Interviewee: Dr. Hagar Labouta, PhD | Authors/Editors: Arrthy Thayaparan & Negin Nia
Published: February 25th, 2022
With our blog series Behind the Science, we strive to share the stories and amazing work of a diverse range of scientists and academics in the Women’s Health field. The latest feature in our series is Dr. Hagar Labouta, assistant professor at the University of Manitoba’s College of Pharmacy and a renowned nanomedicine researcher. In this blog we speak with her to better understand exactly what nanomedicine is and to learn of her journey through academia as a Hijabi woman of colour.
Can you please explain what your research is?
My research is in nanomedicine. So, we work with small things called nanoparticles, or small particles. Those tiny particles are very powerful, you can use them to target specific sites in the body that you are not able to do with conventional therapies. You can also decorate nanoparticles with some chemical groups or ligands on top. For instance, those attached ligands could target specific cancer cells. Therefore, there would be higher accumulation at the tumour side and lower accumulations elsewhere, and as a result the patient suffers less side effects from chemotherapies.
Most of the applications of nanomedicine have been in cancer therapies, but there are lots of other applications that require nanotechnology-based solutions. The focus of my lab is using those technologies to develop safe and effective therapies for the treatment of maternal and fetal disease during pregnancy. More specifically, we design new nanoparticles to carry drugs that are essential for the mother or the baby and we carefully characterize them in the lab as well as evaluate them under conditions that simulate human pregnancy.
How did you get interested in pursuing this work?
My dad, Dr. Ibrahim Labouta, was a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry. I lost him recently to COVID-19 but he was my mentor throughout my entire life, who got me into science. Since I was a child, I wanted to be like him. He was my number one supporter to leave my home country after my master's degree to pursue a career in Germany, where I got supported by my mentor during my PhD. I was really lucky to be mentored by great mentors, Drs. Labiba El-Khordagui, Marc Schneider, Claus-Michael Lehr and David Cramb, who pushed me into the direction of this research and significantly impacted my career.
In the beginning I was inspired by doing science, and drug delivery was a big thing. When I started my PhD in Germany, I was fascinated by nanomedicine and how powerful this field is. I think we’re now witnessing the glory of this field, millions and billions of people are now receiving the COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna that are based on mRNA lipid nanoparticles.
In 2019, I started at the University of Manitoba with lots and lots of ideas. I got in contact with the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba (CHRIM), and I started collaborating with Dr. Richard Keijzer and his team to develop a delivery system for a specific microRNA to babies diagnosed with congenital diaphragmatic hernia before they are born. That was the first project I did related to fetal health. Now, the main focus of my lab is maternal and fetal health.
What got you into women’s health?
My father got me into science, and he was also very interested in women's health. When I was working at the University of Alexandria in Egypt, he was working in the Women’s Health Centre and was responsible for several women’s health projects in Africa and the Middle East. So he invited me one day to give a talk there, and so it’s always been in the back of my mind that I wanted to do something related to women’s health.
The motivation has always been there, especially when I started to go deeper into women’s and fetal health. I started to realise that most applications of nanomedicine are geared towards cancer, which is a really big thing and we have seen several products already in the market. But if you're talking about helping or using those technologies for women’s health, it's really an area that is understudied and there are lots of questions that haven’t been answered yet – which is why I want to use my expertise in this area to answer these pending questions.
As a Muslim Hijabi woman, how has it been for you going through the ranks of the scientific community?
Being Hijabi and a woman from a minority, it definitely has been a journey, and I’m proud to be Hijabi. In general, people tend to respect you when they see how you respect your background and culture. I feel very fortunate to be a Muslim Woman from Egypt. I was also really lucky to work in labs where many were inclusive. But there were definitely some people who were discriminating. Nevertheless I just kept going, and currently I’m a faculty member and a Hijabi. I hope this inspires other people who are Hijabi, non-Hijabi, minorities, or females, who are looking to build their career in academia. I hope I can send them a message that this is possible, I hope their route is now easier than mine. Just to add to that, I want to also emphasise that having a family doesn’t mean you can’t be a professor. I have a loving husband and two kids who made me better in many different ways. Everything is possible; academia is not really limited to a specific population or stereotype of a scientist.