Blood cancer researcher Dr Despina Bazou – ‘People with blood cancers are now living much longer’
For Dr Despina Bazou, arriving in Ireland by way of Greece, the US & UK has given her a unique perspective on different cancer research cultures that can be applied to her work here.
Originally from Greece, she studied in Harvard and Cardiff University before a fellowship eventually brought her to the Mater Hospital to pursue her research.
How the Translational Research Lead even finds time to talk about the numerous projects she is involved in aimed at helping cancer patients seems a minor miracle in itself: “At the moment I am working on several clinical trials led by Prof Peter O’Gorman focussed on a rare type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma, as well as a research programme that aims to help doctors to decide what treatments might work best for individual patients with this diagnosis,” Dr Bazou says.
“On top of that I manage the blood cancer biobank which is a collection of patient blood samples at the Mater Hospital which I was involved in developing, and I am part of an educational programme aimed at training the next generation of doctor-scientists for blood cancers.”
For Dr Bazou, who was named Research Support Staff of the Year at the Irish Cancer Society’s 2021 Research Awards, the lengthy list of commitments is worth it to be able to help those living with multiple myeloma.
“There has been a huge increase in the number of drugs that have been developed and approved for multiple myeloma, and have worked to some extent but unfortunately we find that patients eventually become resistant and stop getting benefit from their treatment.
Multiple myeloma has almost become a chronic disease now where people are living much longer with it, but it’s not curable.
"What we’re trying to find out is how can we make treatment more personalised by using the information we are able to gather on people’s genetic makeup, through something called next generation sequencing, to then predict what drugs they might respond best to. The earlier we have this information, the better treatment that can be provided to patients.”
Dr Bazou has a goal of finding more effective drugs for multiple myeloma patients through her collaborative research that can ultimately help them to lead better lives, and she tries to take a holistic approach when considering the treatments that may be right for different people.
“At the moment we are working with a psychiatry group to look into the psychological effect of disease on patients, and on their quality of life.
“It’s great to be able to look at this as there are factors beyond ‘response to treatment’ which are really important to take into account for patients as well.”
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