Early inquisitiveness and turning failures into opportunities

Growing up in France, Christel remembers she was always very curious about the world as a child. As she recalls, 'I think I drove my parents a bit mad, always asking questions about why something happens while observing ants for example.' Her mother had a degree in biochemistry and after a placement during her BSc she chose to become a stay at home mother. Christel's father did a degree in electronics and then worked as a repair technician for General Electrics where he moved up to a commercial function focused on medical scanners.

As well as being highly inquisitive, Christel loved animals from a young age. Based on this her parents encouraged her to consider a career as a vet. As a result, when she was 15 years of age, she went to a selective school which was necessary for preparing her to get into veterinary preparatory school which is highly selective. She was accepted on the back of a review of her school results.

While successful at getting into the selective school and in the other subjects, Christel struggled to keep up her marks in maths. Part of her difficulty was because she was being taught maths that was not actually in the curriculum. This misled her into thinking she was not any good at maths and should avoid any studies that required maths, which included doing veterinary science. In fact she landed up getting a very good mark for maths in her baccalaureate, her final school exams, although all her school marks were not sufficient to secure admission into veterinary studies. But by then she had already decided to apply for medicine which she thought she stood a better chance of getting into than pharmacy which used maths as a selection.

All students wishing to study medicine in France can get into the first year of medical school, but then there is a strict quota for the number who can go on to the second year. After completing the first year of medical school, Christel failed to get enough marks in her exams to go on in medicine and she had to redo the year with the same outcome although she did greatly improve her rank and grades. At the end of that year, overall she was ranked 144 out of 1300 in the selective exam to go into medicine where only the first 140 were taken to medicine or dentistry. But fortunately, her marks were the equivalent to passing the first year in biochemistry at university. One of the reasons Christel scored so well in the subject was because she had a really 'wonderful' biochemistry teacher during her medical studies who made the subject fascinating.

With medicine no longer an option, Christel decided to switch to taking a degree in biochemistry. One of the advantages of going down this route was that she could go straight into the second year of the degree. Reflecting back on her difficulties to firstly get into veterinary science and then medicine, Christel says it taught her an important lesson. Rather than treating it as a failure, it opened up an opportunity for her to know what she really wanted to do. What she particularly liked about biochemistry was that it gave her the opportunity to understand how the body works and investigate the disease process.

Christel landed up focusing on structural biochemistry. This combines chemistry, biology and physics to study the structure of molecules within cells and tissues. Christel was one of the only women in her cohort who studied the subject. She then went on to do a master's degree in food quality control. Her decision to do this was in part inspired by her desire to understand the impact of food on how the body works.

Moving to London to get a job

When Christel finished her master's degree, she applied for many different jobs where she could use her analytical chemistry skills in nutrition but found it extremely difficult to find a position in France. Part of the problem was because there were not many jobs available in the country at this point. Also, despite having done several placements during her studies, recruiters at the time considered this did not give her sufficient experience to qualify for the jobs that were open. Unable to secure a suitable job, in order to earn some money Christel gave private lessons to school children in Biology, Maths and English.

After spending many months sending off many applications, the turning point came when Christel happened to learn from a recruiting agent that there were many job opportunities for biochemists in the UK. Based on this she and her soon-to-be husband, also a biochemist, decided to take the risk and move to London. Moving to a different country they believed would be more enriching than going to Paris where biochemistry jobs were also abundant. Unsuccessful in their first applications, the two of them managed to remain in London by getting temporary work in fast food restaurants for a short period. While tough, this decision paid off because after three months Christel managed to secure work contracts with pharmaceutical companies.

First steps into the industry

In January 2005 Christel started work as a development analyst at Genzyme, which at that time was an American company developing rare disease drugs. She was contracted to join a team based at the Genzyme's Haverhill site, in Suffolk, working on a new drug for the treatment of final stage renal failure and clostridium difficile colitis, a bacterial infection that can cause diarrhoea and life-threatening damage to the colon. Christel's initial contract with the company lasted six months, but this got renewed twice.

Working for Genzyme gave Christel the chance to learn the ropes of good manufacturing practice (GMP). This is a set of rules and standards set by regulatory agencies, such as the US Food and Drugs Administration, that govern the production and testing of medicine to make sure they are consistently high in quality from batch to batch and are safe for their intended purpose.

Genzyme not only helped improve Christel's knowledge about GMP but also her English. Christel already had quite a good understanding of the language with the help of her aunt who was an English teacher and as a result of travelling with her parents. As a youngster she had also spent a month with an American family and another with an English family. The main difficulty she had when joining Genzyme was getting used to the British pronunciation of English, because she was more familiar with the American way of speaking. It also took her time to get used to the pace and technical terms employed at work.

After nearly a year and a half at Genzyme, Christel realised she needed to deepen her experience in analytical chemistry. So, she decided to take a job with Cambridge Display Technology. Taking this step represented a bit of a side-step from what she had been doing until now, because the company had nothing to do with pharmaceuticals. A core part of its business was to develop liquid crystal display materials for use in large-screen, high-definition televisions.

With Cambridge Display Technology for four and a half years, Christel learnt a lot about how to refine and improve different methods which she describes as 'the bread and butter of an analytical chemist'. She also gained experience with mass spectrometry, a powerful analytical tool that helps to elucidate the structure and chemical composition of a biological sample or molecule. Used for many different applications, mass spectrometry is an essential tool for biological research and commonly used for drug discovery and testing.

Working with antibodies

While enjoying the work at Cambridge Display Technology, Christel was always set on returning to the pharmaceutical industry. To this end, in 2010, she took up a position at MedImmune, a large global biopharmaceutical company owned by AstraZeneca. The job was ideal for Christel because it gave her a chance to expand on her mass spectrometry skills whilst working on therapeutics using antibodies. She joined the development team working at the company's UK site in Cambridge. Their research was focused on the use of antibodies for therapy.

Millions of different types of antibodies get produced every day by the immune system to combat substances regarded as foreign or dangerous to the body. Made by white blood cells, each antibody is highly specific, in that they bind to one particular molecule, known as an antigen, found on the surface of a harmful agent. Antigens are not only present on foreign invaders, such as bacteria, viruses and fungi, but also on cancerous cells. Once an antibody locks on to a specific antigen, this sends signals out to other components of the immune system to destroy the particular target.

First successfully produced in the laboratory in 1975, antibodies are now used for a wide variety of applications. Where they have had their strongest impact has been in the treatment of cancer, which is what Christel worked on amongst other therapeutic areas at MedImmune. Antibodies have the advantage that they can be designed to specifically target cancer cells while avoiding healthy cells so are less liable to cause harmful side effects. They can also be tailored to enhance the immune response to attack cancer, an approach known as immunotherapy. In this context the antibody can be used to help release the brakes cancer cells put on the immune system to prevent their destruction. Such therapy is designed to block the biological pathways cancer cells use to disguise themselves from the immune system.

A lot of Christel's focus at MedImmune was using her mass spectrometry skills to help engineer and characterise monospecific and bispecific antibodies. The latter are designed to provide dual action by simultaneously binding to two different targets. Bispecific antibodies offer a means to improve target specificity and to achieve a more complete blockade of the mechanisms cancer cells use to suppress the immune system. The aim in doing this is to be able to treat resistant forms of cancer, a growing challenge in cancer. This is where cancer cells no longer respond to drug treatments which can happen very quickly in some patients. Bispecific antibodies have the advantage that they can be designed to simultaneously target the tumour and activate a stronger immune response, thereby reducing the capacity of cancer cells to adapt and become resistant to treatment.

Taking up the challenge to head up a team at another company

Christel worked closely with the MedImmune's team in the United States to develop bispecific antibodies. She really enjoyed the work but after six and half years was ready for a change. Her decision to leave was prompted by a request to head up a team at F-star, a biotechnology company based in Cambridge, that was also developing bispecific antibodies primarily for cancer treatment.

Initially Christel was hesitant about moving because F-star was much smaller than MedImmune so its future at the time was less certain. Also, she had a lot of projects on the go at MedImmune and good colleagues there. But in the end Christel decided to go because the new position offered her the possibility of building her own team which gave her greater freedom to try out her ideas.

Christel joined F-star in May 2017 as a Senior Scientist/Team leader of the Product Characterisation team (a sub-team of Protein Sciences) and became the Associate Director/Head of Protein Sciences in July 2020 and subsequently Director in January 2022. One of her first tasks involved purchasing a mass spectrometry instrument and developing a strategy to build out the company's capacities for protein characterisation and formulation. Since then she and her team have been trying out many new techniques to improve the development of bispecific antibodies. A lot of their work involves making sure the antibodies are made as intended and determining whether they can be produced at scale and at a high quality. What is also important is to see how they behave with different excipients because this can have an impact on how they get formulated as a final drug.

Christel has really enjoyed moving to a smaller company in that she has greater contact with other teams which makes it easier to ask questions and get a sense of how a therapeutic project works as a whole. Her own department works in the same office as the discovery group. Now having responsibilities as a group leader has also given her greater insights into how decisions get made and since then F-star has been acquired by invoX Pharma, a subsidiary of Sino Biopharm, a world-renowned biopharmaceutical company.

Work satisfaction and life balance

Balancing work with home life has always been important to Christel. Fortunately, F-star has a flexible work policy. This gives her scope to take time off when needed, such as to go to her children's sports day at school. Having a busy family life, Christel really appreciates the ability to do this. She points out that not all companies are so flexible, but she believes that it is important and makes sure to apply it to her own team. Having such flexibility, she argues, helps to motivate people and usually they go over and beyond to give back.

What Christel really likes about working for a smaller company is that her work 'changes all the time' and the speed of activities can alternate between slow and fast depending on the stage of development. At one moment she might be working on one project but then suddenly she might get a request to provide data very quickly for another new project.

A great deal of Christel's day is spent problem solving because, as she says, 'nothing happens the way we expect'. The other aspect of her job that she enjoys is knowing that what she is working on could 'actually help people with terrible diseases'. As she says, 'what gets me up every day is to know that the work I'm doing is to help people down the line'.

Wide vista of opportunities in the biomedical field

When Christel looks backwards at her career, she realises that when she left school, she had very little knowledge about the wide range of opportunities available beyond the traditional route of becoming a vet or doctor. In her case, she believes she would never have got to where she is today had she dwelled on what could be considered as failures. Instead, she took the challenge to look for other opportunities where she could best use her skills. What helped her move forward was working out what she particularly enjoyed doing and following that path.

To others contemplating a career in biomedicine, Christel advises them to talk to as many people as possible. As she says, there are so many opportunities out there, all of them rewarding in their own way. Often the path will not be clear in the beginning, and it will take many twists and turns, but the key thing is to follow the most enjoyable one.

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This article was written by Dr Lara Marks based on an interview conducted with Christel Veyssier on 28th July 2023.