As we’ve weighed the options for protecting ourselves and our loved ones throughout the pandemic, we’ve seen just how important understanding the role of research can be. During the past two years we’ve had front row seats to research in action. We’ve heard about research that’s led to the discovery of variants, research that helped build the foundation of the vaccines, and research that helped us understand how masking and social distancing can keep us safe. But at the same time, it’s sometimes hard to understand research and the role it plays in our lives - and it can be tough to communicate the importance of research to others.  

In this episode of Science Never Sleeps, we’re going back to basics to ask – what is research and why is it important? Why should the quest for knowledge through research matter to us now, and what are the implications for the future? How can we continue to educate ourselves on the importance of research and build trust in the process? And how can we share this information with family, friends, and our communities so we can all be safer and healthier? 

Guest Info:

Dr. Lori McMahon is the Vice President for Research and a professor of neurobiology at the Medical University of South Carolina. She is a federally funded basic and translational neuroscience researcher who is nationally and internationally recognized for her work in the areas of neurodegenerative disease and neuropsychiatric illness, with a focus on synaptic plasticity and sex differences. 

Show reference links:

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/

National Institutes of Health - https://www.nih.gov/

National Institute on Drug Abuse - https://nida.nih.gov/

American Diabetes Associaton - https://www.diabetes.org/

From the Medical University of South Carolina, this is Science Never Sleeps, where we explore the science people and stories behind the scenes of biomedical research happening at MUSC. I'm your host, Gwen Bouchie. As we've weighed the options for protecting ourselves and our loved ones throughout the pandemic, we've seen just how important understanding the role of research can

be. During the past two years, we've had front row seats to research and action. We've heard about research that's led to the discovery of the variants, research that helped build the foundation of the vaccines, and research that helped us understand how masking and social distancing can help keep us safe.

But at the same time, it's sometimes hard to understand research and the role it plays in our lives, and it can be tough to communicate the importance of research to others. In this episode of Science Never Sleeps, we're going back to basics to ask What is research and why is it important?

Why should the quest for knowledge through research matter to us now? And what are the implications for the future? How can we continue to educate ourselves on the importance of research and build trust in the process? And how can we share this information with family, friends in our communities so we can all be safer and healthier?

Joining us to help answer these questions is Dr. Lori McMahon. Dr. McMahon is the Vice President for Research and a professor of neurobiology at the Medical University of South Carolina. She's a federally funded, basic and translational neuroscience researcher who is nationally and internationally recognized for her work in the areas of neurodegenerative disease and neuropsychiatric illness with a

focus on synaptic plasticity and sex differences. Stay with us.

Dr. Lori McMahon, welcome to Science Never Sleeps. Hi, thanks so much, Gwen, for inviting me today. We are happy to have you here. So I want to start off by asking you to tell us why you became a researcher, what led you down this path and how did

you end up where you are today? That's such a fun question for me to answer. And you know, I get asked that a lot. So I was always interested in science and math all the way back to elementary school.

I had a really great biology teacher. When I was a sophomore in high school, I went to a Catholic high school sister. Carmen Joy was probably one of the toughest teachers that I've ever had still to this day.

But she really inspired a sense of curiosity in me the way she taught, and I was just fascinated about biological systems, how cells worked, and I really hooked me. And so I think it was probably my sophomore year of high school that I really realized that a career in science was what I wanted to do and what

I had passion for when I was in college. I really thought I would go to medical school, and I think most kids like me, at least at that time, didn't have an understanding of research. It just wasn't something that was talked about.

But I knew about going to my pediatrician. And so I think a lot of kids who are interested in biology and chemistry and maybe even math think about medical school because that's familiar to them. They've gone to their pediatrician, and that's very familiar.

And so I was one of those college students who thought, I'm going to go to medical school. And so I was preparing for that. I was a double major biology and chemistry, and I just couldn't learn enough. And one day at the end of my physiology and anatomy exam, it was at the end of the spring semester,

my professor came up to me. I was the last student to turn in my exam, and that was my habit. I always waited till the end to turn my exams in. And Dr. Ader came up to me. So this was at Southern Illinois University and Edwards fell and he walked up to me and he said, Hey, Lori,

what are you going to do with your career after you finish your undergrad degree? And I said, I'm going to go to medical school. And he said, OK, that sounds great. And what do you want to do? And I said, I think I'd like to be a pediatrician.

And he shook his head at me and it really upset me at the time, and I said, Well, Dr. Ed, do you think that's not the right thing for me? Do you think I won't get into medical school?

Do you think my grades aren't good enough? And he said, No, no, no. You will be a great pediatrician. I just think that a career in research well is better suited for you. I think you will enjoy it more.

You're so curious. You ask so many questions in the classroom during lecture. And I just think that that sense of discovery is where your passions are going to be. And so I reflected on that. That was at the end of my junior year of college.

And so the next year, I spent some time doing research in a virology lab. And that really set me on my course to pursue a Ph.D.. So I reflect on this a lot. I think Dr. Ader, I've had an opportunity to to thank him for inspire me in that way.

And I've never I've never looked back. I've just been so honored and thrilled to have the career that I have. And how about the neurobiology side of it? How did you end up in that space? So that's also a really great question.

So when I started thinking about graduate school, I saw a flier. You know, we don't advertise that way. Now it's all by the internet. But I saw a flier hanging on a bulletin board for the pharmacology department and program at Saint Louis University downtown St Louis, Missouri.

And there was a section about neuro pharmacology or how drugs affect the brain, and that instantly pulled me in. I thought, Oh, how fascinating. So I applied. That was the only graduate program I applied to. And that's what got me into neuroscience, and my Ph.D. is in neuropharmacology.

Following my degree, I performed a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University and Dr. Julie Cowher's laboratory in the neurobiology department. And so I've just been hooked ever since. The brain is fascinating. I can't learn enough and I to this day enjoy doing experiments in my research lab, so our listeners might not realize that we work together, and you

and I have had the opportunity to chat about research. And in those conversations, you've referred to research as the quest for truth. But at the same time, you've also pointed out that those truths can change over time. What do you mean by that and how how is that rooted in what research is?

You know, I always say to my students and all of the trainees in my laboratory that that's our job is to get to the truth, the truth of how something is working. And in our case, it's where neuroscientists we we want to understand how the brain works.

We want to understand. How neurons function. We want to understand how synapses work and health and disease, and so we cannot bring our biases or our our beliefs. But it's about the truth. We're seeking the truth. And so I say to my students, be thoughtful in the design of your experiments.

Make sure you have your experiments well controlled. And then when you get the results, will analyze it, will interpret it and we'll understand what it means. And so that's what I mean when I say we're seeking the truth.

It's not our opinion. It's not about our opinion. It's not how we think something works. It's not how we think the neurons in the hippocampus work in order to acquire new memories. But it's what the data tell us.

So the truth can change, however, and so what does that mean? So as we learn more and as our technical approaches become more sophisticated, we refine what we understand. And so it's not that the original truth is wrong, it's just that we expand and have more detailed knowledge about how a process works.

And so as as our knowledge progresses and the information continues, we add to that original truth. And in some cases, we really revise how we approach the next experiment that we do based on the data that we find.

So, you know, I think third graders, fourth graders in their elementary school class, when they're when they're listening to their science teacher, they learn about the scientific method. They learn what a hypothesis is. They learn about experiments and collecting data and analyzing it and interpreting it.

But sometimes I think there is a disconnect. And as people who are not researchers continue in their life, they have a disconnect between what they have learned as a child and how they they value and how they look at what researchers do today.

So I think that trying to help the public understand what researchers are seeking to do and the knowledge that we're seeking to generate and how that knowledge gets refined over time is really important for everyone to understand so that they have confidence.

And and what the researchers are finding because the research helps us grow the knowledge base, which are the things that we know to be true based on the research in that moment, but then can also help us weed out what we're discovering may not be true.

What we've believed to be true. Right. And you know, the word I believe is is a loaded word when it comes to research. And so we train our students to not say, I believe, because belief can be colored by opinion.

And so it's not about opinion. It's about what the data show, what the data tell us. Often, as we learn more and we design the next experiment and we collect the results and we look at the results, there can be more than one interpretation.

And so sometimes groups of scientists can do the same experiments, but they come to a separate conclusion because results are not always cut and dry. A lot of times, and I will say most times, results lead to more questions than answers.

And so when the interpretation can be variable between groups of scientists that just says more work needs to be done. More experiments are needed. More results need to be collected so that we can fully understand what it is that we're or we're trying to learn about.

So one of the things that I think is fascinating about research that that I have learned is that it isn't just one thing. You can't just look at it and point at it and go. Research is comprised of this.

It's it's actually a spectrum of several different types of research, particularly in the biomedical space, which we're in here at MUSC. And it goes from foundational or basic science, which your basic scientist all the way to discoveries that get brought to our daily lives, whether it's pharmaceuticals or some other interventions that we can do for health.

So as a basic scientist, how does what you do plug into this larger picture of research as a multidimensional experience? I think Basic Science is the area of research that is a mystery to most non-experts who aren't engaged.

So I think all of us have seen advertised. Demands for clinical trials, we may have had a family member who unfortunately has cancer and they are engaged in a clinical trial where those patients are have an opportunity to get an experimental drug to see if that will help their cancer.

So I think that kind of research is easier to understand or just more exposure. People have more exposure to those kinds of ads. They may see that when they go to their physician's office. But basic science, or fundamental science is something that most people don't hear about and isn't discussed in just friendly conversation among family members and

friends. So basic, I think as a as a word, that sometimes means simple. But in this context, basic science is not simple science. Basic science means a fundamental science or fundamental discovery. It's the kind of research that's driven purely by curiosity.

How do things work? How do cells work? How do for me, how do circuits in the brain work? How do the cells in the pancreas release insulin? What makes our heart beat? What helps our muscles to be able to withstand running and walking?

So those kinds of questions are answered by basic research, fundamental discovery. And you know, I think often that it's curiosity that creates cures, and it's those kinds of unexpected results that lead to a discovery that wasn't anticipated. So when we think about clinical trials and we think about human research to help with new treatments for disease, it

usually comes from a very basic fundamental discovery by people working in a laboratory just simply trying to understand how things work. So it sounds like to me, basic science really does. We call it foundational, foundational science or foundational research, but it really is foundational because the beginning of discovery happens in that space, and there must be plenty

of really great examples about things that we take for granted today that came out of this basic science or basic research space. Can you talk about some of those? I think a great way to understand how scientists have made foundational fundamental discoveries as to look at the Nobel laureates and physiology and medicine.

It's easy to go to the website at the Nobel Prize website and find these amazing scientists and scientists that discovered insulin. For example, medical doctors knew about diabetes, but they had no idea what caused it. And so the discovery of insulin in 1923 was really foundational for helping us to understand diabetes.

There's also been Nobel Prize winners for discovering the virus that causes cervical cancer, for understanding which neurons in our brains help us to determine our place in space and help us with spatial navigation. Nobel Prize winners were awarded for understanding circadian rhythms and also many of the cancer therapies.

It's really interesting that this past year the Nobel Prize was for scientists who discovered receptors in our fingers that help us to understand temperature and touch. So that's been a mystery for decades, and those scientists in the nineties worked to understand how we perceive touch and how we perceive temperature, and we all know that those are sensations

that protect us and protect our lives. And so those winners in 2021 won that prize for their discovery. And these all came about because these scientists were on a quest to understand something that felt fundamental to them. And so it wasn't necessarily that they were looking to solve anything at that time.

It might have been that they were just trying to learn more about any given disease or symptom or something like that, right? Exactly. So discoveries cannot be planned. They are never planned, and it is scientists being curious and just trying to seek the truth, trying to build knowledge, trying to understand how something works.

Some group of cells, for example, I mentioned insulin, the discovery of insulin in 1923. Those scientists were just trying to understand what was going wrong in diabetes. And so. That fundamental discovery now has changed over these decades how we can treat those suffering from diabetes, we still don't have a cure, but we understand the disease process and

we have some therapeutics that help those patients. So it's never it's never a discovery that's planned. It's always just curiosity. And in my own field, as I've mentioned, I'm a neuroscientist and just thinking about the scientists who have taught us how the nervous system works.

There has been several known Nobel Prize winners. And my field in 1963 Hodgkin and Huxley and Eccles there the scientists that have taught us how action potentials happen. So a more familiar term for an action potential is a nerve impulse.

I think that's a concept that many people would understand. So it's fundamental to how our nerves work, how we are able to contract our muscles when a chemical is released at the end of our motor nerve that can contract our muscles when we stand up from our chair.

So the scientists that understood that the the substance that was released as a chemical Nobel Prize for that to how our muscle cells respond to that chemical uses ion channels. There was a Nobel prize to for those scientists who discovered ion channels, how our heart works, how our skeletal muscles work and really how all of our organs

work depend on action potentials. Our nervous system controls our our organs. And so those discoveries in the nervous system, to me, of course, I'm biased because that's my field have just been amazing. So one of the things that we do here is this phrase bench to bedside when we talk about this research continuum.

Can you talk a little bit about what that phrasing means and why we use that the bench to the bedside is really an important concept. And those of us, like myself, who are basic researchers, hope that the discoveries that we are making at the research bench in the laboratory will eventually make its way to treating patients with

disease. It is those discoveries, as we talked earlier, the fundamental knowledge that's being generated by a basic or fundamental scientist that lead eventually with hope to a clinical trial. So in my own laboratory, we've been very interested in Age-Related memory loss and in particular, age related memory loss.

That's a consequence of menopause in women. There's been a lot of debate about hormone replacement therapy, the risks and the benefits of that treatment for women. And it really comes down to an individual woman's family history and their risk for disease.

So my laboratory using a rodent model where we can examine the hippocampus, the part of the brain that's required for learning and memory role and and Age-Related memory loss and how ovarian hormones modify the function of the hippocampus.

There's decades now of research that shows that estrogen is beneficial to the neurons in the hippocampus. And interestingly, the neurons in the hippocampus can actually make estrogen themselves. So it's not just estrogen from the ovaries that can impact learning and memory, but the neurons themselves can make and release estrogen.

So my lab has wanted to understand how the effects of aging and how loss of ovarian estrogen leads to a decrease in cognitive function. And so those kinds of studies that my lab has done and other leaders in this field have done can help inform physicians when they're thinking about the risk of dementia and there are female

patients and perhaps the benefits of hormone replacement therapy. So again, understanding at the very fundamental level what estrogen is doing to the neurons in the hippocampus, how it's impacting how their synapses work and how that leads to a beneficial effect on cognition is something that we've been passionate about.

And again, we hope that that can inform treatment strategies later. So right now, trust in science and research is a big concern as we're back. Battling misinformation, disinformation, particularly around COVID, but this is not a new phenomenon for us.

What do you see as some of the keys to rebuilding that trust in research and trust in science in our communities? Building trust really relies on education. I think trust or lack of trust often is based on fear and not understanding, and I think we can decrease that fear and improve understanding with education.

I think scientists like myself have a responsibility of helping to educate non-experts. And so that can happen. And in many ways that can happen. Going to local libraries and having scientists in libraries talking to the public, it can be offering workshops and symposia where researchers talk to the public about what they're doing and how they're solving some

of the biggest mysteries in health. And it really needs to start to with children. I mentioned earlier that children and third and fourth grade learn about the scientific method. But I think that education needs to be carried through all through K through twelve education and into college, even for those individuals who are not seeking a career in

science. And probably it's much more important for those who who are not seeking careers in science and medicine to understand the research process, the caveats, the difficulty, the lack of tools sometimes and technical approaches that just don't exist yet that we need that will help us understand and learn more about human health and disease.

So to me, it really comes down to education. It comes down to scientists being accessible. I think a lot of individuals have never met a scientist, and I think if if they could have a conversation, they would have a better appreciation and a better understanding and really be able to develop that trust that we are seeking the

truth. We're not trying to put out misinformation disinformation. It's about understanding how disease process works, how cells function and and that we are all truth seekers. It's all about the knowledge that we generate to the best of our ability to make sure that what we think is right is really correct.

And so to that end, talking about finding what is right and finding the things that work, we think about good research. And I think that's been one of the big questions, too, is how do we know something is good research?

How do we know this? This is based on solid experimentation, solid evidence. What are some of the hallmarks of good research? What should we be looking for when we want to understand more about research? I think the key to good research are being able to recognize good research is research that's published and peer reviewed.

Articles and peer review means a review of the data and the results, the analysis and the interpretation by our research peers. So when my laboratory submits an article for publication, we send it to journals who send our article out to our peers, to experts who can accurately judge the quality of our work to make sure that we

haven't overlooked something. To make sure that our experimental design was not as solid as it could be. And as a scientist, I value the peer review process. I get excited when reviewers send their comments back to us to help us improve our study, to help us look at it, perhaps from a different angle and in many cases,

to go back to the research bench and to do more experiments to clarify what we think we are understanding. So peer review is absolutely key. Our federal funding agencies have peer review process for grants that are submitted. And and when those grants are reviewed, sometimes they're funded about 10% of the time.

They may see they may receive the research award, but often the investigators have to go back and rethink and redevelop their approach. There are experiments that the. Are doing and maybe even refine the model system in which they're using.

How can we be more informed about research in areas where we're interested? I think that's one of the things that's also come about lately is encouraging people to go and find reputable information about the things that they're interested in.

How do we how do we best do that? I think a great source of information is the niche the National Institute of Health. If what you're interested in is health science and biomedical research, and in particular the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. NIGMS funds basic science, fundamental science research.

They often have on their website many of the latest discoveries, and they have that content written in a way that non-experts can understand. They also have lots of information about science education on their website. I think it's a valuable resource if you're interested in particular areas of science, for example, the drug abuse and China and India and

NIDA, N-I-D-A, NIDA National Institute on Drug Abuse, you can go to their website and read about the latest research that's going on there. The National Cancer Institute, NCI, you can go to that website. I would also encourage everyone to look for societies and foundations.

So, for example, the National Diabetes Foundation, they have the latest information on their website to peer reviewed manuscripts can be a little difficult to digest for a nonexpert. But there are some general magazines out there that I would encourage readers to go look for,

like The Scientist. That's a reputable journal where the authors of the articles will describe a recent discovery and language that's digestible for non-experts. And I think that brings up a really great point in that you're building on a body of work.

So none of the I don't want to say “none”, but many times I'm sure when we get to clinical trial phase or when we get to a phase where a patient can have access to something that's built on years, decades, a body of work that has led us to that point.

So it's really your contribution is helping to build that pathway that gets us to where we may want to be with better health and less disease in the future. That's the hope that that fundamental basic science research does.

And so in in my own laboratory, whether the findings that we make with how estrogen can protect the hippocampus will change, how patients are treated as a very open question. We hope that it does, but it's going to take a lot more work.

We know there are risks to hormone replacement therapy. We also know that there are increased risks in women for Alzheimer's disease after menopause. So how this fundamental work can help inform Alzheimer's risk. What's missing in the brain after menopause?

How we might be able to intervene. Maybe not with estrogen. Maybe it's not estrogen replacement. That's the key. But understand the receptors, the molecules, the pathways. It may show us a different type of target to use a drug to enhance.

Perhaps that is less risky than than taking estrogen. So the deeper we understand, the more knowledge we generate, the more opportunity there is to find better treatments, more effective treatments, treatments that have fewer side effects and have a much better beneficial effect on our patients.

Dr. McMahon, thank you so much for being here today on Science Never Sleeps. Thank you so much, Gwen. It's been my pleasure. We've been talking to Dr. Laurie McMahon, vice president for research at the Medical University of South Carolina, about research and why it matters.

I want to take a moment to recognize Loretta Lynch-Reichert, the former host of the Science Never Sleeps podcast. Loretta's vision brought this program to life and paved a path of excellence that we strive to follow. Loretta retired in November of 2021, and we want to close this episode by saying, Thankyou for all you have done

for MUSC Loretta. You will be missed. You can find out more about the research happening in a USC by visiting research.musc.edu. Have an idea for a future episode of Science Never Sleeps. Send us an email at scienceneversleeps@musc.edu.

Science Never Sleeps is produced by the Office of the Vice President for Research at the Medical University of South Carolina. Special thanks to the Office of Instructional Technology and Faculty Resources for production support on this episode.