Women in Research #LINO24: Raquel López-Ríos de Castro

Raquel from Spain is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (NY) and King’s College London.

She works on developing structure-based and physics-informed machine learning models to engineer inhibitors with a desirable polypharmacology against kinases altered in specific diseases, such as cancer.

Raquel participated in the 73^rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.

Enjoy the interview with Raquel and get inspired:

What inspired you to pursue a career in science / in your discipline?

Growing up, I thought that I would like to study medicine for a very long time. I found the fact that there is still so much we do not understand about ourselves fascinating. How can we feel and see ourselves and still have so many unknowns about the human body?

However, coming up to my last years of high school, I really enjoyed math and physics, so I did not want to give them up. Then, at a last-minute decision, I decided to study theoretical physics.

Overall, I enjoyed my course very much. In 3^rd year, we had a module called “Biophysics”. I did not know what to expect from it, but I decided to take it since I was still very interested in biology and medicine. Here, I learned that you can use highly complex math and physics models to understand many biological processes within the human body. Therefore, this was it for me! I fell in love with biophysics since it is a way of combining physics and the human body! I now work on machine learning drug design, where I can use physics and machine learning models to understand how cancer drugs work from a molecular perspective and improve them to achieve better cancer treatments. I am very happy I have been able to combine my two passions since I was very young: physics and medicine.

Who are your role models?

During my school years, all my teachers inspired me quite a lot. Some of the ones I still think of today are Bea, Teresa Alba, Goyo, Mariano, Lys, Javier, Itziar, Paloma (from my school Sagrado Corazón), Sergio, David and Pedro (from my High School I.E.S San Mateo). They were all great teachers who transmitted their passion for their subject to me. Thanks to them, I really enjoy learning, which I believe is the main reason why I love research.

I also look up with great admiration to Prof. Chris Lorenz, my PhD advisor, since he was able to create one of the best lab environments I have ever seen (completely female-dominated), making research interesting and fun. I want to be an academic like he is.

Furthermore, I also look up to female scientists such as Emmy Noether, Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, Gladys West, and Vera Rubin. Most of them encountered many issues and a massive lack of recognition during their career just because they were women. I always try to revindicate them in every outreach activity I do.

How did you get to where you are in your career path?

I was very fortunate to receive several scholarships based on merit to pursue summer research projects during my undergraduate degree. Therefore, I was exposed to science research since my second year of university. This made me realize that this is what I would like to dedicate my life to. Furthermore, for my PhD, I was part of the LiDO D.T.P., funded by BBSRC, which supported me and my research. I believe these types of doctoral training centers are a great way for young scientists to pursue their PhD and, at the same time, build a strong network.

Furthermore, I have been very lucky to have incredible mentors during my university and PhD years. First of all, my undergraduate thesis supervisor, Mark Green, really supported me during my project and encouraged me to pursue a career in science. Then, during my PhD, I was very lucky to have two great supervisors: Prof. Martin Ulmschneider and Prof. Chris Lorenz. They were incredibly supportive, always allowed me to pursue every new project I was interested in (inside and outside of my PhD), and provided me with the resources to achieve it. I feel very lucky because, so far in my academic career, I have never had anyone who has tried to stop any of my ideas, so I have been able to explore as many areas and tools as I have wanted. Also, now I just started a new research position as a postdoctoral researcher, and I am still feeling very supported by both my supervisors, Prof. John Chodera and Prof. Andrea Volkamer.

Finally, I am very lucky that my parents have supported me in pursuing a career in science despite them not being very familiar with science or academia. Their trust and support have been invaluable to me. Thanks to them, I felt from a very young age that I could achieve anything I wanted if I worked for it.

What is the coolest project you have worked on and why?

It is hard to choose only one project, but I really enjoyed one of my latest publications. This project was titled: “Therapeutic Peptides Are Preferentially Solubilized in Specific Microenvironments within P.E.G.–PLGA Polymer Nanoparticles.” In this project, I used molecular simulations to study how an experimentally validated nanoparticle (N.P., a polymer-based drug delivery vehicle) encapsulated its cancer therapeutic cargo.

The motivation behind this work is that actually predicting how and where N.P.s store their therapeutic cargo is not well understood. This makes the tuning of the storage position within an N.P. quite challenging.

In this project, I applied molecular modeling and machine learning techniques to understand how a specific N.P. encapsulated its cargo. I found that the polymers within the N.P. take very specific conformations (instead of adopting just random or chaotic conformations), and some of these conformations create a microenvironment that can encapsulate drugs. Interestingly, these conformations are related to the topology (shape) of the individual polymers. In a nutshell, this work shows that if you want an N.P. that stores its cargo very deep into the core (so that it is more protected, for example), you need to use polymers of a specific shape (like diblock) to achieve this. Therefore, this is a direct link between the N.P. building block characteristics and the overall N.P. cargo storage characteristics!
I really enjoyed this project, not only because it showed a new parameter to take into account for the rational design of N.P.s but also because this is the project I feel the most ownership of. I developed this project during the last two years of my PhD when I had much more expertise and was able to design everything about it from the beginning to the end. When this paper got accepted, it really made me feel like I could pursue a career in academia.

What’s a time you felt immense pride in yourself / your work?

I feel very proud of the previous project I talked about: “Therapeutic Peptides Are Preferentially Solubilized in Specific Microenvironments within P.E.G.–PLGA Polymer Nanoparticles.” However, I must admit that something that makes me feel happy about being a scientist are outreach activities. I go to schools to talk about interdisciplinary sciences or biophysics, which are concepts that are new to most students. It is very fulfilling to see the school students being very engaged in the talk and answering all the questions I ask them along the way. Especially because at the end of the talk, all the students say they want to become biophysicists! I know that probably not all of them will be scientists. Still, it is great the feeling of maybe having planted a small seed in all those young people who maybe did not consider the idea of being a scientist or had certain stereotypes associated with it, that now believe they can also pursue a career in science if they want to.

What is a “day in the life” of you like?

As a computational scientist I mostly work from my office. But the first thing I do every day is to exercise, either going for a run, spinning, or doing weight lifting. I found during my PhD that sports positively impact my mental health, so I really prioritize them in my life!

Then I go to my office in Charité (Berlin) and work from there. I am currently in a very interdisciplinary team, and I am part of two labs based in Germany and one in the U.S. So, my day is full of discussions with people from all over the world and from different disciplines, which really enriches my vision of science and my projects. I usually travel quite a bit between my labs, so I often go to the U.S. and the other lab in Germany (Saarland University).

In the evenings, I usually go to German classes, since I recently moved to Germany!

What are you seeking to accomplish in your career?

I would love to stay in academia and have my own lab. The reason I want to stay in academia is because I love researching, and I want to research on what I believe is interesting and can impact the world. I also love mentoring and teaching, which academia allows you to do (compared to industry). I would love to keep passing on the knowledge to the younger generations while using physics to do research on human-related diseases.

What do you like to do when you’re not doing research?

I am a big sportsperson. I am a long-distance runner (I recently ran my first marathon), and I also love biking, weight lifting, and pole fitness. Furthermore, I really enjoy participating in outreach activities, such as school talks or organizing university events where students can talk about their experiences in academia.

What advice do you have for other women interested in science / in your discipline?

I would advise you to try to look for mentors who are women. They do not necessarily need to be much more advanced in your career than you. For example, if you are a first-year undergrad, you can try talking to female students in their third year. Physics is heavily male-dominated, and it can get very isolating. That is why building a community of women in physics is very important. They will be able to understand your daily struggles of being in a male-dominated field and provide advice in any situations you may encounter. For example, I now feel very lucky that my PI is a woman (which is the first time this has happened to me!) I am very happy I can discuss any concerns with her (Andrea Volkamer). Also, the fact that she has made it in academia without having to sacrifice her personal life is a great source of inspiration for me!

In your opinion, what will be the next great breakthrough in science / in your discipline?

I think we are very close to seeing a big revolution of A.I. in computational biophysics. For example, we have just seen the release of Alphafold 3.

I believe machine learning (ML) molecular simulations will probably be a big breakthrough. This would allow us to compute molecular simulations much faster (in some cases, it can take months with current methods) and in a very accurate fashion. I just hope all of these advances are open-source and not only industry-led so that the greater scientific community can benefit from them! I really believe open science should be the future!

What should be done to increase the number of female scientists and professors?

I think in order to increase female scientists and professors we need changes in our education system first. Schools need to talk about female scientists and scientists from minority backgrounds to students from a young age to try to reduce their biases. Outreach activities led by women scientists would also help to allow kids to see that women can also be scientists!

Furthermore, I think open conversations about being an academic and bearing children would be very useful since many women feel they have to choose between having a family and being an academic. Of course, this should be coupled with social policies like even maternity and paternity leave.