More postdocs for Russian Science

Alexander Kabanov told how the life of scientists is changing after the megagrant and what Russian science lacked

Marina Kiseleva, "Indicator"

Photo from the archive of Alexander Kabanov

What has changed in Russian science with the advent of mega-grants, why Russian scientists do not know how to write articles and why the country needs the institute of postdocs, the correspondent of Indicator.Professor of the University of North Carolina and Lomonosov Moscow State University, megagrant of the first wave, Doctor of Chemical Sciences Alexander Kabanov told Ru.

– You are a megagrant of the first wave and received a megagrant in 2010. Has science become better in Russia during this time?

– The question is complicated. Some things have certainly improved, some have not advanced, some may have rolled back as a result of economic and international circumstances. The latter should be "put out of brackets", since it cannot be influenced within the framework of the scientific process. Fundamentally, the entire scientific process, including the system of financing, decision-making and research itself, has undergone major changes. Due to the fact that I became a megagrant of the first wave and took an active part in Russian scientific life since 2010, I saw these changes and became involved in them. I have heard that the experience of the megagrant program has influenced the general ideas about the organization of science in the country as a whole, and I think this is true. At the first stage, mega–grants in terms of funding were comparable to large grants in the West - such a concentration of resources in the hands of one leading scientist selected by competition was unheard of in our country. If I'm not mistaken, this is the first major federal program in which there was a real independent examination, and it was done by both Russian and foreign scientists. Personally, it was a surprise for me to receive a megagrant.

It is clear that at first the "mega–grantees" were perceived rather cautiously, especially since many of them were "Varangians" according to the terms of the competition, and half were "from the former", from among compatriots who succeeded abroad. But it was precisely thanks to this formulation of the issue that many dozens of scientific projects and directions were brought to Russia in the shortest possible time, including in areas in which the country was hopelessly behind or which did not exist at all. For example, my field – nanomedicine – was formed in the 90s and 2000s in the West and Japan, when little was happening in this area in Russia.

In general, megagrants stimulated new research. According to the megagrants of the first four waves, 160 laboratories were created, as a result of this program, over a hundred major scientists of a very good international level appeared in the scientific life of the country, several times more of their own specialists were trained. Among the megagranters are highly cited scientists, members of prestigious foreign Academies, laureates of the Nobel and Fields Prizes. This is a very big strengthening of the composition of scientists in the country. The perception of modern science and the culture of scientists began to change, it became clear that we are part of the big world, Russian science has become more visible. Since the first mega-grants, a new modern grant system has developed and strengthened in Russia, in particular, the Russian Science Foundation (RPF) has appeared, which, in my opinion, acts like a real Western foundation. Today, no one is surprised by the grants for the laboratory in the amount of 60-90 million rubles for three years awarded by the RNF, and megagrants do not stand out much against this background. These are very important changes, because the engine of modern science should be the possibility of obtaining competitive financing on the basis of independent expertise, where there should be no conflict of interests.

– Now there is a lot of talk about the need to bring Russian scientists back. Besides megagrants, what else could attract them?

– Of course, in order for science and education to be fully in demand, a modern, not raw materials, but high-tech innovative economy is needed. Then the return of scientists will make more sense. And at the same time, this is partly a "chicken and egg" task, since in order to create an innovative economy, it is necessary to strengthen academic and university science. China has recently coped with this task – they started after the cultural revolution almost "from scratch", and it took them about 30 years. The Chinese conducted an analysis of their scientific diaspora and found out that there are very successful scientists of Chinese origin who have "sprouted" so much in other countries that it is very difficult to return them permanently. But China has also come to the conclusion that these people are the most important intellectual resource of the country. They have become so successful and independent that they can help China with their knowledge and authority more than anyone else. They were invited to open laboratories like our "megagrants", to involve them in scientific and expert work in China in various ways. Along with this, conditions began to be created for the work of younger scientists abroad and their return home. There is a program in China where the most talented graduate students and postdocs are sent to study abroad. All the postdocs who worked for me in the USA under this program have returned to China. Graduate students return worse, although in my opinion, much better conditions and opportunities have been created for them in China than they currently have in Russia.

– And what should be done for this in Russia?

– I think that in Russia it is necessary to create conditions for everyone, not only for those who will return from abroad. This includes conditions for rapid professional growth of young people, as they say in the USA, gaining "scientific independence", that is, the ability to decide what to do in science, the opportunity to get resources for this in the form of a grant and create your own laboratory. Here we teach graduate students, and what happens to them next? Many immediately leave science. Many have to stay in the same laboratory in which they grew up, that is, work within the same scientific subject and, roughly speaking, wait until their leaders grow old to take their place. What kind of innovation, interdisciplinarity and, moreover, "convergence" of science can we talk about in such conditions? Even in the Soviet Union, a young candidate of sciences from Tashkent, Tbilisi or Alma-Ata could come to Moscow, work at Moscow University or the Academy of Sciences, gain experience and go to develop science in his hometown. Now there is practically no such opportunity in Russia – the mobility of scientific personnel is very low.

Therefore, in our country it is necessary to create a modern institute of postdocs and a flexible mentoring system, including scientific training centers, where independent scientists will be trained from young candidates of sciences. Then the young scientist will come to some strong center in Moscow or St. Petersburg, where he will be trained and will go back to his university or academic institute, for example, in Volgograd, Kazan or Tomsk. From there, he will receive a starting grant for a young professor, and, of course, the university should provide a professorship, a room, a "startup" so that this scientist can begin to "unwind". And if a scientist does not get all this at one university, then he will go somewhere else with his grant… That's when a young scientist will want to stay in science or come back, including from abroad. It should be interesting and attractive for a scientist to come back. But until recently I did not have the feeling that Russia has an understanding of the need for such an approach and serious efforts are being made in this direction. The exception, perhaps, was the program "Cadres", developed several years ago in the Ministry of Education and Science, which, unfortunately, was not implemented.

– Who should these efforts come from?

– In principle, from universities, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the scientific community itself. But the state policy in the field of science and education plays a huge role. This should be a state decision and a planned activity of the government. As you know, several mega-migrants, including me, were invited to the Kremlin to meet with Putin in September of this year. This meeting was timed to coincide with the second conference "The Future of Science". At the meeting, the President spoke about the usefulness and necessity of continuing the megagrant program until 2020. This, apparently, had already been decided before our arrival. But when we were preparing for this meeting, we made a list of priorities, those mechanisms that do not exist today, but which, in our opinion, are necessary for the development of science in Russia. Among such priorities, in the first place, we named the need to ensure the professional growth of young scientists, which requires the creation of postdoctoral programs and funding for young scientific leaders. We also stressed the need for long-term support for the most productive laboratories, creating long-term positions to attract the most productive world-class scientists. Of course, additional funding should be allocated to solve these tasks. The President was clearly interested in all this, he asked to submit expanded proposals to his administration and less than a month later met with the heads of the relevant ministries, and it was announced that already in 2017, in addition to the already planned expenditures on science, 3.5 billion rubles would be allocated for the implementation of the proposed measures. The RNF has been entrusted with implementing these measures, and we very much hope that as a result, a beginning will be laid for the creation in Russia of those mechanisms for supporting science and scientists that I mentioned above.

– What difficulties have you encountered while working on the megagrant?

– The first difficulty was Federal Law No. 94-FZ, when we

we found out that we can't buy what is necessary for work with the availability of funds. This was a terrible problem for scientists all over the country, and the first wave of mega-migrants joined in solving it in the spring of 2011 during a meeting with Dmitry Medvedev. The problem has been solved. The second is bureaucracy and accountability, which Russian scientists have not stopped and do not stop talking about to officials. In the first year of work on the megagrant, we wrote four reports of 100 pages each. There are fewer reports now, but it still remains a problem. I also come across the fact that people often do not know how to write scientific articles, I see this in America among their students, but in Russia the problem is huge and affects not only students, but also mature scientists. The quality of the evidence base of articles published today in the West or in Japan is significantly higher than in Russia. This may be due to the fact that in Russia too much attention is paid to formal reports rather than writing scientific articles. It is also possible to note the quality of work with animals, the lack of modern vivariums available to all employees at leading universities, the opportunity to work with transgenic animals and other animal models. This terribly hinders the conduct of biomedical research at the modern level.

– You work at the University of North Carolina and Moscow University. Are the conditions very different?

- Yes. There are very significant differences in infrastructure. I have already said about working with animals. In general, work in Russia, including in my field, is terribly hampered by the lack of a "critical mass" of high-quality research, which is necessary for successful cooperation and interdisciplinary work. On the other hand, it was thanks to the mega-grant that I was able to conduct some research that I could not have done at my American university before. In particular, thanks to the cooperation between my Moscow laboratory at Moscow State University and scientists at Tambov State University, we were able to design experimental installations and build equipment that is now manufactured at the Tambov plant and which we purchase for work both in Moscow and North Carolina.

– What kind of equipment is this?

– This is equipment for studying the effects of magnetic fields of very low frequency on superparamagnetic nanoparticles. Such particles are so small that they can get inside the cell and can be delivered to the focus of the disease in the body, for example, to a tumor. They are often tried, for example, to warm up with high-frequency fields to kill a cancer cell.

And we began to work with ultra-low frequency fields (10-50 Hz). In such fields, these particles begin to move and mechanically affect the environment. During the work on the megagrant, we showed that we can attach an enzyme molecule to magnetite nanoparticles and "kill" the activity of this enzyme with the help of a non-warming magnetic field of ultra-low frequency. We called it "magnetic-mechanical action". Since there was practically no such work in the field of ultra-low-frequency magnetic fields, we, together with Professor Yuri Golovin, needed to design new installations to obtain homogeneous fields of the required frequency, amplitude and configuration. Recently, in my American laboratory, with the help of such an installation, a work was carried out and published, the meaning of which is that polymer-coated magnetic nanoparticles are delivered to a cancer cell, where they accumulate in lysosomes. Next, we act on cancer cells with a magnetic field and magnetic particles break the cytoskeleton in these cells, thereby killing them. It turned out to be very interesting that non-cancerous cells are preserved because their cytoskeleton is tougher. Of course, we have shown this effect on cells so far, we need to show a therapeutic effect on animal models, and it is still very far from practical implementation.

– How many years will it take until your development reaches at least the stage of clinical trials?

– It's a long story. It often takes 10-15 years from the first ideas to the clinic.

– Is there any way to shorten this process and at the expense of what?

– These questions concern not only science. Conducting even the first phase of clinical trials costs millions of dollars. When you finish the last, third, phase of a clinical trial, it no longer takes millions, but tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars. It is important at every stage of the development of an idea from the laboratory to the clinic to convince investors to invest a lot of money in this idea, showing that it will bring the appropriate return. And this, for various reasons, is becoming more and more difficult. Therefore, in addition to the challenges and difficulties in setting up the research itself, there is a "valley of death" for good ideas. And in medicine it is quite large.

– What has been achieved during the work on the megagrant?

– My laboratory was created at the Department of Chemical Enzymology of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Natalia Klyachko, professor of this department, became my Russian partner and de facto co-head. The laboratory focused on the creation of enzyme preparations for the treatment of inflammatory diseases, including the eye, spinal cord injuries, bacterial infections, protection of the human body and animals from damage by pesticides and other toxic substances. One of the laboratory's developments is a nanosime of the antioxidant enzyme superoxide dismutase 1, which has shown a significant therapeutic effect in the treatment of inflammatory eye diseases and is currently undergoing preclinical studies with the support of the Federal Target Program "Development of the Pharmaceutical and Medical Industry of the Russian Federation until 2020". Another interesting development is the nanozyme of the enzyme organophosphate hydrolase, capable of providing protection against multiple lethal doses of organophosphate pesticides when injected into the body. In general, it seems to me that we have "pushed" the development of nanomedicine in Russia. In particular, the laboratory contributed to the emergence of the center for functional genomics at Skoltech. I have already said about the work in the field of magnetomechanical effects for nanomedicine. In the development of these works, a new laboratory of Biomedical nanomaterials has been created at the National Research Technological University MISIS, which is headed by a young Russian scientist Alexander Mazhuga, a native of our laboratory at Moscow State University.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru   16.11.2016