My name is Analia Loria. I’m an assistant professor of the Department of Pharmacology
and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Kentucky. I’m originally from Buenos
Aires, Argentina and I studied biochemistry at the University of Buenos Aires, then I
joined the Department of Physiology as an instructor. My plan was to work in a hospital
as an analyst of human samples, but then science took me to other destinations and I spent
some time in Europe in a research lab, and I ended up coming to the States to perform
a postdoctoral training. I was applying for an independent grant and a few years later
I had my own grant that led me to start to interview for assistant professor. So it was
like a snowball and I’m here having my own lab today. My mom was a teacher. She attempted
to study biochemistry, but then she was raising three kids. My father is a butcher. He has
a butcher shop. So my father actually was a little bit shocked about my decision to
pursue a scientific career. Obviously, he wanted me to be a M.D. and didn’t understand
very well in the beginning what was biochemistry about or it was too different, and it took
a little while to accept that I was having my independence, going to the University,
making my decisions. It’s very typical for a Hispanic family or maybe not that different
to other families here. If I have to go back and say where my passions for scientists are,
I have a chemistry teacher and I loved the book she picked for the course. I thought
it was funny. It was an interactive book, not a typical chemistry book. It was telling
you stories. Also she encouraged us to participate in a kind of chemistry Olympics. I didn’t
expect that I would have fun studying something that most people will say, “I don’t want
to deal with chemistry.” If I go back and see my background and how I was trained, I’m
still using the same basic tools that I developed very early in my career. Depending on your
sex, on your gender, you already have a number of susceptibilities and all those susceptibilities
can be enhanced by this sort of negative experience or physical abuse, sexual abuse, but low socio-economical
status, parental loss, very traumatic experience, even a natural disaster. So it’s very wide,
very broad, and involves several years of life. Probably the first five to ten years
are the most crucial. So the bottom line is you have a first hit or first experience that
has a negative impact in many of your hormonal systems and other systems that control your
blood pressure, control your metabolism, and then later on in life when you are challenged
with another environmental stressor, which can be the diet, it can be a stressful situation,
it can be environmental stress, those experiences have an impact in your system and your system
overreacts. So we already started with different expressions of proteins in a male compared
to a female. So when we apply the same therapy, it is no way it’s going to have the same
impact. The best that we can do right now is trying to keep investigating to bring to
the table new therapies, apply what is called personalized medicine, like when the patient
goes with a problem to see the doctor. We see the patients like something specific that
we are counting in gender, race, ethnicity, environment, and then apply the corresponding
therapy. That’s why we need more research because the current therapies, some of them
are starting to account for this sex effect some of them are still not. You have to be
very focused and answer a specific question that is clinically relevant, that has a potential
translational effect that your research is going to impact therapies. So you need to
search, read, and see where science is weak or needs more development. So all these things
are going on simultaneously, and that’s the most challenging part. And then on top
of that, if you are a woman in science, and Hispanic, and not natively speaking English,
it’s a sort of challenge on so many levels. The best support you can have is other women
in science. And I could give you examples of many women in science that are in very
high positions at the University of Kentucky and the American Heart Association and the
American Psychological Society. So in this point, we cannot complain about we don’t
have the role that we deserve because I see on all levels we have the chances to be there,
and actually compete or be evaluated like any other scientist beyond the gender.