An interview with COLOSSUS Coordinator Professor Annette Byrne, The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland – University of Medicine and Health Sciences (RCSI) entitled: “International collaboration: A precision medicine approach to treating metastatic colorectal cancer” was conducted in late February 2022 in advance of Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. In it, Prof. Byrne outlines some keys to her success in leveraging largescale European funding and what strong international collaborations mean to her research. Below is an excerpt. Read the complete interview here.
The benefit of collaboration
Without question the single biggest benefit of this collaboration has been the impact of the research we’ve been able to do. It has allowed us to collaborate with real leaders in the field across Europe, including institutes like VIB Leuven and INSERM in Paris, which are two of the top research institutes in Europe.
With joint thinking and infrastructure, the scope and impact of the work has been much greater than any solo effort, and as a consequence we have had some high impact publications together that have benefited all researchers and may help to improve cancer patient treatment and care.
From a personal point of view, it helped raise my profile, I had an increasing number of invitations to speak at leading conferences and it allowed me to quite quickly make it to full Professor. I am often asked how I did it, by women colleagues in particular. I knew that my forte was in research so I really wanted to push the boundaries of what I could do. By figuring out what my skill sets were, such as being able to write well, I was able to use that to help me along the way.
Staying on the ball
As coordinator, the buck stops with you and that can be stressful. Coordinating 10-15 institutes, companies, academics, academics in different fields, clinicians and computational experts who all speak a different (scientific or clinical) language or who don’t understand the fundamentals of cancer biology can be difficult.
Some of this involves being tough and sometimes business-like when you need to be. For example it is important that the budget for each partner is well justified and, quite simply, if people aren’t delivering on their side of the collaboration, I won’t invite them to collaborate in the future.
You have to be on the ball all the time, especially when dealing with the European Commission and making sure to report on time. You are also responsible for all the financial aspects, herding the crowd and organising meetings. In short, you really have to deliver. Since the pandemic in particular, it’s been a constant barrage of Zoom meetings to keep the team motivated and make sure that all partners are doing what they were funded to do and according to the EC’s strict timelines.
Read more of Professor Byrne’s research on colorectal cancer.
“Professor Annette Byrne joined RCSI as a lecturer in the Department of Physiology and Medical Physics in 2008.
She works on new treatments for brain and colorectal cancers and has been the successful coordinator on several European consortia including COLOSSUS which focusses on precision medicine systems for patient stratification based solutions in metastatic colorectal cancer.”
