Award recipient says women in medicine must fight for ‘equality, salary, justice’
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Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, has spent her career investigating dendritic cells and identifying novel cancer-specific antigens with the goal of developing an off-the-shelf vaccine for treatment, work that has recently garnered recognition.
Bhardwaj was this year’s winner of the Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research award from the American Association of Indian Scientists in Cancer Research. Each year, the association presents its award to an outstanding scientist in recognition of significant contributions to cancer research that have had a lasting impact and demonstrate a lifetime commitment to achieving progress against cancer.
“It was a tremendous honor,” Bhardwaj, who currently serves as the director of immunotherapy, medical director of the vaccine and cell therapy laboratory and co-director of the cancer immunology program at The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai, as well as the Ward-Coleman chair in cancer research at Icahn School of Medicine, told Healio. “When I look at who has received this award in prior years, it's pretty amazing. I'm deeply honored and grateful to the committee and the society for this recognition.”
Valuable research
Bhardwaj originally started out as a rheumatologist who was fascinated with immunology. As a post-doctoral fellow, she worked in the lab of Ralph M. Steinman, MD, the Rockefeller University scientist who won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the dendritic cell.
“I was fortunate to be trained in his lab to begin investigations on human dendritic cells, which were not well studied at the time,” she told Healio. “I had an opportunity to be part of the first wave of investigation in human dendritic cell biology, and that led to trying to understand how these cells play a role in jumpstarting the immune system in not just autoimmunity, but in viral immunity, and eventually cancer.”
Through Steinman’s lab, Bhardwaj transitioned to oncology and has made major discoveries related to dendritic cells with her own team.
“We were one of the groups that discovered plasmacytoid dendritic cells,” she said. “We also learned how to grow dendritic cells in the lab and to apply them as cellular adjuvants for cancer vaccination.”
Bhardwaj added that her team is focused on understanding how the immune system recognizes cancer-associated or cancer-specific antigens.
“In the past few years we developed what we call a neoantigen discovery pipeline, where we are trying to identify novel antigens from cancer patients’ tumors that can be used and formulated for vaccines,” she said. “We've identified ways and means to induce immunity against patient-specific neoantigens (a patient-specific repertoire of novel antigens), but we've also played an instrumental role in identifying antigenic epitopes from neoantigens that are shared amongst patients so that we can eventually create an off-the-shelf vaccine for patients with certain types of tumors, such as patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms or microsatellite instability.”
‘Extraordinary mentors,’ stepping up for equality
When asked about how she got to where she is today as an oncologist, Bhardwaj emphasized the positive impact her mentors had on her career.
In addition to Steinman, Steven Burakoff, MDLloyd J. Old, MD; and Arnold J. Levine, PhD, were all “extraordinary mentors,” Bhardwaj said, adding that she believes they serve as excellent examples of what makes a good mentor.
“They really care about you as a person and your career path; you as a person come first,” she said. “I believe the unconditional support, kindness, selflessness, and fact that they were always available no matter what to help me find positions or give me advice on negotiating are qualities of a good mentor.”
Even though Bhardwaj detailed her great set of mentors and how she was fortunate in her career path, she also acknowledged that she still faced challenges as a woman in the field.
“The biggest challenges have been dealing with difficult personalities and having to advocate for myself as a woman to ensure equality, which was not readily apparent many years ago,” she said. “Having to fight for equality, salary and sometimes justice in scientific arguments were major challenges.
“I'm very proud for having spoken up for myself and for my team when I had to,” she added. “Those are sometimes hard fights, and you have to step up when things are not equal. Even if advocating for yourself costs you, you need to do it in order to be able to go back, look in the mirror and say I did what I thought was the right thing to do.”
Advice
As a part of the wave in oncology that incorporated new therapeutic modalities, Bhardwaj is excitedly looking forward to what the new generation of oncologists will unveil.
“For younger people, it's a really exciting time to be in the field,” she said. “I wish I was 20 years younger so that I could see what's going to happen in the next 20 years.
“I urge young investigators and students, women especially, to remember that the world is open in this area,” she added.
With such a successful career and recent receipt of her lifetime achievement award, Bhardwaj offered up some advice for young female oncologists.
“You need to find people who will give you unconditional support,” she said. “Surround yourself with a team of people who will support you. When you go and let’s say work in a lab, you need to be sure that the lab and mentor is going to give you that unconditional support and guide you through your career no matter what stage you're at. That network is very important, and it doesn't have to be made up of just women; it can be women and men. In my case, my mentors were all men, and they were terrific.”
Bhardwaj concluded, “They need to stand up, advocate for themselves, find supportive networks and teams in the departments or divisions they're in and reach out to people as well.”
Reference:
- Mount Sinai researcher receives prestigious award from the American Association of Indian Scientists in Cancer Research. https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2022/mount-sinai-researcher-receives-prestigious-award-from-the-american-association-of-indian-scientists-in-cancer-research. Published June 21, 2022. Accessed Aug. 9, 2022.
For more information:
Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, can be reached at nina.bhardwaj@mssm.edu.
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