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I joined the Precision Oncology Ireland (POI) team at the beginning of December 2019 and immediately started helping set up the consortium in my role as Senior Research Administrator. POI consists of five Irish universities, six Irish cancer research charities, and nine companies aiming to develop new diagnostics and therapeutics for the personalised treatment of cancer. It is based out of Systems Biology Ireland at UCD, and the combined SFI, charity, and industrial funding commitment to POI will total €11.9 million over the next five years. The Consortium was officially launched on the 26^th of November 2019, and since then, huge progress has been made to establish the programme. Given the complexity of POI as a unique programme which receives funding from SFI, industry partners and Irish charities you can imagine that the process of setting up the programme has not always been completely straightforward, but we are getting there. The POI operations team have been recruited, along with some members of the research team. We have negotiated the majority of our partner agreements to secure our funding. And importantly, we have engaged with academic researchers, charity and industry partners, the patient advocate community, and the public, to communicate what POI is all about.

Back in February, we raised awareness of the consortium through POI being profiled on the RTE1 ‘Nationwide’ programme, which has an almost cult following across the country and is broadcast every weekday evening, reaching audiences in every corner of Ireland. POI Director Prof. Walter Kolch and Deputy Director Prof. Liam Gallagher were both interviewed and featured in the final broadcast programme. They spoke about the research that they and their teams do and shared the importance that precision oncology and cancer research have for patients and society.

POI Director Prof. Walter Kolch walking through SBI for Nationwide segment.

Photo from Nationwide segment featuring a patient involvement session in collaboration with the Patient Voice in Cancer Research

POI has also held the ‘Choirs for Cancer’ event on 4th February 2020, to mark World Cancer Day. I helped organize this event, which had over 700 attendees, 10 choirs and 300 singers was hosted by RTE presenters Miriam O’Callaghan and Marty Morrissey and brought together cancer patients, advocates, survivors, and family members to share the story of their cancer journey with the cancer research community. These stories were interspersed with inspirational songs by choirs from across the Ireland including choirs whose members were from cancer support centers or had a link to cancer. Patient advocates shared their personal cancer stories, and cancer researchers spoke of their motivation and progress towards finding new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat this devastating disease. A huge amount of planning and preparation was involved in coordinating all of the speakers and choirs. In the run up to the event I liaised with all the participating choirs who were travelling from all across Ireland to ensure they had all the information they required, helped with any logistical arrangements including parking (which was a bit of a nightmare as UCD isn’t the easiest place to secure event parking) and answered any queries they had. On the day, all of our hard-work and preparation paid off and everything ran to plan with the exception of the Sing for Life Choir’s bus breaking down an hour into their journey from Belfast to Dublin! We didn’t know if they would make it on time to perform, but luckily, they eventually got the bus back on the road and arrived in UCD halfway through the event, just in time to give a beautiful rendition of the song ‘Falling Slowly’. The event was a resounding success, with huge traction on social media (84,000 mentions of #choirsforcancer2020), and photo/video content featured on outlets including the Irish Times and the World Cancer Day highlights video. Furthermore, the event was extremely moving and heartfelt and despite the huge amount of work that went into organizing it, everyone who worked tirelessly in the background felt that the experience was definitely worth the effort and agreed that memories from the day will stay with them for years to come.  

February turned out to be a very busy month for POI. We headed west to Galway to hold our first team meeting with the researchers, charity partners and industry partners from all over the country and even further afield. It was lovely to meet everyone there in person for the first time after weeks of preparations to ensure everything would run smoothly on the day. However, unfortunately as I am learning, sometimes no matter how much you prepare there are always things out of your control (like a projector that does not want to cooperate and causes a 20 minute delay to the start of the meeting!).

We also hosted a table at the Patient Voice in Cancer Research ‘Dragon’s Den’ event in Galway on the 25th February 2020. This brought the POI management team members and those with a lived experience of cancer together, with the goal of co-designing a patient involvement plan for the POI programme, based on the insights and experiences of those around the table. On the following day, POI partnered with CÚRAM, the SFI Research Centre for Medical Devices at NUI Galway and Galway Film Centre, in this year’s Science on Screen programme, which will commission a short scientific documentary focused on cancer research. Members of the POI management team, together with patient advocates and researchers, shared their insights with an audience of filmmakers, with the focus of the proposed documentary film being on precision oncology. The pitches put forward by filmmakers are currently being shortlisted, and hopefully the successful candidates will be able to shoot the footage in early 2021. That same day, I manned the POI booth at the Irish Association for Cancer Research (IACR) Annual Conference, and I really enjoyed engaging with the researchers, discussing their current work and providing them with information on POI.  

Manning the POI booth at the IACR with POI’s COO Jessica Ralston

So, the going was good and then everything changed. On the 12th of March we all headed home and have remained there since. What is the new reality of continuing to set up the programme remotely? To be honest, things have been running surprisingly smoothly thanks to modern technology and the virtual office environment is working well for us. On the operations side, our work is getting done, grant applications have been submitted and our meetings are still going ahead via Zoom in the comfort and safety of our homes.

An insight into our virtual POI management meetings

The clear negatives are that wet lab-based work has ground to a halt and it is unclear when this may fully resume. Recruitment of new hires to several projects has also been delayed due to Covid19 and this could mean that projects might be running behind before they can even start. Significant milestones have been set out for this programme and these delays could of course impact on the timeline for achieving these. The ban on holding events means that we unfortunately cannot plan any networking or team-building activities for newly hired researchers to meet the POI operations team or other researchers involved with the programme. These events are vital for building relationships and creating a sense of community within the programme so we will need to explore other ways of achieving this remotely.

However, on the positive side, in the overall scheme of a five-year project, any delays at the start of the research projects should not cause too many issues and we will still have plenty of time to get the work done down the line.

Now we must adapt to the current situation and continue to plan ahead. However, it is hard to know what future planned events will look like if social-distancing rules must apply. This is especially true for patient and public engagement activities where some attendees may belong to high-risk groups. Perhaps events such as these will need to be put on hold until a COVID-19 vaccine is available. As we can no longer host seminars in person, we have been forced to think creatively and explore innovative ways to engage our audiences remotely. We are currently planning a virtual tour of our industry partner’s labs and facilities, as well as a virtual seminar series. These are things that we probably would have never considered doing if it wasn’t for the new social-distancing restrictions and one clear benefit to working in this way is that the events are accessible to a wider audience as people can join in from home. So, keep an eye out for the invites to these virtual events as they are sure to be excellent.

So luckily, we are able to continue working and making progress in establishing the programme and we are very thankful for this. If we have any personal regrets though it would have to be that we didn’t take out shares in Zoom last year!

About the author:
Shauna is the Senior Research Administrator for Precision Oncology Ireland and joined the team in December 2019. She assists with the day-to-day running of the programme and its related activities.