Breast oncologist, researcher forges uncommon career path
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As a physician-scientist and medical oncologist, Hanna Y. Irie, MD, PhD, has forged an uncommon path in oncology that does not fit into typical career tracks at most academic cancer centers.
“It is challenging but I find it worthwhile and satisfying,” Irie, breast medical oncologist at Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai Hospital and associate professor in the department of medicine, hematology and medical oncology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said during an interview with Healio. “There are only 24 hours in a day, and so I need to be organized and focused on my research questions and on my patients, and I need to be present in the moment so that I can devote attention to research questions or patient care at hand.”
Irie spoke with Healio about her career path, how she balances being a physician-scientist and medical oncologist, the rewarding aspects she sees from both and advice for other women in the field.
Healio: What is a typical day like for you in your career?
Irie: My efforts are split between the clinic and the laboratory. I run an active research lab where we investigate and validate novel therapeutic targets that hopefully lead to early-phase clinical trials. In any given week, there may be different things that I engage in but I split my time between the clinic and the research lab, with most of my time spent running the research lab program. I spend 1 day per week seeing patients at the Dubin Breast Center but, of course, I am always available for my patients because there truly is no endpoint to oncological care. When patients need us, we are there.
Healio: How do you balance the two areas?
Irie: It is a constant struggle, but it is an inspiring struggle. My patients are the reason why I focus on certain research questions in the lab, and they are the constant motivation for why I want to do better at finding new drug targets and new compounds that, hopefully, lead to better ways to treat higher risk breast cancers. Chemotherapy has been very effective, but we need more therapies because not everyone is cured with our current standards of care. I am inspired by my patients so that the difficulties and challenges of balancing research in the laboratory with patient care really is not in any way frustrating or overwhelming but, rather, exhilarating on many levels. Organization, focus and staying interested and passionate about the work helps me to balance my career during any given week.
Healio: What are some of the challenges that you have encountered and how have you overcome those challenges?
Irie: Being a physician-scientist, at the border between basic research in the lab and being a clinician in the clinic, is often two jobs in one. Being a physician-scientist allows me to contribute to ‘pushing the envelope’ to find new therapies. Surprisingly, because of time constraints and challenges in excelling in both clinical care and research, when I was a fellow, I did not see many role models doing exactly what I envisioned in terms of a physician-scientist career. It was challenging to find mentors who did exactly what I wanted to accomplish. I was able to get around that by interacting with as many mentors as possible, male and female, who were excelling in the aspects of the career that I was hoping to combine. I had the privilege of working with a wonderful female laboratory research scientist, Joan Brugge, PhD, researcher at Harvard Medical School, who was inspiring in asking the right patient-relevant questions and excelling in critical scientific thinking to enable me to do what I currently do as a research scientist. She was inspiring on many different levels. She also forged different career paths in industry as well as academia and followed her passion for science, regardless of the setting.
I also had wonderful clinical mentors, both male and female, in clinical care and research. Expanding the network of clinical and research-based mentors helped me to see the broader landscape and understand the challenges that they experience from different angles, and I incorporated their perspectives as I forged my own combined career in oncology. The depth and breadth of a lot of mentors helped me understand that I could achieve a career that I wanted to achieve for myself.
Healio: What are the different rewarding aspects you get from both?
Irie: As a medical oncologist, caring for patients is the utmost privilege that a human being can be awarded. Patients are trusting us with care at a time that they are most vulnerable. They also inspire the research. Thankfully, many patients do well with our current standard-of-care therapies. However, the patients who have more of a difficult time with our current therapies, because they are not fully effective or cause side effects, really challenge me to identify therapies that are more effective and less toxic, so that more patients can achieve life-long remission of their breast cancer.
I tailored my research program in the laboratory to have a preclinical and translational focus, to maximize our understanding of the biology behind the cancer and work toward understanding what makes certain breast cancers not as responsive to our standard therapies so that we can do better.
Healio: What advice would you offer to other women in the field?
Irie: The strong message that I received during my career from different mentors and that I hope other women take away is that you need to follow your passion. There will be challenges but reach out to as many people who you respect and who excel in the various aspects of the career that you are thinking about, because mentors are there for you. Learning from what their challenges have been and learning how they navigate through those challenges truly strengthens your ability to be resilient and adaptable. Find ways to forge a career that satisfies you. Sometimes there are no exact role models, but there are people who can help you forge the career that you want, as long as you remain passionate and are doing what you are excited about.
For more information:
Hanna Y. Irie, MD, PhD, can be reached at hanna.irie@mssm.edu.
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