Re-entry fellowsThe Wellcome Trust has revised and relaunched its re-entry scheme giving scientists the chance to get back into research |
After a 12-year break to bring up three children, Helen Arthur wasn’t sure she would be able to pick up her career again. “It’s emotionally and physically demanding looking after children, but not intellectually demanding, so you get rusty,” she says. “Also new technologies develop so rapidly that you’re looking at a very different playing field.”
In 1996, when her youngest child went to school, an opportunity came for her to work as a postdoc with Professor John Burn at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. There, Dr Arthur developed a mouse model of a bleeding disorder, hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) and began work on her Re-entry Fellowship proposal. In 1998, she was awarded a four-year Re-entry Fellowship, which enabled her to set up her own laboratory at Newcastle.
The re-entry scheme was launched in 1994 to give talented scientists the opportunity to re-embark on a scientific career after a break. Importantly, for researchers wishing to balance work and home life, the award allows them to work part-time on a pro-rata basis.
“If you get a four-year award, but only want to work two-and-a-half days a week, your award will last eight years, so you still get the same amount of funding and time,” explains Dr Anne Taylor, a Wellcome programme manager.The scheme also covers the cost of retraining, something that Dr Arthur found particularly valuable. “I was starting from scratch working in a completely new field.
“I had to learn about mouse genetics, blood development, cloning and design. On top of that, there had been so many major advances in scientific technology while I was otherwise occupied with three young children.”
The Fellowship proved to be an important stepping stone. After, Dr Arthur was awarded a research lectureship at the Institute of Human Genetics at Newcastle.
She now has her own group of five people, and is continuing her research into blood diseases and blood-vessel growth and repair.
Interestingly, one member of her team is another previous holder of a Re-entry Fellowship, Dr Jill Borthwyck. “We met at a Wellcome lunch for Re-entry Fellows and kept in touch afterwards. Dr Borthwyck was also studying blood vessels using laser micro-dissection, and when a position came up in my laboratory a couple of years later, I asked her to join us,” says Dr Arthur.
The team’s research is centred on endoglin – a receptor for a growth factor called TGF-beta – in vascular development and disease, specifically HHT.
Dr Arthur has gone on to establish an EU collaboration to coordinate research on TGF-beta signalling and angiogenesis, as well as several collaborations across Newcastle.
“I’ve also become involved in local clinical collaborations examining angiogenesis in colon tumours. Preliminary data suggest we may have an important contribution to make in future diagnosis and treatment,” she says.
How has she found the return to research? “It wasn’t easy, I was changing fields and starting again from scratch. Also, many of my peers before I gave up work, who didn’t take a career break, are now professors, so there’s a lot of catching up to do.
“On the other hand, I had a huge amount of support from the people here. No one ever turned down a request for help. And the Re-entry Fellowship meant I could enjoy my time with my children and still re-establish myself on a productive career path in an important area of vascular research, with potential major medical applications.”