great to network with the other volunteers, but it’s also the opportunity to network with the presenters, so with chairs, so that’s part of the role as well. Besides keeping an eye on things, we usually have one of two roles, so we either go and meet the chairs, make sure everything’s all right, if they run into problems, we make the connection to the Alzheimer’s association. And then the other role is to help people, sometimes they have some trouble finding the seat. So you get all these opportunities to interact with both the other attendees and chairs and presenters.

Adam Smith:

I assume you’d recommend people-

Isabel Castanho:

Oh yes, 100%.

Ozama Ismail:

I highly recommend it especially… For me the thing that I’ve loved, I’ve loved so many things about the experience, but you get to also work with the people behind ISTAART, they’re a great team.

Isabel Castanho:

Including Grace.

Ozama Ismail:

A big shout out to Grace, and to Megan, and Nicole, and Keith. You make these connections, they’re lifelong connections and they’re great people to work for. You only work for them for a week, but they’re such great people to work for. And they connect you to other people within the association and so it’s very rewarding and they’re wonderful people to work for, so hands down. I’d say apply for it.

Adam Smith:

Fantastic.

Isabel Castanho:

I Completely agree.

Adam Smith:

Thank you. And I guess there’s information on their website for people to apply. When do you normally have to apply for the next year.

Ozama Ismail:

So usually they…

Isabel Castanho:

I’d like to say February.

Ozama Ismail:

They open applications around Christmas time-ish and I think the applications close around February. Because then they make a decision quite quickly after that.

Isabel Castanho:

But all the information is available on the website and definitely feel free to, I’m sure Oz will say that as well, but an email or a message by Twitter if you want to learn more about it.

Ozama Ismail:

Absolutely.

Adam Smith:

And next year of course this conferences on the West Coast.

Ozama Ismail:

It’s in LA.

Adam Smith:

And we should add that all your expenses are covered as well.

Isabel Castanho:

Oh yes. Flights.

Ozama Ismail:

They cover the registration.

Isabel Castanho:

Registration everything.

Ozama Ismail:

And five nights in a hotel, a nice hotel.

Adam Smith:

Yolanda’s already [crosstalk 00:37:13].

Yolanda Ohene:

I’m so upset. I had to just hang around the teas and coffees to try and meet people.

Adam Smith:

Sounds like you should be applying next year.

Ozama Ismail:

But then Yolanda wins prizes and is so charming. She doesn’t-

Adam Smith:

You’ll just get a travel van actually. No problem at all. Sadly that’s all we’ve got time for. I know that everybody’s keen to get away this evening. Have you all got fun plans? We should add of course that it’s Oz’s birthday today.

Isabel Castanho:

Happy birthday oz.

Adam Smith:

Happy birth… Should we sing him? No let’s not [crosstalk 00:37:44]. But you didn’t even get a present.

Ozama Ismail:

Being… No, that’s so cheesy. So every year I end up here, I see my birthday. But this time it’s special because it’s my first time in Chicago, and so a few of us were going to go in the architectural boat tour this evening and then we’re going to go out for dinner and maybe some drinks.

Adam Smith:

So drinks, really?

Ozama Ismail:

Yeah.

Adam Smith:

Will there be cake?

Ozama Ismail:

I can order some cake.

Adam Smith:

There might be cake. Tell them it’s him it’s his birthday, they might bring a drink out with a sparkler. [crosstalk 00:38:16].

Ozama Ismail:

It’s America, so I expect them to be like sing and get on the tables, it’s has got to be crazy.

Adam Smith:

Fantastic.

Yolanda Ohene:

But we have had recommendations for this restaurant and we’ve managed to sneak in there on Oz’s birthday.

Ozama Ismail:

Nap a reservation.

Adam Smith:

So this is the one night.

Yolanda Ohene:

The girl on the go. Lots of people [crosstalk 00:38:32].

Ozama Ismail:

People are recommending restaurant. We’re going to go.

Adam Smith:

As recommended by Dementia Researcher.

Ozama Ismail:

And also as recommended by Grace.

Adam Smith:

And Isabelle, I happened to know that the X team, are all going out this evening because my colleague Pius has asked me if I’d join as well, so we’re looking forward. So I think I better let everybody go before they’ve already given up too much of their time. So, thank you all again, don’t forget to visit our website to check out profiles on all our panellists. You can also post questions in the comment section and our panellists are also, I know, all happy to interact with you directly if you want to follow them on Twitter. So please do subscribe to this podcast through iTunes and SoundCloud and you can mention it using the hashtag #ECRDementia. So thank you very much for listening. Last day of podcast recording for us is tomorrow. So please do come back tomorrow for our fourth and final podcast from the AAIC. Thank you very much.

Voice Over:

This was a podcast brought to you by Dementia Researcher. Everything you need, in one place. Register today at dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.

END


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