Profile

I live in Perth, Scotland but spent the last three years in Brighton, England, working towards a PhD in medicinal chemistry. Due to the pandemic, we had to move my final exam online but I still managed to pass so I am now unofficially Dr Fiona Scott! I am currently working as a freelance science writer and am due to start work soon in one of the covid-19 testing labs part-time while looking for more permanent jobs in drug development. Outside of the lab, I enjoy playing music and watching theatre – I particularly enjoy musicals and get to see some for free working as a theatre critic!

Me working in a chemistry lab

During my PhD, I worked in a drug discovery research group who try to help develop better medicines for diseases like cancer, anxiety, cystic fibrosis, depression, Alzheimer’s etc.

I spend time in the lab making new molecules called “chemical tools”. They aren’t drugs exactly but they look a lot like medicine molecules. They are made in the early stages of a new medicine programme to help biologists work out if shutting down a particular process in our bodies using a drug is useful for treating a disease.

Our bodies are full of about 40,000 different enzymes/proteins which carry out various jobs in our bodies. Sometimes these proteins go rogue and cause a disease and need shut down by drug molecules. Drug molecules work by fitting into the enzyme, like a hand in a glove, and stop them from being able to do their usual job. I am designing and making chemical tool molecules for a type of enzyme called a kinase, one that often goes a bit rogue in cancer cells.

These days we are trying to develop cancer drugs that only harm cancer cells and not healthy ones, like traditional chemotherapy and radiotherapy, do. That way we can hopefully have drugs with fewer side effects such as nausea and hair loss.

My usual day when I was working in a lab consisted of the following

7.30 am get up and go for a run

9.15 am get into uni – I preferred to ride the bus when it was less busy without students trying to get to 9 am lectures

Morning – catch up on e-mails and set up new chemistry experiments, or progress ones I had been running overnight

12.30 pm lunch, usually soup or a salad I had made at home

1.30 pm catching up on lab book or reading new research, or in the lab

3.30 pm usually back in the lab by this point to get my reactions finished or to a point where I could leave them overnight

6.30 pm leave uni

7 pm dinner

Evening – either chilling in my flat or going to review a show at my local theatre