Her personality reflects the reality of her profession, "get to the point". Objective and pragmatic, that doesn't take away her empathy, even for those who meet her for the first time. She prefers to be called simply Luísa, she wears round glasses that, along with short hair, give her grace and make her sophisticated and feminine.
It seems like the office where we meet to talk reflects her personality, there are some red and orange gerbera, a Pilates ball that can double as a seat, and a children's book forgotten on a chair, which reveals her good relationship with her nephews. Sunlight keeps the small room warm, however, it's so cosy inside that there's really no need for it.
Luísa Vaqueiro Lopes is a Neuroscientist studying Neurobiology of Ageing and she's a Group Leader at the iMM. She is a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, a member of its Scientific Board, as well as a supporter of the GAPIC project, thanks to which she receives a few Medicine students from the same Faculty in her laboratory.
She was born in Bombarral, Portugal where she studied in a regional school and she proudly calls herself "a product of public education" because she didn't need extra tutoring or special English lessons. It was all her hard work and merit because she didn't accept to be labelled as intellectually "weaker" just because she had a smaller town. As a matter of fact, she thinks that living in a small place increases one's will to grow and expand the limits of one's own brain. And it's the brain she actually studies and challenges every day. As a high school student, she was already travelling around the world every time she bought the Time magazine, which she always carried with her. Proud of her country, but not a nationalist, she always believed that borders should not be closed because they close what challenges her the most, the mind.
She always wanted to be a Scientist, but her passion for Literature made her hesitate about the future. However, thanks to Science she became part of a global concept, of a whole without geographical or intellectual borders. She says that even today when she imagines herself in a small place, she feels claustrophobic because she needs her freedom of choice. Freedom is this fantastic characteristic intrinsic to Science that can be pursued anywhere in the world.
After graduating in Biochemistry at the Faculty of Sciences and completing a "joint" PhD in Neurosciences at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, the University of Cambridge and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, she completed her academic career with a Post-doctoral degree in Switzerland. Having several options, she decided not to stick to pure Neuroscientific research, she needed to try something different once again.
Nestlé was looking for a Neuroscientist for the first time. As a multinational company, it needed to understand the relationship between the enteric nervous system (an autonomous nervous system, a network of neurons that integrate the digestive system) and the brain, i.e., the gut-brain axis. This axis between the brain and the digestive system was going to reveal whether certain diseases influence the brain and which proteins may create this link. She spent the first 3 years of her career there. Since Nestlé is not a pharmaceutical company, it allowed Luísa to continue writing scientific articles, enriching her CV and leaving the door open to the possibility of returning to the Academy if she wanted to.
She claims that people should leave their comfort zone and move to another country, a different environment because, in addition to increasing their professional value, it puts the competence of their country of origin into perspective. But returning was a condition she imposed on herself when she decided she wanted to have children. She came back at the age of 35 with a romantic idea of what returning to her country would be. She had a son, Tiago, who is now 11 years old. Looking at the social role of women, she now recalls Switzerland in a less positive light, because she believes it still has a sexist attitude towards women, wanting them to work only part-time.
In 2018, Santa Casa da Misericórdia awarded her the “Mantero Belard”, prize for Neuroscience in the amount of 200 thousand euros, as she stood out for her project about the "synaptic dysfunction that plays a crucial role in Alzheimer's disease since it's at the origin of cognitive decline."
When I ask how she explains her science to common people like myself, she tells me that that's the biggest challenge, to make Science approachable, and despite the need to act responsibly, she feels she has to reach everybody, not just the elite. Maybe because she believed that Science should be brought closer to the community in general and because she can easily express herself, she knew she had to accept Endemol's challenge to be a member of the jury of the "Os Extraordinários" [The Extraordinary] TV show, on RTP, where she would assess "brilliant" minds.
Passionate about literature, she also has an interest in non-scientific writing, penning a few articles. Matters aside, she strongly affirms that the subjectivity we find in literature can never be part of a scientific project. Fiction, on the other hand, can tell history in a different way. It was the fiction by Filipa Martins that challenged Luísa to present her book "Na Memória dos Rouxinóis" [In the Memory of Nightingales], which tells the story of a mathematician confronting his own memories. She highlights the moment when she was allowed to mix the business of her reality with the pleasure of talking about writing fiction. Combining the sensibility she sees in fiction with the pragmatism required by Science.
This month we chose her because of her key characteristics - she is an assertive and self-assured woman, rock-solid and recognised in the Scientific area, a driving force behind the opening of new paths.
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Does being a Scientist who is always supported by reason condition your emotional relationships with others?
Luísa Lopes: It shapes them a bit, but I believe that Scientists are not all alike. There is one thing we all share, we're very curious and practical. There are people who joke that when we write e-mails we go straight to the point. It's not that we're rude, we're just practical. The same goes for interaction, if we have to do it, we do it pragmatically and without that e-mail preamble. Sometimes I try to be more careful when I write, can you believe it? Going back to your question, I think it conditions only a part of it. Scepticism is one of those parts because we believe in numbers and facts. However, interpersonal relations are not controlled like that and luckily they manage to avoid Scientific control. You know, people often ask me when we will be able to read other people's minds. I tell them I hope never! It's good that we have our private thoughts. (Laughs loudly)
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I would say that the only private thing we own is our mind.
Luísa Lopes: And that's just as well. It's important that we don't lose our sensibility and say exactly what we think because it helps maintain a relation of empathy. It's important to maintain empathy.
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Science also seems to explain empathy, doesn't it?
Luísa Lopes: Empathy is a biological adaptation because we need each other. We're gregarious. Empathy is reciprocal and that strengthens relationships between people.
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It's impossible not to mention Women's day and their role in society. I know you came to Portugal to become a mother because you knew that for a woman like you, Switzerland wasn't the right place to "call home". Do you want to talk a little bit about that period?
Luísa Lopes: In Switzerland, mothers don't work full-time. I remember so many curious situations of trying to make doctor's appointments and them wanting to schedule for 3:00 p.m. I always asked, "but can't it be in the morning or at the end of the day?". And doctors were very surprised that I was working late.
In Portugal, even a few years ago, this was no longer acceptable. Even for financial reasons, women need to work. In Switzerland, people can have very comfortable lives earning just 1/3 of their total salary. That's why I understand people who choose this, even though I didn't want to. One thing is to take a day off because my son is sick, but interrupting an entire phase is something else entirely. And Science always had that advantage for me because it offers us flexibility in terms of working hours and we can work from home.
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Do you always need to feel free?
Luísa Lopes: I like being able to choose. And I know that sometimes we're not that free. But we're freer than we think. Science has that advantage of giving us huge freedom, I can do my job anywhere in the world because that's what I was trained for. We speak English and the terminology is universal. I can be here, in Tokyo or New York and I would be equally skilled because scientific language is global. I really like to travel and I have no problem admitting that I'm really considering going a year abroad to do research. As a matter of fact, I often encourage students to do this and to take advantage of this universality. (Stops and smiles) But Lisbon is a fantastic city to live, especially for a global person like me, this city ticks all the boxes, it fulfils everybody.
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I still think about Switzerland as a counterpoint to Portugal. When your son was younger, weren't you tempted, even for a second, to benefit from a labour regime like the Swiss one? Were you always able to manage time in relative calm?
Luísa Lopes: I really like to work and I know that it's not a very consensual position, but I really enjoy what I do. And at first, as a mother, I obviously missed going to work. So, when I came back I had no problems. However, I really needed that time at home. Partly because I don't like doing several things at the same time. I mean, I like doing a lot of things, but not having to pay attention to a baby and having to write a project at the same time. I wouldn't do either of them properly. I like to separate things. When I'm at work, I'm really at work. When I'm at home, I'm really at home. I don't mix things and I rarely make personal calls when I'm at work. I like to compartmentalize things and avoid distractions. And I've learnt to manage this time. You know, when my son was 4 months old I already felt ready to go back to my intellectual life. I needed it.
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You only feel fulfilled if you play both roles.
Luísa Lopes: A lot more. We're more than just mothers. Than women actually. All sides are positive sides for those who choose them. But being a woman, being a professional, fulfils us a lot more!
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Tell me how you got here to the iMM.
Luísa Lopes: When I came back I had other proposals to do research in other cities in Portugal. But Lisbon has a special charm and it allowed me to get into a good Research Institute. I wanted a dynamic place because I'm really impatient by nature. When something needs to be done, we do it. Or we give up. But thinking about what could be done is not part of my nature. The iMM had that enthusiasm for novelty and a strong commitment from the Faculty and the Academic Centre. So I applied for a scholarship with a project and I came here. I got a Science 2007 position as a researcher for the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and I stayed at the iMM. It went very well. I started as a Staff Scientist, which meant I would stay as a senior group researcher, but still without my own group . Later on, I got funding to have my team and buy equipment.
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As a researcher, funding is what allows you to grow and adapt your status, gaining autonomy for what you really want to research, isn't it?
Luísa Lopes: Yes, but when I came I already had that autonomy. I joined the group of Professor Alexandre Ribeiro. I came under two conditions, implementing animal behaviour analysis and having autonomy. And I had that freedom. We set up an animal behaviour room, which didn't exist, where you can do things like evaluating memory, anxiety, motor activity, which are very close to all the preclinical models for the neurological diseases we study.
It took some time, but it was a milestone for us. I recall with great enthusiasm and I still laugh a lot remembering the adventure of setting up a 1000-litre pool.
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A pool?
Luísa Lopes: Yes, we have a Morris pool to do a classic memory test (Morris test). Usually, to evaluate mice memory, we need the pool water to be dark, the animal cannot know where the escape platform is. It walks around looking for it, precisely for us to test its memory. The thing is, Portugal is very warm and a lot of people put powdered milk to make the water white. So that's what we were doing... We put powdered milk in the pool and we were still in an optimisation phase where we asked for help from our colleagues who had already implemented the system, to follow their steps. Since it wasn't possible to keep filling the pool with new water because it had 1000 litres and we wanted to save money, we did the memory tests and left the water and powdered milk there over the weekend... When we got back on Monday and I looked at the pool, there was a fermentation cloud due to the heat and the mice excrements, it acidified. There were fermentation bubbles everywhere, they looked like beer bubbles. (Laughs) And the smell? It was disgusting. What's worse, I was pregnant. A lot worse. (Laughs) There's more, we were about to receive a delegation from Harvard.
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It's called perfect timing.
Luísa Lopes: I was so embarrassed. At the time, I jumped into the car to buy a pool pump to empty it all quickly and I placed an "under maintenance" sign on the door. So nobody would enter and see that big mess. (Laughs)
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Did you manage to distract them?
Luísa Lopes: We managed to empty the pool and we let in some fresh air. Everybody helped a lot. And, of course, now we use what is usually used in warmer countries, non-toxic paint. Now the room is air-conditioned. That's how my group started and it marked the start of what we wanted to do.
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Which objectively speaking was...
Luísa Lopes: It's strongly connected to ageing, those are early signs of ageing. Finding the neural signatures of that process. We started with a few stress models and now we are working a lot on the circadian dysfunction associated with sleeping problems. We're trying to understand if people working shifts have increased susceptibility to dementia. There's a lot of evidence showing they do, but we're talking about correlative data and they're not showing whether or not there's a cause/consequence. Several studies suggest that nurses, working rotating shifts, for instance, could have, in the long run, combined with short-term cognitive changes, a higher vulnerability to dementia. However, there's no proof. We're trying to do this with animals thanks to which we manage to establish the cause and consequence. We induce these models in the laboratory and we try to get an answer from the long-term neuronal function.
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Will it be possible to apply this to humans?
Luísa Lopes: We have a few more translational studies, but none has been applied. This study that was awarded by Santa Casa has a part with human samples. What we try to do is, when we find a lead and a mechanism we try to validate them in human models, otherwise what we're doing would make no sense. And this is a great place to do it (CAML). We have the Biobank, the (Santa Maria) Hospital and our physician colleagues. The thing is that ageing can have very important leads to help us understand Alzheimer's disease a bit better. To do this, we're studying the function of synapse proteins, i.e., neurons throughout life. The leads we have were found in animals, but there are results showing that there could be similar leads in humans. So, what we're trying to understand is whether proteins or mechanisms that are modified in animals also appear in human sections. Obviously, because we don't have access to living brains, we only have access to biopsy sections (from the Biobank and Neuropathology). We can check whether this protein is present in elderly people and that will be a sign that our mechanism can be extrapolated.
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So biomarkers are not palpable in an MRI, are they?
Luísa Lopes: No. These in particular, no. For now... Only in blood or liquor (cerebrospinal fluid), or in sections. Especially in their dynamics, in real time. Functional magnetic resonance still has no resolution at the synaptic level. But this Santa Casa project will allow us to buy equipment to register neurons in a very detailed way. And there's a technology that allows producing neurons from the skin cells of fibroblasts in living patients and, using a biopsy (which is always somewhat invasive), we can produce neurons and examine their function. This is a major breakthrough compared with stem cells. In this new direct induction technology, we've already managed to induce neurons, directly, without losing the signature of their ageing. And this Prize will also allow us to implement this technique and validate it. I'll give you a practical example: if we take 3 or 4 patients from different age groups and induce neurons from their cells, will the neuronal function be in line with what we're seeing in cognitive terms? That's one the challenges of the project.
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And as far as I see this strengthens the importance of the CAML, which has a bit of everything, research, clinical practice, patient data.
Luisa Lopes: Exactly. And the Biobank has already authorised tests on the cells of patients who had biopsies for different reasons, and we use these cells to study them. That part is done in collaboration with Neurology. We need our physician colleagues to analyse the patients' clinical files and to correlate that information with our analyses. And precisely because of our connection to the CAML and its importance and because we want it to grow even more, Cláudia Faria (a researcher and neurosurgeon) and I thought of starting the "Neuroses" cycle of meetings. It's funny that we got to know each other better when we went on presentations of the João Lobo Antunes Fund, she on clinical research and I on more fundamental research.
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You only got to know each other well when you presented the Fund?
Luísa Lopes: That's right. Because I was working more with the people from Neurology and Psychiatry, and less with Neurosurgery. And as we got to know each other, we realised the importance of having more translational projects. In other words, to combine the talent of clinical questions with our capacity as fundamental researchers to create models. And that's how this series of Translation Neuroscience Meetings was born. We'll always think about a relevant clinical question and then all of us, physicians, researchers and postgraduate students, will get together and try to understand what we can and can't improve. We all want to evaluate what's doable and we know that together we have a lot of knowledge. If on the one hand, we have a lot of physicians with relevant questions, on the other hand, we have researchers with a lot of know-how on model implementation. We test the clinical question.
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Is there still the need to establish dynamic bridges between clinical practice and research?
Luísa Lopes: Physicians in Portugal don't have a lot of time for research (there are some exceptions) and they do ask questions, but we realised that those questions weren't always reaching us. When physician colleagues read our articles, they ask a lot of questions that make sense, which we still hadn't asked because we're not in clinical practice. Just like we ask questions that, often, we cannot validate without their collaboration. The meeting that took place on the 12th this month showed what's possible when we get together. Sometimes because we don't have time, other times because we don't meet, we could be missing some very useful answers. This idea for these new seminars had a lot to do with Santa Casa. Several colleagues from the clinical area congratulated me on this Prize and, in what regards the CAML, this is a very important Prize for the entire community. One of the people I talked to was Professor José Ferro (Director of the University Clinic of Neurology and President of the School Board of the FMUL). He encouraged me to keep in touch and told me that I could use whatever I needed from Neurology, samples, ongoing studies. I felt we needed to talk more often and it took me 15 minutes of exchanging project ideas to realise that we should meet periodically. In other words, create a routine that could be more intense if we had enough time available.
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Is it difficult sometimes to ask simple questions?
Luísa Lopes: I have a hard time asking simple questions because I really like integrated Physiology and I always think that the brain is linked to the body, the body to diet, then there is genetic predisposition, the immune system. In other words, a lot of interconnected things in the area of neurodegenerative diseases. In the laboratory, simple questions are often the most rewarding ones. And it was a simple question that led us to the Prize - "How is the amyloid precursor protein present in ageing? And will its normal function of ageing lead us to understand what happens in neurodegeneration?" It's urgent to get that answer because a lot of mistakes have been made in clinical trials. We fail because either we don't know enough, or we need to rethink the way of discovering new models. The integration of all the areas is becoming more and more important. Now, it's also important to say that nobody has unlimited access to cells, living brain synapses, and that explains the difficulty of studying and analysing things in real time.
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How does a person who describes herself as impatient deal with the calm, pondered and slow timings of Science?
Luísa Lopes: I'm impatient for things to happen, it's not the same as cutting corners. Science has to be very controlled and I'm very strict there, that is, I think that in order for a result to be a real result we have to be sure it's not an artefact. However, impatience helps in realisation. We cannot accept failure, or not doing things, just because we're lazy. The idea of settling because we're in Portugal, or because we don't have money, or because we don't feel like it, makes me impatient. I'm lucky to be surrounded by people who work a lot, both at Hospital and here at the iMM, as well as at the Faculty and they give me the strength to always fight against the discouragement. I don't like to be informed about a failure at the very beginning, I think we can at least try. I mean, of course, I will not test something in a certain way if my colleagues have already tried it and it's not working. But we can find other ways. Then there is another thing I don't like, which is when a student gets frustrated because he tried one technique and it failed, even if he was trying for 6 months. We always have to find other ways of thinking and solving problems. That's our role. Our goal is not to be right as individuals, but to advance Science. You don't do anything on your own, it has a lot to do with sharing and even when we criticize a researcher's methods or results, we want things to move forward because we all win with it. That's why Science is a real daily exercise of humility and patience. You can't wait for a miracle drug that will cure all the brain diseases at the same time, that's not going to happen! But the urgency of waiting for results puts pressure to try to find as many solutions as possible.
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A lot of students whom I've talked to are very concerned with the near future, if they'll make it to the areas of specialisations they want, or in case they don't, which professional alternatives remain. I have the feeling that Science is still a distant, largely unexplained topic for them. Do you talk enough about Science to them in order for them to know what to choose?
Luísa Lopes: Since I'm a member of Scientific Board of the Faculty, we're actively working on that issue at the moment. We're thinking about introducing more optional research subjects, we want to offer more contact with research. The GAPIC is making a great effort and you know, I receive e-mails from GAPIC students who spent some time here and are doing their internship and write me to tell me that it was very useful for them to practice the scientific method. However, there are problems on the national level when it comes to combining clinical practice with research; many, faced with the choice, choose clinical practice. We're trying to change that, with the internal status of the doctoral student so that people who are studying for a doctoral degree don't harm their clinical career and vice versa. There's a concern that we're trying to turn into practical measures.
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What did your peers and people in general think about your jury role in the RTP program, "Os Extraordinários"? (note: the program was a competition between brilliant brains with cognitive capacities above average)
Luísa Lopes: You know that people usually imagine a Scientist as someone ugly, half sullen and somewhat of a hermit. When the producers met me, they commented that they thought scientists were strange, shy people who didn't care much for their appearance. (Laughs) That means there's an image problem that we have to change. At first, I hesitated to accept because I thought that appearing in a TV show was a huge responsibility because I was afraid of its credibility. So I took a look at the format and it seemed to me that, since it was a family-oriented show for scientific dissemination, it fit into what I could do. Also, I'm very keen on disseminating Science, it's very important. It's important that people understand what we do in order to understand why Science takes so much time and also for the scientific community to support research. In order for our importance to be understood, we need to talk about it and show ourselves, as long as we do it in a credible way. And I like to talk, so I can do it for the benefit of Science in general. I liked the experience, I met really interesting contestants. Of course, I had to be careful about my language so that everybody could understand me and some of my comments were edited because they thought I was explaining too much. We thought about having a brain in the program to explain brain areas. The program paid for it and offered it to me and it's here for Neuroscience students. My colleagues in neuroscience were nice to me and generous in their peer-review . The benefit was greater than my fear of taking part in it. I think we democratized Science a bit more and we got the attention of kids. When I would go to pick up my son at school, several kids would recognize me and they would come and talk to me so I could tell them more about the brain. Several kids started talking about the hippocampus as if they already knew it and that was a good sign. Then I received a lot of generous emails from adults giving me new ideas and telling me cases of other people. It was very positive.
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When Luísa Lopes put her thoughts into practice she thinks about strengthening translational research and she hopes to be able to teach experimental neurology and psychiatry models, matters she is already applying in her laboratory.
In research, she'll keep trying to decode the signature of ageing. Even though she says she doesn't make long-term plans, she wants to abroad for a year, to do research and to study more, going back to the Laboratory bench. She'll take her son whom she has taught that it's possible to love and let go at the same time.
Recently she was granted an individual stimulus position by the FCT which will allow financing her salary at the iMM for more than 6 years. Therefore, and for now, she's elated by her daily routine at the iMM and she keeps learning while leading her team. With the students, she always innovates in her capacity to teach them something new and different, fostering in them what has always driven her, the inexhaustible curiosity for what her own brain still has no answer.
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Joana Sousa
Editorial Team
