Dr Alena Pance has had an incredible career traversing neuroscience, cancer, and tropical parasite research. She has always had a focus on transcriptional regulation and it was incredible hearing about how she adapted to these very different fields. Alena was very honest in this interview about her two very different experiences of having children in research. It was very interesting to hear how these fed into policy changes that women on the Wellcome Genome Campus were driving and, although there is still work to be done, how much better these women made it for the parents coming after them.
Some Resources!
Alenas Sanger Page: https://www.sanger.ac.uk/person/pance-alena/
Alenas LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alena-pance-a4930620/
Alenas ResearchGate profile https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alena-Pance
Pance, A. The Stem Cell Revolution Revealing Protozoan Parasites’ Secrets and Paving the Way towards Vaccine Development. Vaccines 9, 105 (2021).
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/2/105/htm
Pance, A. Diversify and Conquer: The Vaccine Escapism of Plasmodium falciparum. Microorganisms 8, 1748 (2020).
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/8/11/1748/htm
And one of her landmark research papers:
Bentrari, F., Chantôme, A., Knights, A., Jeannin, J.-F. & Pance, A. Oct-2 forms a complex with Oct-1 on the iNOS promoter and represses transcription by interfering with recruitment of RNA PolII by Oct-1. Nucleic Acids Res. 43, 9757–9765 (2015).
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0158238 https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/43/20/9757/1400090
She’s also been part of a great series called as part of public engagement called Talking Cells taking you through the life of a cell. I’ve linked below “The Life of a Cell”, “The Odd Neighbor Best”, and “A Tumultuous Affair”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIHqaCm7xZo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SI0hisPQgw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZKsQ_vDx0I
Music: 'Lion' by Sapajou
Free download: bit.ly/3q6w8mW