Eighteen hours of flying across the Atlantic Ocean and Europe before landing in the Middle East may seem arduous for a young scientist's first international panel discussion and poster presentation. But for Wayne State University School of Medicine graduate student Neha Aggarwal it was well worth it.
"It was exciting. There was a lot of discussion," she said.
Aggarwal, a graduate student in the Department of Physiology, and her advisor, Distinguished Professor Bonnie Sloane, Ph.D., chair of WSU's Department of Pharmacology, were among just three groups invited to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to review and discuss successful international collaborations.
The duo was met in Dubai by Dr. Sloane's Cairo University collaborator, Mona Mostafa Mohamed, Ph.D., and Cairo University student Eslam Ahmed Elghonaimy.
Dr. Mohamed directs Cairo University's Cancer Biology Research Laboratory, which opened in 2009. Dr. Sloane served as her mentor and provided oversight for Dr. Mohamed's inflammatory breast cancer research from 2005 to April 2007 at WSU. Dr. Mohamed continues to visit WSU as part of a National Institutes of Health/Fogarty-funded collaboration with Dr. Sloane.
The March meeting was the fourth in a series held in the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan to define critical issues underlying international collaborations in the biological sciences between these countries and the U.S. The Dubai meeting focused on early-career scientists like Aggarwal and her Egyptian counterpart.
Aggarwal's role was to explain how the collaboration between Drs. Sloane and Mohamed started, what she learned about the process of collaboration and how collaborations can help improve research and education.
"This meeting made me aware of the problems that young scientists face in starting labs, both funding and personnel, especially in that region, as well as how careful they have to be while collaborating on patient-based research," she said. "There is a great need for awareness, funding and collaboration in the area of breast cancer research. Additionally, there is an immediate need to develop research programs that can be of assistance to patients and make women aware of breast cancer so it can be detected in early stages in the region."
Aggarwal also presented a poster of her research to identify markers predictive of changes that occur in the breast microenvironment during the transition of premalignant lesions to breast cancer.