From the bench to the bladder and back

Interviewed and edited by Sarah Anderson, PhD

Dr. Morgan Roberts never thought she’d work on cancer. While pursuing her PhD in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UBC, she conducted research in the lab of Dr. Kenneth Harder, where she studied how innate immune cell signalling regulates health and disease in the gut. While she had planned to continue to focus on fundamental research into immune cell interactions, a unique post-doctoral fellowship opportunity landed her at the Vancouver Prostate Centre, one of the world’s top urologic cancer facilities. “Although I originally didn’t have an inherent interest in cancer research, I realized that there’s a lot of interesting immunology to learn and a lot of interesting biology about how cancer and the immune system interact,” Dr. Roberts said.

Now a senior research scientist at the Vancouver Prostate Centre and an assistant professor in UBC’s Department of Urologic Sciences, Dr. Roberts’s research focuses on understanding these interactions in bladder cancer and exploring how they might unfold differently due to biological sex. In this conversation, Dr. Roberts reflects on her experience in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, her views on the marriage between basic and translational research, and the importance of remaining open to the unexpected.
 

How did your graduate studies in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology set you up for success as an independent investigator?

MR: Throughout my PhD, my supervisor provided opportunities to develop the skillset needed to think and work independently. I was allowed the freedom to devise new, creative research questions, pursue projects I was interested in, and collaborate with other members of the lab. This training style shaped my current approach to research, which relies on following where the data leads and incorporating different perspectives through collaboration. Scientifically, my PhD equipped me with a strong foundation in rigorous basic immunology principles and experimentation. I learned how to study cell-cell interactions and the ways in which they regulate the immune response from the molecular level to the tissue level, which laid the groundwork for my research at the Vancouver Prostate Centre. 
 

Tell us more about your transition to the Vancouver Prostate Centre and your work there.

MR: The summer after I graduated with my PhD, a friend of mine who was working at the Vancouver Prostate Centre told me that Dr. Peter Black was seeking a post-doctoral fellow in bladder cancer. I got the job, and I was really fortunate because although Dr. Black didn’t hire me for immunology research, he let me build up an entire immunology program over the course of my time in his lab. Like the gut, the bladder is a type of mucosal barrier and is the site of a lot of really complex and interesting immune activity. Bladder cancer had been historically understudied, and there had been very few advances in treatment for more than 30 years. But the year that I started at the Vancouver Prostate Centre, there were five FDA approvals for new bladder cancer immunotherapies — all immune checkpoint inhibitors, which boost the ability of T cells to recognize and destroy cancer cells. There was a collective effort to leverage the immune system to combat bladder cancer, immunotherapy was exploding and totally changing the treatment landscape, and I was very much in the right place at the right time. 

My research now focuses on understanding how the immune system works to kill bladder cancer cells, how cancer cells can avoid cytotoxic immune responses, and how we can overcome immune evasion mechanisms to restore cancer-fighting immune activity. An important underlying theme of this work is sex differences in bladder cancer pathology: Biological females are far less likely to get bladder cancer, but when they do, their outcomes tend to be worse as the disease progresses. We’re studying how cancer-immune interactions are affected by sex-specific processes to gain insight into the bladder cancer immunobiology that underpins treatment resistance and cancer progression.  
 

What do you see as the value of basic science and the synergy between basic and translational research in your work?

MR: Basic science is absolutely, 100 percent essential. Unfortunately, many of the career metrics within academia are based on quick, tangible outputs, and I think that broadly incentivizing a focus solely on translational research is incredibly shortsighted. We need ongoing basic research to create and expand the foundation of information that translational research can build upon. Without it, we will not have the fundamental knowledge needed to spur new therapeutic breakthroughs and, in the long run, we will be limited to making small, incremental advances in drug development. 

Something I really love about my work at the Vancouver Prostate Centre is that we integrate basic, translational, and clinical science. I work closely with the urologists to understand clinical needs and use them to define the basic research questions we should pursue so that our findings are more directly translatable to the clinic, and then the feedback loop continues. For example, we are analyzing blood samples from clinical trials to look for patterns that correlate with patients’ responses to immunotherapy drugs. The goal is to better understand the immune mechanisms underlying treatment response and resistance and eventually to stratify patients into different treatment subgroups. We are also working to identify new targets for drugs that make cancer cells more sensitive to immunotherapy.  
 

What advice do you have for students who are interested in pursuing a career in research? 

MR: Science is really hard. Generally, in research, 90 percent of what you do is going to fail for one reason or another — maybe because of a technical issue, or maybe because the initial question was flawed. If 10 percent of the things you attempt actually work, you’re doing really well, but that’s not the norm for other aspects of our lives. So, it’s important to understand that research is unique in that way and to build resilience in the face of failure.

It’s also important to remember that there is no one right way to succeed. I kept delaying applying for faculty positions because I did not think my research profile was developed enough. Circumstance pushed me to move ahead and, although I didn’t have something like a first-author Nature paper on my CV, I still got three faculty position offers because I fit a very specific need within the field. So, it’s important to understand what your skills and strengths are, define and develop your identity as a researcher, and find your niche. 

Finally, it’s critical to remain open to unexpected opportunities, whether that’s something small like a new direction within your research project or something major like a job. Don’t get too set on a specific path or plan because life is unpredictable. I said that I was never going to work on cancer, and yet here I am now, having worked in cancer research for almost a decade and having discovered a strong passion for the field through running my own cancer immunology research program.