19-21st of May, the international science festival Pint of Science is bringing together researchers and audiences in pubs, bars and cafés across the world. As a supporter of science outreach initiatives, PRIMA is co-sponsoring the Oslo event. The festival at Brygg in Oslo was kicked off by two PRIMA postdoctoral researchers, Nicholas Chandler and Nikoline L. Rasmussen. Here, they introduced the audience to our body’s natural protectors, our immune cells, and how PRIMA is working to unlock their full cancer-fighting potential.
As the opening act, Nikoline L. Rasmussen, postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory of Adaptive Immunity and Homeostasis, introduced us to our body’s Avengers: our immune cells. Like the Avengers, our immune cells are fighting together to protect us against “alien” invaders, such as bacteria and viruses, but also against an enemy from within: cancer. She introduced us to T cells, the Iron Men of our body, and how they can be engineered to become even more efficient cancer killers. In a battle between good and evil forces, she demonstrated how she is using engineered antibodies to boost our T cells to efficiently take out cancer.
This was followed by an exciting talk by Nicholas Chandler, postdoctoral researcher in the Experimental Immunotherapy group. Dressed for the occasion, Nick came straight from attending the King Olav V Cancer Research Prize ceremony, where his group leader and PRIMA co-director, Johanna Olweus, received the award earlier that day. As an Australian, Nick knows a thing or two about killers: Australia has an exceptionally high density of deadly animals and true crime podcast-enthusiasts per capita. Naturally, he is drawn to study our body’s killer cells: T cells. With help from the audience, Nick demonstrated the T cells’ remarkable precision in finding its target, but also their immense complexity. So, to fully harness the T cells’ potential in fighting a broad range of cancers, Nick and his colleagues are using machine learning to decode this precision.
The two PRIMA talks were followed by two interesting talks by researchers from Simula, demonstrating security risks in AI. All presenters were met with engaging questions from the audience. Together, all the talks clearly demonstrated the importance of doing research on how to upgrade our defenses, both biologically and technologically.
