A Universe Waiting to be Discovered

A Conversation with Dr. Milica Radišić, Scientist and Professor at the University of Toronto

Dr. Milica Radišić is an important name in the realm of science, very respected and awarded for her contributions to the field of bioengineering. Born in Serbia and educated in Serbia, Canada, and the US, Dr. Radišić nurtures both her personal and professional life with equal success.

She lives in Toronto, where she has raised three children and works as a full-time professor at the University of Toronto. She is a member of the most significant professional associations and organizations: The Royal Society of Canada, The Canadian Academy of Engineering, and The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Dr. Radišić is the recipient of numerous awards for her scientific achievements, including The Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering Hatch Innovation Award, The NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship, The Ontario Professional Engineers Young Engineer Award, and The Engineers Canada Young Engineer Achievement Award.

Tissue engineering is a new field that is a hope for millions of patients who suffer from heart disease. Dr. Radišić’s research program encompasses many projects, all which fall under the category of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, and which are focused on finding mechanisms and strategic approaches to healing myocardial infarctions through the development of new biomaterials.

We spoke with Dr. Radišić during a quick break between her classes, travels, and family obligations.

SAN: What does a workday look like for a scientist and university professor?

No two days are the same, which has good and bad sides. Every day, I have the chance to meet and speak to exceptional people with brilliant minds. Every day is filled with many meetings where we talk about experiments, the results gathered by students, what to do next, or how we will design a study in a way that makes the most sense. That is the good side. However, unfortunately, the least amount of time is left over for that which is most valued in our field—writing scientific articles. That time has to be found somehow, by taking away from other obligations such as writing grant proposals, teaching, or meetings of an administrative nature.

SAN: You were born and raised in Serbia, more specifically in Bačka Palanka and Novi Sad. After finishing university, you moved to Canada where you did your postgraduate studies at McMaster University in Hamilton. What kind of impression did Canada make on you, and how did this new society accept you?

I did my undergraduate degree at McMaster in chemical engineering. Those university days were wonderful and I remember them fondly, like everyone else. Of course, I had to adapt a lot to my new surroundings, but my studies required me to be very focused, which also helped during that period. It was a period when I established some friendships that have lasted even to this day.

SAN: I assume that the jump from Hamilton to Boston was all the simpler and easier, if nothing else because of the language. What made you go to Boston to do a doctorate?

When I think about it, I see that it was more or less the same thing, going from Serbia to Hamilton as it was going from Hamilton to Boston. In any case, one has to get used to one’s new surroundings, find an apartment, make new friends… I had to choose where to do my doctorate, since I was accepted to Princeton, Caltech, University of Minnesota and a few other universities that had amazing programs in fields that interested me. I picked Boston because of MIT, which is truly fantastic and which has the most professors in the field of bioengineering most interesting to me.

SAN: During your studies in Boston, you got married and had your first two children, Anastasija and Teodora. You later had a son in Toronto. Studying, scientific work, and having a family all entered your life parallelly. What was the hardest part of that time period, and what was the challenge that motivated you not to give up on either?

The most difficult thing about that time, which remains the most difficult thing today, is the lack of help with raising small children, since I did not have close family either in Boston or Toronto. Everything else was fantastic. There is no greater treasure than children. People who have small children have to be incredibly efficient both at work and at home. When that happens, all of a sudden, you have time for everything! I see that not only with myself, but with other people who have children and are growing their careers at the same time. One of my students, who is currently doing her doctorate in my lab and has just had her third child, has managed to achieve more during her doctoral studies than other students without obligations besides their studies. When one looks back at one’s professional development, it looks like it is never a good time to have children, since work always pulls you in, no matter the stage in your career. However, if you turn that fact around, that also means that any time is as good as any other to have children.

SAN: Where do you get the energy and persistence that help you be at the top of your profession in this far-off continent?

I think I get my energy and persistence from the profession itself and because of the people I am surrounded by. As a professor at a university such as U of T, I am surrounded by wonderful, exceptional young people. The time they spend with me, in my lab or during their undergraduate studies, is very important in their lives, which will more or less formulate their entire lives from that point onward. Who would not invest their maximum effort in that situation? A professor is in a position where he/she can do a lot for them and their start in life. It is a great satisfaction when you see that people from your lab have succeeded, that they have found good jobs, published their works, started a family… For me, in that professional part of my life, there is no greater reward than the success of my students.

When I started this job 13 years ago, the head of our department, Doug Reeve, told us younger professors, “This is a unique job. You are surrounded by brilliant young people who are dedicated to their own self-improvement. That is a rare position to be in.” And he has absolutely right.

SAN: When did you opt for science, and did anyone influence you in that respect?

I cannot remember whether anyone directly influenced me in that, but I do remember that I was interested in the beauty and mystery of natural phenomena from a young age. A few days ago, I received an award from the YWCA Toronto, and to that same question, I answered, “When I was little, I was fascinated by the night sky and the many stars in it. I imagined that when I grew up, I would be an astronaut. But it so happened that a microscope got to my hands first, which enabled me to see a different but equally enchanting universe that was waiting to be discovered. The only difference is that that universe was unbelievably small. To this day, that same childhood curiosity drives my thrill every time I look into a microscope and see how we are turning stem cells into real and functioning heart tissue. We should support the efforts of every little girl who wishes to discover the beauty and mystery of the world of nature.”

SAN: What did you know about tissue engineering before you chose it as your specialization? Have your expectations been fulfilled?

That is a fairly new field of science that I knew nothing about before I started my doctoral studies. Some time in the spring of 1999, I was sitting in the library at McMaster and thinking about what I would like to do my doctorate on. I found an article about tissue engineering, written by Robert Samuel Langer from MIT, published in the journal Scientific American. From that moment, I was absolutely fascinated by the idea and immediately wrote to Langer to ask whether I could work with him. My collaboration with him was in fact one of the reasons I went to MIT. Only later did I find out that Langer was one of the founders of that field and that it is very difficult to get into his lab.

My expectations have absolutely been fulfilled. As some of the first scientists in that line of work, we had the privilege of forming and defining it. I was personally privileged to work alongside Langer and Gordana Vunjak Novaković, who were real pioneers in the field of tissue engineering. One feels a great sense of satisfaction when one sees that one’s field is growing and developing.

SAN: Your name and work is as well known in Europe as in North America. Do you receive offers to move back to Europe and continue your work there?

I did receive some offers, but for now I would not return to Europe. A scientist and professor in North America has a great deal of freedom and opportunities. When you feel that kind of professional freedom, a decision for that kind of change is not made easily.

SAN: As you see your children growing up, do you see yourself in them at that age? Do any of them show any propensity towards pursuing life science?

For now, none of them are showing any propensities towards life sciences, except for Teodora, who likes math. Anastasija is a real artistic soul, as she plays piano and violin, and Mihailo is still quite little.

SAN: Students help you with your research. Do you form your collaborative groups yourself, and does the university help you with financing?

The university does not help with financing. Professors are responsible for securing funding for all their work, for the wages of their coworkers, the stipends of all the students, all the materials, all trips, and everything else. That is where the aforementioned freedom comes from, the freedom to work on projects that the professors themselves formulate. However, at the same time, with freedom comes responsibility for the whole team. Now, mostly the collaborators and students run experiments in the labs, and we plan what we will do next all together.

SAN: Discoveries in the field of stem cell probably helped you opt for the field you now work in. The possibility of turning any stem cell into any other cell was revolutionary. How is a stem cell reprogramed? Do you use this method in your work?

Induced pluripotent stem cells were discovered in 2006, and the Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka received a Nobel Prize in 2012 for his work in that field. He presented the results of his then-new research at a conference in Toronto in 2006, when I was already a university professor. His discoveries enabled that which we had only dreamt of until then—to create human heart tissue. Today, those cells are the main source of our work.

SAN: What kinds of problems do you run into with regards to funding your research? Are there bureaucratic obstacles like in other fields?

The main problem is that there is simply less funding available for science. In fact, science has in some ways become the luxury of wealthy societies. In Canada and the US, there is less than a 20% chance that a scientific project will be funded by a government institution; most often it is a 10-15% chance. That kind of situation puts a great deal of pressure on all of us.

SAN: I think that everyone who has read about the results of your research has been amazed by the possibility that damaged heart tissue can be healed with tissue grown in a lab. How far away are we from the practical application of this method?

This method is already being practically applied in testing medication, but it will take quite some more time before these cells and tissue can be used on patients. In experiments conducted on monkeys carried out by a team from Seattle, USA, there was arrhythmia that was produced by cells injected into the hearts of monkeys with infarcts. That arrhythmia lasted a few days, but in the end, the monkeys did very well, and their hearts regenerated themselves. However, the sheer fact that it produced arrhythmia means that we still do not completely understand how these cells work when they are put into the heart. The old expression “slow and steady wins the race” in this case is absolutely applicable and precise. 

SAN: You have said that we cannot use our own heart cells to test medications, so for that reasons, we most often use animal cells. However, they are physiologically different from human ones. The solution is found in the so-called “training gym.” Can you clarify how that “gym” works and how it can be applied in the production and approval of medications?

During the process of creating tissues based on human cells, we apply electric stimulation. We stimulate the cells faster and faster every day. We make them beat progressively faster and stronger. In the end, those tissues become much more mature and better synchronized than the ones we started with.

SAN: You have received various awards for your contributions to science, including an innovation award from The Society of Chemical Engineers, and they also put you on the list of the 35 most promising young scientists in the world. What do awards mean in this society and in your field of study? Do they help you get grants for future research?

Awards definitely mean a lot; not so much in terms of getting grants, since that depends much more on the quality of the project itself. The awards we get are significant in terms of the reputation of our work and our university, and a good reputation then attracts better students and the best coworkers. It is impossible to advance in science without the right people, but that is probably the case in every other field.

SAN: Currently, pharmaceutical companies are practically already using the results of your research. Tell us a bit about that collaboration.

That collaboration happens through a company called TARA Biosystems (www.tara-biosystems.com), which was in fact founded by Gordana Vunjak Novaković and myself, along with our students. It is based in New York.

SAN: You fall into the category of the younger generation of scientists. I assume you already have an idea of what you will be doing in the future. Are cancer cells your next area of interest?

Thanks to the techniques that we have adopted from the microchip industry, we can now create a very nice little vascularized tissue. This field of study is called organ-on-a-chip engineering. It allows us to create models of tumours in the lab using the very cells taken from patients. We are currently working on that along with colleagues from Toronto General Hospital. The vascularized tumour models will help us understand what provokes metastasis and how to stop it. People who suffer from cancer mostly die from metastasis, not from the primary tumour. In animals with tumours, human cancer cells do not metastasize in the same way as they do in human bodies, so there is a real possibility that this field of research will help us better understand these mechanisms.

SAN: Do you follow the artistic and cultural scene of the Serbian community in Toronto? Do you miss Serbia?

Of course. I especially like going to the theatre shows given at the Isabel Bader Theatre. I really miss some people in Serbia, my family and friends, but I have been here for so many years already that I have gotten used to this lifestyle.

SAN: What do you do in your spare time?

I work out, ride my bike, see my friends a bit, walk the dog. Unfortunately, I also have to deal with other things that I do not particularly like, such as repairs and renovations around the house.