Winning a Nobel Prize is the dream of every researcher. Calm down, Joanna Lima hasn’t received an award yet, but she was heavily involved in a study that recognized the award.
The daughter of a single mother, the woman from Piauí spent her childhood and adolescence studying on scholarship in private schools. When it came time to take the entrance exam, in 2008 he tried biology at the Federal University of Piauí (UFPI) and chemistry at the State University of Piauí (UESPI). They both passed.
At the time, Joanna thought there were more job opportunities in the chemistry sector, but biology allowed her to study something she had always been interested in: cancer. She did not like some of the subjects in the chosen course, such as entomology (the study of insects) and botany, but she stayed in college for physiology and other subjects including health.
Joanna’s graduation was almost entirely devoted to teaching. She had her grandmother, who was a teacher, as an example, and she spent part of the course dedicating herself to teaching – an activity that brings the student closer to teaching. But that story completely changed after its first phase. The researcher went to work for Agespisa, a company that provides basic water and sanitation in Piauí. There, he had his first contact with the material inside the lab—which sparked his interest in the research.
The company decided to hire Joanna and she agreed, but for a limited time. The idea was to save money to go to São Paulo for a master’s degree at USP. After some time, the young woman traveled without guaranteeing that she would get something in São Paulo.
Upon arriving in town, he sent emails to five professors who had worked with cancer at the university asking to volunteer to do an internship in their labs. It was researcher Marilia Serqueira Lite Cylinder who answered first, and she made an appointment for the next day.
In 2015, Joanna entered the Masters class with the fairy godmother from São Paulo. His line of research has long included cachexia – a severe loss of fat and muscle mass – linked to cancer. She evaluated people with the same type of cancer at similar stages, and found who could and who could not develop cachexia. It remained to be seen why this happened—something she intended to resolve in her Ph.D.
From Brazil to the world
However, other researchers did not consider Joanna a full-fledged scientist. She needed to distinguish her curriculum, publish chapters of books, and study abroad. So, I applied to the Immunology and Cancer Laboratory at the University of Virginia in the USA, and it was approved. She could not speak or even write in English, and had to forcibly learn during the two months she lived abroad.
At the time, Joanna was already preparing her Ph.D. I realized that hypoxia (lack of oxygen in the tissues) was one of the reasons why cancer patients developed cachexia. Then the opportunity to research abroad was presented again, and the scientist chose to apply to the laboratory led by Peter Ratcliffe at the University of Oxford, UK.
While Joanna was in class there, during a typical Monday in 2019, news came that Professor Ratcliffe had been awarded an award. Nobel Prize in Medicine. Later, after receiving the award in Switzerland, he thanked the Brazilian for working on one of them Lyrics. Also in Brazil, Joanna found the hypoxia-inducible gene, called HIF (in English for “hypoxia inducing factor”) in tumors of cachexia patients. In Ratcliffe’s lab, he collaborated on the search for pharmacological inhibition of this gene, which could, in the future, serve as a therapeutic strategy against cancer.
Returning to Brazil, Joanna did her Ph.D. Ratcliffe immediately invited her to return to Oxford as a researcher. TodayThe researcher shows her daily life there from her Instagram account (joannaclima). In addition, it uses the space to promote internships and postgraduate vacancies in international institutions for researchers from all fields of knowledge. After fulfilling her dream of studying abroad, she wants to help others do the same.
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