Life In a Lab Coat: What Does Working as a Cancer Researcher Involve?
Kyle Greenland, First Year Undergraduate, BSc Medical Biosciences (2017)
Photo Credit: Thomas Angus, Imperial College London
“Beep-beep-beep”, “clunk”, “buzz”, and “smash” are often the main sounds that embody any research lab you walk into (definitely the former if I’m in the lab!).
I remember the first day of undergraduate, walking into a brightly lit lab tucked away in the basement of Imperial’s Centre for Translational and Experimental Medicine (ICTEM) and being handed a crystal clean white lab coat (not that it stayed that way for long) while being surrounded by equipment that I had absolutely no idea what it did never mind how to use it. My bewilderment only grew after discovering how human cancer cells could be grown and studied outside of the body. This really was Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for science!
Despite feeling pretty lost in this peculiar environment through most of my undergraduate and masters (and PhD!), I never left. Five years later, I like to think I have a slightly better idea of what’s going on in the lab. I now spend most of my days investigating drug delivery systems to treat prostate cancer. But nobody ever told me what working in a REAL academic lab involved or what the lifestyle of a researcher was like. Therefore, I thought I would shine some light on what life in a lab coat is like.
My typical day
Is there a typical day in research? A very big bonus to working in scientific research is that (depending on what you’re working on) your day-to-day itinerary is highly variable. One day you could be treating cancer cells with a new anti-cancer drug; the next, you could be growing bacteria containing a gene you’re interested in. Sometimes this happens both on the same day. This is great because it always keeps me on my toes and always gives me something new to try out. Also, it means that you must plan and manage your time effectively, particularly if you’re running experiments in parallel.
In terms of work hours, most researchers’ hours are contracted 9:00am – 5:00pm. However, if you speak to anyone in science, they’ll tell you that this is very very different!
On a really good day (light work, everything has gone to plan):
l finish around 4 pm
On a good day (medium workload, a few hiccups):
I finish around 5:30 pm
On a long day (lots to do, multiple plans that have been changed):
I finish around 8:30 pm
Of course, this varies massively between labs and projects! Another thing to mention is that lab work is not exclusive to the weekdays. Science never stops! Therefore, I often find myself in at the weekends to make sure my cancer cells are fed and happy.
The only certainty in my week is a lab-wide meeting. This is the opportunity for colleagues and students to present their data, ideas and future experimental plans, all while being grilled by our supervisor! The lab meeting is actually a great opportunity to get feedback from peers and help point you in another direction if things are not going to plan.
Things I wished people had told me
There are a LOT of things I wish I had known before embarking on a career in the lab, here are just my top three:
1. Things rarely (very very very rarely) go to plan - Sometimes experiments fail for a reason. Sometimes experiments fail for no reason. These scenarios are both fine and part of the research process! Unlike at A-level or GCSE where you already know the outcome of an experiment, in a real research environment, you may have an initial hypothesis, but nobody knows the answer to the question you’re trying to find out (that’s your job!). This can often be frustrating and tiring, particularly if you’ve repeated an experiment 23 times and something is still going wrong. Therefore, lab work often requires lots of optimisation and perseverance with slight tweaks to improve the method you’re using during your investigation. This takes a lot of time!
2. Your friends and family often don’t understand what you do - If you ask any of my undergraduate friends what I do on a day-to-day basis, they’d probably say I play around with pipettes and cancer cells all day long. I remember once discussing with my mother about changing cell media*, and she thought I meant the lab was changing which online media source they were using for research. I of course meant changing the liquid my cells were growing in! These funny stories are now a part of my everyday life. However, it can be challenging explaining to non-scientists why you’re so upset because all your cells have died.
3. The lab you’re a part of will shape your view of research massively - Within research there is enormous variability in the types of labs (large, small, wet*, computational) you could be working in, but more importantly, there is huge variability in the types of people you’ll work alongside. I have been lucky enough to join labs with great colleagues and supervisors that are very supportive and helpful. We’ve even gone out for dinners, drinks and bowling outside of work. It is so important to find a lab and people that are supportive and encouraging as this will best equip you to deal with the challenges of research!
Overall, working in a lab environment has its challenges and there are definitely days where I question if this is the career I want to pursue. However, I wouldn’t change it for anything. I enjoy constantly being challenged and being made to think in a completely different way, all while applying the theoretical biology that I’ve spent years studying. Don’t get me wrong, being in a lab is not for everyone, and that’s totally fine! There are so many STEM careers outside of a lab environment.
My advice
Try to find an undergraduate course or summer placement that involves a considerable amount of lab work. This will give you a really good idea if this is something you absolutely hate, or something you’d like to spend the rest of your career doing!
*Cell media - growth medium or culture medium is a liquid or gel designed to support the growth of microorganisms, cells, or small plants.
*Wet lab - is a lab in which drugs, chemicals, and other types of biological matter can be analysed and tested by using various liquids.
Kyle Greenland is Co-Founder and Director of STEMaccess, at the time of writing completing a PhD at Imperial College London Investigating Novel Drug Delivery Methods to Treat Prostate Cancer.