For many of Atuka’s partners, scientist Tielli Magnus M.Sc. is their first point of contact when initiating a preclinical study. “I work with the client to sort out and manage all of the details once a project has been commissioned,” she explains.
While attending high school in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre where she grew up, Tielli fell in love with biology, and more specifically genetics, thanks to a succession of teachers who helped nurture her interest. For her first job after completing her Master’s, she moved to Rio de Janeiro to work as a biologist at a pharmaceutical company. Not only did the city’s pace and traffic disagree with her, she also began to appreciate the particular challenges of being a scientist in Brazil. “The reality is that to do good science, it’s almost like you can’t have a life,” she says, “especially if you stay in academia. You work seven days a week and you barely see your family, you’re always travelling, always trying to raise money for your research.”
Hoping to carve out a career in science with a more favourable work-life balance, Tielli packed her bags for Canada, where after refreshing her studies she eventually landed with Atuka. Though living far from home, she still takes enormous pride in Brazil’s history of scientific discovery and innovation—national icons such as the physician Oswaldo Cruz, a pioneer in public health, epidemiology, and vaccination, and early aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont. “I think it’s because of the challenges we face,” says Tielli, “that we are very resourceful. The creativity that we have, it’s amazing, it’s what drives a lot of our discoveries and scientific work. We have always been great problem solvers.”
How did you first get interested in science?
In my first year of high school I had a very good biology teacher. And when he started to teach us about genetics that really blew my mind. This was around the year 2000. At the time the Human Genome Project hadn’t yet been completed, but there was all this amazing work going on. Genetics was basically this promise that one day we would be able to cure every disease, and make everybody’s life better. From then on, I was like, “I really want to work on this.” I was lucky to have really great biology teachers throughout high school and that just solidified my interest.
Why did you decide to join Atuka?
The degree of detail and interaction we provide, the background expertise, we’re definitely not the same as other CROs. Most are very generalist, they’re just following a bunch of protocols. We know a lot about this specific thing, which means we are able to adapt the project to meet our partners’ very specific needs.
There’s also something I really enjoy about working at smaller companies. You get to wear several hats, you’re a scientist, but you also work in other areas, whatever the company needs. It means you end up learning a lot, instead of having a very specific job and always doing the same kind of stuff. You also have the opportunity to get close to your colleagues, which is helpful for someone like me starting a new life here. It’s a culture of friendship. There’s a feeling here that whenever something needs to be done, we have a problem, it’s all hands on deck.
How has your understanding of Parkinson’s evolved since coming to Atuka?
I knew very little at first, just that it was a movement disorder, that older people have it, that’s about it. I had never worked with the brain before, so I didn’t even know which parts of the brain it affected. Quickly, I learned so much from anatomical perspective, that the disease is multifactorial, that it’s very complex and affects people in very different ways. Among the challenges is that it can be so different from person to person.
Fortunately, we’re now seeing a lot of new partners coming to us with drugs that try to modify the disease, not only fight the symptoms. When you look at all the great advancements we’ve seen I think we are heading to a much brighter future. I only hope it goes a little faster