research scientist 5

How to Become a Research Scientist

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Professionals with a background in biotechnology can choose to pursue many lucrative careers . One of the most common choices is to become a research scientist. These individuals work in drug and process development, consistently conducting research and performing experiments to help move the biotechnology industry forward. 

“At the highest level, a research scientist is somebody who can design and execute experiments to prove or disprove a hypothesis,” says Jared Auclair , director of the biotechnology and bioinformatics programs at Northeastern. “Within the world of biotechnology, that can mean a number of different things, from creating new drugs to improving the process of how we make a drug.”

Professionals in this industry are often drawn to the wide array of applications of this work, as well as the consistently positive career outlook. The average salary of a biotechnology research scientist is $85,907 per year, with plenty of opportunities for increased salary potential depending on specializations, location, and years of experience. 

These factors—alongside the growing demand for advancement in biotechnology over the last few decades—have led many aspiring biotechnologists to consider a career in research science. Below we offer five steps professionals can take to kick-start a career in this field.

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5 Steps to Become a Research Scientist

1. acquire the necessary technical skills..

According to Auclair, there are four main applications of research science within the biotechnology field:

• Molecular Biology
• Process Science
• Biochemistry
• Analytical Biotechnology

Professionals hoping to pursue a career in research science must begin by deciding which of these four areas is the best fit for their interests and backgrounds. They must then acquire the specific skill sets they need to excel in that area. 

Below, Auclair breaks down some of the key skills and knowledge required within each of these specializations:

• Molecular biologists should focus on developing a complex understanding of DNA and learn how to do a Polymerase Chain Reaction alongside other DNA-related experiments. 
• Process scientists must understand cell biology and how to work with living mammalian cells, as well as how to perform analytical experiments using mass spectrometry and other analytical tools.
• Biochemists should focus on obtaining the skills necessary to make a protein drug, including the expression and purification of proteins.
• Analytical biotechnicians must become comfortable with techniques like mass spectrometry—a process that uncovers what drug products are at a molecular level.

One efficient way aspiring research scientists can obtain these specific skill sets is to pursue a master’s degree in biotechnology at a top university like Northeastern. 

“The biotech program is designed in collaboration with industry so that we’re meeting their needs,” Auclair says. “This includes training students with the skills they need to be a successful research scientist.”

The curriculum of Northeastern’s program explores the core competencies required to excel in the general biotechnology field and provides students with the unique subsets of skills they need to specialize in a specific area of research science. Students can even declare one of 10 industry-aligned concentrations, including options that directly relate with these common research science roles.

“Especially in industry, most people who are doing research science—who are actually doing the experiments and helping think about experiments with some of the senior leaders in the company—are people with a master’s degree,” Auclair says.

2. Become a critical thinker.

Alongside honing technical skills, Auclair says that critical thinking abilities are key for aspiring research scientists. 

“It’s important to become a critical thinker and a problem solver, and to challenge yourself wherever you can to step outside of your comfort zone,” Auclair says. 

Though critical thinking is a common requirement among most professional career paths, it is especially important for research scientists, who are constantly tasked with innovating and thinking creatively to solve problems.

Northeastern’s master’s in biotechnology program is designed to help students grow in this regard. “Everything we do within the program is geared [toward] making you a critical thinker and a problem solver,” Auclair says. “We try to define classes and assessments to make you think, [and] we also hire most of the faculty in our program directly from the industry, so they bring with them real-world experience that they can talk about with the students.”

These real-world case studies are a core component of Northeastern’s approach to learning, and they help prepare students to think critically about their work. By bringing this exposure into the classroom, students also graduate better prepared to tackle current industry challenges and adapt to evolving trends .

3. Hone your “power skills.”

It’s no longer enough for research scientists in biotechnology to have obtained the technical skills needed to complete their work. Today, many employers require an array of industry-specific “power skills”—previously known as “soft skills”—among candidates for research science roles.

Below we explore the top three “power skills” for biotechnology research scientists:

• Communication: As a research scientist, “you must be able to communicate scientific information to both technical and non-technical people,” Auclair says. For this reason, professionals should work to hone their verbal and written communication styles, focusing specifically on the variances in each depending on which audience they’re interacting with.
• Presentation Ability: Research scientists must be able to present their findings clearly and concisely to a variety of different audiences, ranging from fellow scientists to investors to C-suite executives. Research scientists must be comfortable in front of a group and know how to speak about their experiments and conclusions in an engaging and informative way.
• Teamwork: Although one might think a research scientist’s work is very siloed, today’s professionals must be very comfortable working with others in a lab environment. They must become comfortable sharing ideas, providing feedback to others in their cohort, and tweaking their experiments based on contributed findings.

Northeastern offers students the chance to explore each of these core “power skills” during their time within the master’s in biotechnology program. For example, the university offers countless opportunities for students to collaborate with and present to classmates, instructors, and even industry-leading organizations through Northeastern’s experiential learning opportunities, giving them the chance to apply these skills in both classroom and real-world situations early on.

Learn More: How to Become a Biotechnologist: Build Your Soft Skills

4. Obtain hands-on experience.

One of the most effective ways an aspiring research scientist can prepare for a career in this field is to obtain experiences working in a real lab. While finding these kinds of opportunities can be difficult for those just breaking into the field, programs like Northeastern’s MS in biotechnology bake hands-on learning directly into the curriculum. 

“Students do essentially four to six months [working in the] industry, and put what they learn in the classroom…into practice,” Auclair says.

These opportunities, known as co-ops , provide students with the chance to work within top organizations in the industry and explore the real-world challenges of the field from inside a functioning lab.

Did You Know: Northeastern’s program provides students with exposure to the tools and equipment used within labs in the industry. This access to cutting-edge technology reduces the learning curve and allows students to dive into their work as soon as they graduate.

Another unique way Northeastern provides hands-on experience is through Experiential Network (XN) Projects . Students who participate in these projects are typically paired with a sponsor from an active biotech company that has a real-world problem they need to solve. Then, “under the guidance of a faculty member, students spend the semester trying to come up with solutions to that problem,” Auclair says. “It’s all student-driven.”

Hands-on learning opportunities like these give students a competitive advantage when it comes to applying for jobs. “The experiential learning piece [of our program] is what has our students actually stand out above others in the field,” Auclair says, because employers like to see that their candidates are capable of applying their skills in a real-world environment. 

5. Grow your network.

Research shows that 85 percent of all jobs today are filled through networking, making it more important than ever for professionals across industries to invest time and energy into building these vital relationships.

Professionals hoping to establish a career as a research scientist are no exception. These individuals should aim to develop connections with organizations and individuals within the greater biotech industry early on in their careers, and use those relationships to help carve their path forward.

Northeastern’s master’s in biotechnology program has strategically created many great opportunities for students to network throughout their time in the program. They are encouraged to build relationships with their classmates, guest speakers, faculty, and even the industry leaders they meet through co-ops and XN projects. As a result, they establish various impactful connections with individuals at different stages in their careers, all before they graduate.

Learn More: Networking Tips for Scientists

Another way Northeastern’s program supports networking is through opportunities for student/faculty collaboration. “We encourage our students to interact with our own faculty who are research scientists as much as possible, whether that’s volunteering in their lab or finding a half an hour to talk to them about what they’re doing,” Auclair says. “We want our students to be exposed to as many research scientists as possible while they’re in the program.”

Take the Next Step

Pursuing a master’s degree in biotechnology from a top university like Northeastern is a great way for aspiring research scientists to break into the field. Students in these programs can hone related skill sets, grow their professional networks, and experience hands-on learning, all while pursuing graduate-level education. 

Learn more about how a master’s in biotechnology can set you up for success as a research scientist on our program page , then get in touch with our enrollment coaches who can help you take the first step.

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Final Remarks: How to Be a Successful Research Scientist

• First Online: 26 April 2024

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• David Julian McClements 4 ,
• Jake McClements 5 &
• Isobelle Farrell McClements 6  

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This short chapter provides 10 tips for becoming a more successful research scientist based on the material covered in the book: (1) Understand the system, (2) Set clear goals, (3) Know your field, (4) Develop strong research skills, (5) Publish and present, (6) Communicate well, (7) Develop a strong work ethic and positive attitude, (8) Collaborate and network, (9) Time management, (10) Prioritize self-care and well-being.

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5 Characteristics of a Successful Research Scientist

Analytical mindset.

• Detail Oriented

Good Communication Skills

• Open minded and free of bias

Positions in scientific research are available in a wide variety of fields—but in each specialization, the characteristics of a successful research scientist are similar. From medicine to history, these traits help most scientists use the scientific method to conduct more efficient, impactful investigations. Before entering the field as a researcher, it’s helpful to build up each skill to prepare for the demands of the job and to become a good scientist.

Scientists’ work can take decades to discover answers. They must repeat experiments multiple times. They may have numerous failures, and their work may be proven false by future research scientists. While not every good scientist will have all of these important characteristics, ones having many of these traits and continuing to develop them will succeed.

No matter what scientific specialization you choose, the traits we highlight below are an asset. While not everyone will have all these traits, by developing the top characteristics of a research scientist, it’s easier to build a successful, thriving career.

An analytical mindset is one of the most crucial characteristics for scientists working in research. Every day they take in a variety of collected data from experiments and studies. To make sense of that data, the good scientist must analyze it using critical thinking. They look for patterns, try to spot causation, and prove or disprove their hypotheses to make new discoveries. A scientist must make a successful analysis that requires an in-depth understanding of the field and other research projects, as well as knowledge of the factors that might affect the results. In other words, a good scientist in research knows how to take a huge variety of information and pick out the factors that affect the project at hand. A good scientist must know how to think critically and solve problems by analyzing information and making critical decisions to solve experimental and real world problems. 

A research project is complex by nature. The scientist running the study must have the qualities needed to track and record every relevant and measurable factor; even in the highly regulated environment of the lab working with other scientists, this requires a high level of organization. When an investigation to test scientific theories moves into the outside world—as it often does in fields like wildlife, the environment, and medicine—organization is even more important. Successful research scientists are able to use the scientific method and digital and physical tools to keep track of every pertinent piece of data, from the outdoor temperature to the exact amount of fluid in a vial. This enables them to design repeatable studies and report accurate results that promise to add knowledge.

Detail-Oriented

When a good scientist is conducting research, even the smallest change can affect the results and taint the outcome of the study. That’s why the best research scientists are detail-oriented. They are often sticklers for  scientific method procedure, and they don’t take a lax approach to solve experimental problems. This presents an unusual duality—great scientists must be critical thinkers on both the big-picture and micro-level to ensure the integrity of their projects. Since the scientific community scrutinizes results and methods carefully, attention to detail is one way to maintain a strong reputation and ensure future funding.

A good scientist works to gain answers to problems using the scientific process to observe and collect data. This attention to detail helps in the development of scientific theories, and one experiment can lead to unexpected answers to other problems.

Scientific research is full of disappointments. A years-long study might not produce any useful information. Trials and tests fail. New information can negate an entire body of work. Given this reality, one of the top research scientist characteristics is resilience. A great scientist is able to take rejection and disappointment—and rather than letting it stop the work, they learn from it and use the information to design better studies in the future. This is also helpful when your job depends on securing funding; according to Science Magazine , short-term contracts are common in the research world. Another important trait is patience and courage to answer questions when needing to verify results and answering questions about experiments. Scientists recognize their work may take decades, and that their approach may be wrong and their work could be proven false by future scientists.

Although research scientists spend a great deal of time in the lab or the field, both written and oral communication is crucial. On the local level, they must be able to communicate the procedures and requirements of a study to their lab techs, assistants, and grad students. Communication also plays a role in securing funding for research—through presentations and written proposals, the scientist should be able to explain the importance of the study and convince the funding agency to give money. Once a project is complete, the scientist must communicate the findings to a larger audience, which might include students, other researchers, interviewers, administrators, and the general public. Effective communication is essential in science when working with other scientists as part of a team, or when sharing findings with others. 

Open Minded and Free of Bias

Good scientists observe and collect important data while searching for answers and being open minded and free of bias. These research scientists are creative and must think outside the box in their own way, while envisioning possibilities not yet seen all while being open minded about possibly being wrong. Knowing failed experiments provide answers helps good scientists be open minded. Open minded scientists are open to what other scientists have to say about their work and their ideas.

What is the professional organization for research scientists?

There are many professional organizations for all subject matter, and each subject matter has their research arm. Whatever your area of study, investigate the organizations that serve that profession. Professional organizations exist to serve their members with professional guidance, continuing education, research journals, networking events, and more. The National Organization of Research Development Professionals works with all areas of research with the mission to advance the global capacity for and impact of research by strengthening the practice and profession of research development. 

So if you are looking to make things happen as a successful research scientist, take a look at the characteristics and traits you already have, and what needs to be developed. Take the steps needed to get on the road to becoming a research scientist. 

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• 19 April 2024

Do insects have an inner life? Animal consciousness needs a rethink

• Mariana Lenharo

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Growing evidence indicates that insects such as bees show some forms of consciousness, according to a new scientific statement. Credit: Phil Savoie/Nature Picture Library

Crows , chimps and elephants : these and many other birds and mammals behave in ways that suggest they might be conscious . And the list does not end with vertebrates. Researchers are expanding their investigations of consciousness to a wider range of animals, including octopuses and even bees and flies.

Armed with such research, a coalition of scientists is calling for a rethink in the animal–human relationship . If there’s “a realistic possibility” of “conscious experience in an animal, it is irresponsible to ignore that possibility in decisions affecting that animal”, the researchers write in a document they call The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness . Issued today during a meeting in New York City, the declaration also says that there is a “realistic possibility of conscious experience” in reptiles, fish, insects and other animals that have not always been considered to have inner lives, and “strong scientific support” for aspects of consciousness in birds and mammals.

As the evidence has accumulated, scientists are “taking the topic seriously, not dismissing it out of hand as a crazy idea in the way they might have in the past”, says Jonathan Birch, a philosopher at the London School of Economics and Political Science and one of the authors of the declaration.

The document, which had around 40 signatories early today, doesn’t state that there are definitive answers about which species are conscious. “What it says is there is sufficient evidence out there such that there’s a realistic possibility of some kinds of conscious experiences in species even quite distinct from humans,” says Anil Seth, director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex near Brighton, UK, and one of the signatories. The authors hope that others will sign the declaration and that it will stimulate both more research into animal consciousness and more funding for the field.

Blurry line

The definition of consciousness is complex, but the group focuses on an aspect of consciousness called sentience, often defined as the capacity to have subjective experiences, says Birch. For an animal, such experiences would include smelling, tasting, hearing or touching the world around itself, as well as feeling fear, pleasure or pain — in essence, what it is like to be that animal. But subjective experience does not require the capacity to think about one’s experiences.

The consciousness wars: can scientists ever agree on how the mind works?

Non-human animals cannot use words to communicate their inner states. To assess consciousness in these animals, scientists often rely on indirect evidence, looking for certain behaviours that are associated with conscious experiences, Birch says.

One classic experiment is the mirror test , which investigates an animal’s ability to recognize itself in a mirror. In this experiment, scientists apply a sticker or other visual mark on an animal’s body and place the animal in front of a mirror. Some animals — including chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) 1 , Asian elephants ( Elephas maximus ) 2 and cleaner fishes ( Labroides dimidiatus ) 3 — exhibit curiosity about the mark and even try to remove it. This behaviour suggests the possibility of self-awareness, which might be a sign of consciousness.

In an experiment with crows ( Corvus corone ) 4 , the birds were trained to make a specific head gesture whenever they saw a coloured square on a screen, a task they carried out with high accuracy. While the birds performed the task, scientists measured the activity in a region of their brain associated with high-level cognition. The birds’ brain activity correlated with what the birds were reporting, not with what they were actually shown. This suggests that they were aware of what they were perceiving, another potential marker of consciousness.

Invertebrate inner lives?

Another experiment showed that octopuses ( Octopus bocki ) 5 , when picking between two chambers, avoided one where they had previously received a painful stimulus in favour of one where they were given an anaesthetic. This suggests that they experience and actively avoid pain, which some researchers think indicates conscious experience.

Research shows that octopuses avoid pain, which some scientists take as a sign of consciousness. Credit: Brandon Cole/Nature Picture Library

Investigations of fruit flies ( Drosophila melanogaster ) show that they engage in both deep sleep and ‘active sleep’, in which their brain activity is the same as when they’re awake 6 . “This is perhaps similar to what we call rapid eye movement sleep in humans, which is when we have our most vivid dreams, which we interpret as conscious experiences,” says Bruno van Swinderen, a biologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, who studies fruit flies ’ behaviour and who also signed the declaration.

Some suggest that dreams are key components of being conscious, he notes. If flies and other invertebrates have active sleep, “then maybe this is as good a clue as any that they are perhaps conscious”.

Animal minds

Other researchers are more sceptical about the available evidence on animal consciousness. “I don’t think there is basically any decisive evidence so far,” says Hakwan Lau, a neuroscientist at the Riken Center for Brain Science in Wako, Japan.

Lau acknowledges that there is a growing body of work showing sophisticated perceptual behaviour in animals, but he contends that that’s not necessarily indicative of consciousness. In humans, for example, there is both conscious and unconscious perception. The challenge now is to develop methods that can adequately distinguish between the two in non-humans.

Seth responds that, even in the absence of definitive answers, the declaration might still have a positive influence in shaping policies relating to animal ethics and welfare.

For van Swinderen, the time is right to consider whether most animals might be conscious. “We are experiencing an artificial-intelligence revolution where similar questions are being asked about machines. So it behoves us to ask if and how this adaptive quality of the brain might have evolved in nature.”

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New study offers hope for a rare and devastating eye cancer

After more than a decade studying a rare eye cancer that produces some of the hardest-to-fight tumors, researchers from University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have found a treatment that works on some patients and, more importantly, a tool that can predict when it is likely to succeed.

The work, published in Nature Communications, is being validated in a clinical trial involving at least 30 patients. It could pave the way for similar methods designed to overcome one of the enduring frustrations of cancer care.

Because tumors differ, not only between patients but even inside the same patient, a treatment that works on one mass may fail on another, even when both are of the same cancer type.

The researchers in Pittsburgh tackled this problem in uveal melanoma, an eye cancer that afflicts only 5 people in a million, but that half the time spreads to other parts of the body, often the liver. The median survival once uveal melanoma has spread has been less than seven months, according to a 2018 study in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.

“We chose this because it was one of the only cancers that 10 years ago when we started, there was nothing approved for it,” said Udai Kammula, who led the study and directs the Solid Tumor Cell Therapy Program at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center in Pittsburgh.

Scientists had long speculated that the reason uveal melanoma is so tough to fight is that something helps the tumor keep out T cells, a key part of the body’s immune system that develops in bone marrow. However, previous studies by Kammula and his colleagues showed that uveal melanoma tumors actually have T cells inside, and they are turned on.

The problem? The cells lie dormant instead of multiplying and reaching numbers large enough to overwhelm the tumor.

The culprit appears to reside somewhere inside the tumor’s ecosystem of cells, molecules and blood vessels, known formally as the tumor’s “microenvironment.” Kammula compares this ecosystem to the infrastructure that supports a city. Something in that infrastructure helps protect uveal melanoma tumors by preventing the critical T cells from multiplying.

“Ultimately, if we’re going to get rid of cancer, we have to get rid of this infrastructure,” Kammula said.

A tool for predicting success

He and his colleagues have had some success using a treatment known as adoptive cell therapy, which was developed in the 1980s by Steven Rosenberg at the National Institutes of Health.

The treatment involves removing the T cells from the tumor, where they have been unable to proliferate. Scientists then take those T cells and grow them outside the body in a lab dish. They treat patients with chemotherapy to kill off the last of their old immune systems. Finally, they reinfuse the lab-grown T cells into the patient’s blood stream and the cells, now in much greater numbers, go on to attack the tumor.

In this treatment, the T cells are often referred to as tumor-infiltrating leukocytes, or TILs.

Kammula said his team has found that tumors shrink partially or completely in about 35 percent of patients who receive the treatment. But they wanted to know why it doesn’t work in the majority of cases, and whether there might be some way to predict beforehand when it will succeed.

To find out, the researchers analyzed samples from 100 different uveal melanoma tumors that had spread to different parts of the body in 84 patients, seeking to examine all of the tumors’ genetic material.

“We basically put the tumor biopsy in a blender that had the stroma [supportive tissue], the blood vessels, the immune cells, the tumor cells. It had everything,” Kammula said, explaining that they then analyzed all of the tumor’s genetic material.

They found 2,394 genes that could have helped make the tumor susceptible to treatment, some of them genes that experts would regard as “the usual suspects” and others that were unexpected. Using this long list of genes, the scientists searched for characteristics that they shared.

The genes were predominantly involved in helping the body defend itself against viruses, bacteria and other foreign invaders by removing the invaders and helping tissue heal. Kammula and the study’s lead author, Shravan Leonard-Murali, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab, used the different activity levels of these genes to develop a clinical tool.

The tool, known as a biomarker, assigns a score to a uveal melanoma tumor based on the likelihood that it will respond well to the treatment ― removing T cells, growing them outside the body, then reinfusing them.

So far, Kammula said, the biomarker has been “extremely good,” in predicting when the treatment will be effective, though he added, “these findings will need confirmation in the current ongoing clinical trial.”

“I thought it was somewhat of a tour de force, honestly,” said Eric Tran, an associate member of the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute, a division of Providence Cancer Institute in Portland, Ore. Tran did not participate in the study.

He said that while it will be important to validate these results, “I was certainly encouraged by their studies. And from my perspective, I wonder if that sort of strategy can be deployed in other cancers.”

Ryan J. Sullivan, an oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate professor at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the study, called the team’s work “timely” and said “it is even more significant that they appear to have a [tool] that appears to predict which patients will benefit.”

The team at UPMC is already investigating possible wider application of both the treatment and the biomarker in a second clinical trial that involves a dozen different cancers.

Scientists welcome new rules on marijuana, but research will still face obstacles

As the Biden administration moves to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, scientists say the change will lift some of the restrictions on studying the drug.

But the change won't lift all restrictions, they say, neither will it decrease potential risks of the drug or help users better understand what those risks are.

Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I controlled substance , which is defined as a substance with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The Biden administration proposed this week to classify cannabis as a Schedule III controlled substance, a category that acknowledges it has some medical benefits.

The current Schedule I status imposes many regulations and restrictions on scientists' ability to study weed, even as state laws have made it increasingly available to the public.

"Cannabis as a Schedule I substance is associated with a number of very, very restrictive regulations," says neuroscientist Staci Gruber at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. "You have very stringent requirements, for example, for storage and security and reporting all of these things."

These requirements are set by the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Institutional Review Board and local authorities, she says. Scientists interested in studying the drug also have to register with the DEA and get a state and federal license to conduct research on the drug.

"It's a burdensome process and it is certainly a process that has prevented a number of young and rather invested researchers from pursuing [this kind of work]," says Gruber.

Reclassifying the drug as Schedule III puts it in the same category as ketamine and Tylenol with codeine. Substances in this category have accepted medical use in the United States, have less potential for abuse than in higher categories and abuse could lead to low to moderate levels of dependence on the drug.

This reclassification is "a very, very big paradigm shift," says Gruber. "I think that has a big trickle down effect in terms of the perspectives and the attitudes with regard to the actual sort of differences between studying Schedule III versus Schedule I substances."

Gruber welcomes the change, particularly for what it will mean for younger colleagues. "For researchers who are looking to get into the game, it will be easier. You don't have to have a Schedule I license," she says. "That's a big deal."

The rescheduling of cannabis will also "translate to more research on the benefits and risks of cannabis for the treatment of medical conditions," writes Dr. Andrew Monte in an email. He is associate director of Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety and an emergency physician and toxicologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

"This will also help improve the quality of the research since more researchers will be able to contribute," he adds.

But the change in classification won't significantly expand the number of sources for the drug for researchers, says Gruber. For 50 years, researchers were allowed to use cannabis from only one source – a facility at the University of Mississippi. Then, in 2021, the DEA started to add a few more companies to that list of approved sources for medical and scientific research.

While she expects more sources to be added in time, she and many of the researchers she knows have yet to benefit from the recently added sources, as most have limited products available.

"And what we haven't seen is any ability for researchers –cannabis researchers, clinical researchers – to have the ability to study products that our patients and our recreational consumers or adult consumers are actually using," she adds. "That remains impossible."

There is very little known information about what is in cannabis products on the market today. Some studies show that the level of THC, the main intoxicant in marijuana, being sold to consumers today is significantly higher than what was available decades ago, and high THC levels are known to pose more health risks.

And Monte cautions that the reclassification itself doesn't mean that cannabis has no health risks. Monte and his colleagues have been documenting some of those risks in Colorado by studying people who show up in the emergency room after consuming cannabis. Intoxication and cyclical vomiting ( cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome ) and alarming psychiatric symptoms such as psychosis are among the top problems bringing some marijuana users to the hospital.

Research on cannabis has been lacking surveillance of these kinds of impacts for decades, he says. And rescheduling the drug will not fill that "gaping hole in risk surveillance," he writes.

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Environmental Factor

Your online source for niehs news, data science event showcases new approaches to environmental health.

NC State symposium highlighted state-of-the-art methods and research activities using big data to advance environmental health studies.

By Ben Richardson

Researchers and big data specialists from across the country, including NIEHS grantees, gathered at North Carolina State University (NC State) April 5 for the Data Science and Environmental Health Science Research Symposium . Sponsored in part by two NIEHS-funded centers, the Center for Environmental and Health Effects of PFAS and the Center for Human Health and the Environment, the event was designed to foster collaborative discussion and present cutting-edge work in the field of data science.

During the daylong gathering, hosted by NC State Professor Seth Kullman, Ph.D. , attendees shared their research, participated in poster sessions, and networked with fellow scientists. Topics varied from addressing environmental health disparities through data mining to new methods in population genomics, which involves providing hazard and risk assessments without animal testing.

NIEHS Director Rick Woychik, Ph.D. , kicked off the day by outlining the institute’s strategic priorities: the exposome, precision environmental health, mechanistic toxicology/biology, climate change and health, environmental justice, and — particularly relevant to the symposium’s theme — data science.

“There’s a lot of data management that’s going to have to happen if environmental health science is to move forward systematically,” Woychik said. “But how do we develop infrastructure that is robust, avoids duplication, and allows us to test hypotheses? That’s the problem for us to solve.”

Meeting the big data challenge

In her keynote address, Francesca Dominici, Ph.D. , a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and NIEHS grantee, responded to this challenge. In particular, she described how her team was using innovative data science methods to change environmental policy.

Prior to February, the air quality limit set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for fine particulate matter (PM) measuring less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5) was 12 micrograms per cubic meter . However, Dominici believed that even these levels of pollution could be harmful.

To test this theory, her team compared mortality rates in different Zip codes across the U.S. to PM2.5 levels at each location. They found that every 10 micrograms increase in PM2.5 led to an 11% increase in mortality, even at levels well below the limit of 12 micrograms per cubic meter.

“Based on our research, the EPA raised its standards for fine particulate matter to 9 micrograms per cubic meter,” said Dominici. “This is a big deal, not only because it means we are going to be breathing cleaner air, but also because it showed the impact data science can have on policy.”

Fostering collaborative data science

Following the keynote, the symposium split up into targeted sessions on various subjects. Though each speaker focused on a different topic, many of them highlighted the same underlying theme: the importance of collaboration and data sharing between institutions.

For instance, NIEHS scientist Alison Motsinger-Reif, Ph.D. , called attention to her team’s efforts to provide access to data from the Personalized Environment and Genes Study (PEGS) , which includes health information on more than 9,000 participants.

“We talk a lot about data sharing in our lab, so we decided to create an interactive web tool that can be used to engage directly with PEGS,” she said. “You can download the data, visualize it, and manipulate it. We’re thrilled to have this resource and fully committed to growing it in the future.”

For some participants, making environmental health data more widely accessible was not only a way of helping to promote collaboration, but also a means of producing better science — especially when dealing with complicated phenomena such as gene-environment interactions.

Chirag Patel, Ph.D. , a professor of biomedical informatics at Harvard University, noted that data sharing is particularly crucial for large-scale research projects that seek to differentiate between possible causes of disease within a population.

“We’re at an incredible time in the field of environmental health sciences when we have all these different data sets coming together,” said Patel. “Because of this, we can integrate multidimensional data across a number of measures to try and figure out where the elusive risk is for highly complicated traits.”

(Ben Richardson, Ph.D., is a Presidential Management Fellow in the NIEHS Office of Communications and Public Liaison.)

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Healthy lifestyle may offset genetics by 60% and add five years to life, study says

Genetics alone can mean a 21% greater risk of early death, research finds, but people can improve their chances

A healthy lifestyle may offset the impact of genetics by more than 60% and add another five years to your life, according to the first study of its kind.

It is well established that some people are genetically predisposed to a shorter lifespan. It is also well known that lifestyle factors, specifically smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and physical activity, can have an impact on longevity.

However, until now there has been no investigation to understand the extent to which a healthy lifestyle may counterbalance genetics.

Findings from several long-term studies suggest a healthy lifestyle could offset effects of life-shortening genes by 62% and add as much as five years to your life. The results were published in the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine .

“This study elucidates the pivotal role of a healthy lifestyle in mitigating the impact of genetic factors on lifespan reduction,” the researchers concluded. “Public health policies for improving healthy lifestyles would serve as potent complements to conventional healthcare and mitigate the influence of genetic factors on human lifespan.”

The study involved 353,742 people from the UK Biobank and showed that those with a high genetic risk of a shorter life have a 21% increased risk of early death compared with those with a low genetic risk, regardless of their lifestyle.

Meanwhile, people with unhealthy lifestyles have a 78% increased chance of early death, regardless of their genetic risk, researchers from Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China and the University of Edinburgh found.

The study added that having an unhealthy lifestyle and shorter lifespan genes more than doubled the risk of early death compared with people with luckier genes and healthy lifestyles.

However, researchers found that people did appear to have a degree of control over what happened. The genetic risk of a shorter lifespan or premature death may be offset by a favourable lifestyle by about 62%, they found.

They wrote: “Participants with high genetic risk could prolong approximately 5.22 years of life expectancy at age 40 with a favourable lifestyle.”

The “optimal lifestyle combination” for a longer life was found to be “never smoking, regular physical activity, adequate sleep duration and healthy diet”.

The study followed people for 13 years on average, during which time 24,239 deaths occurred. People were grouped into three genetically determined lifespan categories including long (20.1%), intermediate (60.1%) and short (19.8%), and three lifestyle score categories including favourable (23.1%), intermediate (55.6%) and unfavourable (21.3%).

Researchers used polygenic risk scores to look at multiple genetic variants to arrive at a person’s overall genetic predisposition to a longer or shorter life. Other scores looked at whether people smoked, drank alcohol, took exercise, their body shape, healthy diet and sleep.

Matt Lambert, the health information and promotion manager at the World Cancer Research Fund, said: “This new research shows that, despite genetic factors, living a healthy lifestyle, including eating a balanced nutritious diet and keeping active, can help us live longer.”

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China launches Chang'e 6 lunar probe, revving up space race with U.S.

WENCHANG SPACE LAUNCH SITE, China — China launched an uncrewed lunar spacecraft Friday in a first-of-its-kind mission to bring back samples from the far side of the moon, the latest step in a rapidly advancing Chinese space program that is spurring competition with the United States and others. 

The Chang’e 6 lifted off on time at 5:27 p.m. local time (5:27 a.m. ET) from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China’s southern island province of Hainan.

The launch of the lunar probe, which NBC News was one of a handful of news organizations to attend, and the national excitement around it had transformed the normally sleepy fishing village of Longlou into a major tourist attraction, with crowds spilling from tour buses and heading to beaches and rooftops with the best views of the spaceport. One rooftop owner said he had sold out 200 seats at 200 yuan (about $28) each.

Ahead of the launch there was a festival-like atmosphere on the beach, where vendors offered space paraphernalia and groups of children sold Chinese flags for 3 yuan (about 40 cents) each. Families sprawled on picnic blankets playing cards, while others strung up hammocks between palm trees so they could wait in the limited shade.

Yiuwah Ng, a 28-year-old real estate office worker from the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, traveled six hours by car and another three hours by ferry to stake out the best spot along the shore, where he had been camping for three days with friends and his dog. 

“I want to witness this historic moment,” he said of the launch, his fourth. “It’s an important first step for China’s lunar exploration.”

Max Zhang, a self-described “rocket chaser” from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, has been photographing launches at Wenchang from the beach since 2011. 

“I’m addicted to the shock of seeing the launches, especially the sound of the rocket flame,” he said. “It shakes my heart.”

‘ A force to be reckoned with’

If successful, the Chang’e mission will be a crucial step in realizing the country’s goals of landing Chinese astronauts on the moon by 2030 and eventually building a base on the lunar surface.

The outcome of the mission will also have implications far beyond China’s borders. A slew of spacefaring nations — including Russia, India, Japan and the U.S. — also have their sights set on the moon, creating what some experts have likened to a new kind of space race.

“China is trying to prove that it’s a force to be reckoned with, and so it’s always that China is competing against everyone in space,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

A successful Chang’e 6 mission would demonstrate how sophisticated China’s lunar exploration program has become in a relatively short time.

“Twenty-five years ago, they had very rudimentary space capabilities,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank based in Washington. “Going from that to where they are today — I think they’ve clearly exceeded Russia, and their space capabilities are really only second to the United States.”

China achieved its first moon landing in 2013 with the Chang’e 3 mission, which set a lander and rover on the lunar surface to study the moon’s terrain. Before that, only the U.S. and the former Soviet Union had successfully landed spacecraft on the moon.

In 2019, China notched another historic milestone with its Chang’e 4 flight, becoming the first country to land a probe on the far side of the moon , the part that permanently faces away from Earth.

The following year, in 2020, China returned to the moon’s near side, which always faces Earth, landing the Chang’e 5 spacecraft on a volcanic plain known as Oceanus Procellarum. The probe retrieved samples there and brought them back to Earth, representing a big technological leap forward. 

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has invited scientists from the U.S., Europe and Asia to apply to borrow the lunar samples for their own research, holding a pitch meeting last week in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Researchers funded by NASA received rare approval from Congress to submit proposals, raising the possibility of high-level U.S.-China space cooperation that is otherwise prohibited by U.S. law.

This time, the Chang’e 6 spacecraft is aiming to land and retrieve samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin, an ancient and sprawling impact crater on the far side of the moon.

Conducting a sample return mission from the side of the moon that always faces away from Earth is challenging because mission controllers on the ground have no way of directly contacting a spacecraft in that region. Instead, signals need to be relayed through a satellite now orbiting the moon that China launched from the same site in Hainan last month.

While difficult, the effort could have enormous payoffs. Studies suggest that the moon’s near side was more volcanically active than the far side, which means all of the lunar samples obtained thus far may be telling only part of the story of the moon’s origin and evolution.

Collecting lunar samples from different geological eras and regions “is of great value and significant for all mankind to have a more comprehensive understanding of the moon and even the origin of the solar system,” Ge Ping, a mission leader from CNSA’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, told reporters in Hainan on Thursday.

Beyond its scientific objectives, the Chang’e 6 mission carries with it geopolitical considerations. The flight is a precursor to a pair of Chinese robotic missions to the moon’s south pole to scout locations to build a moon base. Last year, the Chinese and Russian space agencies agreed to jointly build a research station on the lunar surface.

NASA and its commercial partners also aim to establish a permanent presence at the lunar south pole, though the agency’s Artemis moon missions have faced numerous delays and budget overruns . The current timeline has American astronauts returning to the lunar surface in 2026 at the earliest.

With China and Russia forming a rival coalition, there is some pressure for the U.S. to keep its foot on the accelerator, Harrison said.

“It does matter who gets there first, and it matters how you get there and what kind of coalition you’re bringing with you,” he said.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has on multiple occasions warned that the U.S. runs the risk of falling behind China’s lunar ambitions. In an interview this week with Yahoo Finance , Nelson outlined what’s at stake in the new space race.

“I think it’s not beyond the pale that China would suddenly say, ‘We are here. You stay out,’” he said.

Asked Thursday about international competition in space, Ge said, “All countries in the world should explore, develop and use outer space peacefully.” 

“There is no need to worry too much,” he added. “Space programs are for all humans.”

As more countries around the world build up space capabilities, NASA has pushed for more global cooperation, establishing the Artemis Accords in 2020 to promote peaceful, responsible and sustainable practices. U.S. law prevents China from joining the 39 other nations that have signed the accords, which both China and Russia have criticized as a tool to promote U.S. dominance in space.

Many Western space policy experts have in turn raised concerns about China’s and Russia’s intentions. The full scope of China’s ambitions in space is not known, for instance, because its space agency does not operate with the same level of transparency as NASA. The country’s space program is also more closely tied to the military than in the U.S.

“We cannot ever say that China’s investment in civilian space technologies are only civilian and not to be used for military purposes,” said Namrata Goswami, a professor in the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University and co-author of the 2020 book “Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space.”

While it may feel as if China’s spaceflight objectives have accelerated in recent years, they are part of a decadeslong strategy, Goswami said.

“Many of the leaders of China’s space program announced these goals and timelines 20 years ago,” she said. “What is astounding to me is that they are achieving almost all their milestones on time, and for them, that has a strategic advantage in the global narrative of who’s doing it better.”

As much as the moon and its resources can provoke competition among nations, space exploration can also be unifying, Swope said.

“We are literally a speck in the universe, and when we go to the moon or explore space, we as humankind have that shared human trait where we want to understand the unknown and we want to discover,” he said. “That does transcend politics.”

Janis Mackey Frayer reported from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China, and Denise Chow reported from New York.

Janis Mackey Frayer is a Beijing-based correspondent for NBC News.

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.