The Strand: What year are you and what are your majors?
Jackson Leslie: I’m in my fourth year. I specialize in Neuroscience, and I do a major in Fundamental Genetics.
What is your research?
Right now, I am doing research in Dr. McLaurin’s lab at Sunnybrook. My project looks at combinatorial therapies for Alzheimer’s disease—we work with Alzheimer’s rats, and we’re looking at combined therapies to see if we see amelioration of beta amyloid. We’re also looking at the tau protein and then we look at like different hallmarks. How my project started was that the lab previously looked at a therapy that targets plaques and found that they were able to reduce plaque load, but there still weren’t any long-term cognitive improvements. The theory is that if we combine that treatment with a treatment that targets tau will be targeting the two primary hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease—hopefully we can see some synergistic effect in the rats.
Why is this important thing to research and how can this information be used in the future?
Specifically with my project, there’s no cure for Alzheimer’s. Right? So, that’s there are treatments that have gone to clinical trials, and that show improvements in animal models, but don’t always show the same level when they reach clinical trials. I think it’s important to try to put a lot of effort or all of our efforts into finding a cure; if there are ways that we can confidently prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
How did you get this position?
As part of my specialist program, I needed to take a research course. Around March and April, I started reaching out to potential supervisors on some of the work that they’ve been doing. I basically went through the faculty directory, found some potential PI’s [principal investigator], read a few of their papers, saw which ones I liked the most, and then sent them some emails to see if they’d be interested in taking me on over the summer for the research course. Then I heard back from my current PI, so I worked on a project with her over the summer. We continued on into the academic year on another research project, which is just continuing the same thing, but expanding the scope. Initially, I was looking at beta amyloid, tau, and then neurons, and then right now I’m looking at astrocytes and microglia just to see how that’s impacted the data that we’ve received from over the summer.
What advice do you have for students looking to do research?
I think my biggest thing would be you’ll get there when you get there. I think this specifically in life science research, there tends to be—especially if you want to go into grad school, or if you’re on that pre-med route— people who force this idea that you need to get research done in your first year otherwise you have no chance of getting in like afterwards. I didn’t get it until the summer before my fourth year which a lot of people would consider late and I think I had a really great experience. I think some people start earlier and don’t really have those same experiences. I think my tip would be join a lab that you really enjoy and also understand that you will get there when the time’s right. I guess if I could talk to first year me, I would like to tell myself not to pressure too much about getting a research position because definitely in the beginning, I was overwhelmed with a lot of it. I felt like ‘I need to get something, I need to get something.’ But I’ve had a really great experience and I think other people will too if they just show that.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
