Sarah Jones
Associate Professor Sarah Jones’ lifelong passion for immunology has driven her to make impressive strides towards revolutionising treatment options and health outcomes for inflammatory and autoimmune disease patients. Armed with an understanding of the viability and value of her research, Associate Professor Jones is now leveraging Monash’s enterprise expertise to commercialise her work and reach for the greatest impact possible.
What drew you to medical research, and to driving innovative approaches to combating lupus in particular?
I always knew I wanted to work in science – when I was 15 years old, I was quoted in my local paper declaring that I wanted to be an immunologist.
I was attracted to the complexity of the field. It’s an incredibly stimulating space to work in, and my particular research has the potential to have far reaching applications that can make a real difference to people’s lives – especially the lives of young women in their prime.
Currently, the treatment of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, including lupus, is part of the burden of the disease. Due to a lack of other treatment options, patients overwhelmingly rely on glucocorticoids, or steroid hormones, and are heavily affected by side-effects that have the potential to shorten their life expectancy.
As the Lab Head and Founder of Monash spinout GILZRx, I lead a team seeking to isolate the good elements of glucocorticoids to develop an anti-inflammatory therapeutic small molecule that can treat inflammatory and autoimmune diseases without the side-effects.
The product we're working to develop has the potential to make a substantial impact across medicine, including the treatment of conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.
Can you tell me about your experience of working with the Enterprise and Engagement portfolio to commercialise your research through your spinout?
The involvement from the Enterprise and Engagement portfolio has become more and more important as things at GILZRx have gotten busier and increasingly exciting.
In particular, the Research Commercialisation team has helped me to both learn and be very, very involved in the business development side of things.
You can't successfully run a spinout in isolation – you especially can't do it without the support of people who can make sure everything is taken care of from a legal and contracting perspective. Through their insights, I’ve been able to upskill and really know what I'm talking about when it comes to business.
Commercialisation experts also have a long-term outlook that can help with planning and goal setting. When you're aiming for commercialisation, you're already looking to the end game when you're at the start. They’ve helped ingrain this into the way I work.
From your experience, what’s the benefit of engaging industry in health research?
The key thing for me is that the value of the research has always been clear – I’ve always had that as a stable base.
From this base, I committed to interrogating the science. I knew that if I interrogated the science enough, I’d have the confidence to advocate for it.
I'm always pushing the boundary of what I know and what I'm comfortable with, but I realised very early on that I needed to do the prep work to feel confident enough to put myself out there and advocate for the immense potential of this project. To succeed in this kind of endeavour, you need to be as prepared as possible – and then as convincing as possible.
In my position, I have been able to get to the point of foundational preparedness and confidence by meeting with and presenting to industry, and using these meetings as a starting point for building relationships with different people and learning from them.
It was intimidating at the start, but I reached out to companies working in aligned fields and set up the meetings myself. Through these meetings, I established genuine relationships within the broader sector, which in turn has led to ongoing and invaluable feedback and advice.
What are your best tips for researchers on effectively engaging with industry?
I knew it was important to meet the people who would be both interested in and passionate about what I was doing – I wanted to know what they wanted to see from the science. You’ll never know when a product is viable until you seek feedback.
I recommend having conversations with industry early, where you can present your work and establish your track record and reputation with future allies in the health space. It’s always valuable to say, “Here's the research I think you might be interested in, but please tell me what would make it even better?”
What does it take to be an entrepreneurial researcher? And how can adopting an entrepreneurial mindset set you apart in academia?
I’m not going to lie – it does take grit. You need to be able to embark on major learning curves and have the humility to receive a lot of feedback, because that's a vital part of it.
Sometimes so much feedback can be hard to hear. At the same time, it's important to have the confidence in yourself that you can do this – notwithstanding all of that learning. What's the worst that can happen if the science is good?
Entering an entrepreneurial endeavour means walking through a different world, and that world gives you the chance to have thrilling and sometimes terrifying learning curves. If you’re trying to do something wonderful, it's worth carrying that fear with you and doing it anyway.
I haven’t existed in a comfort zone in five years. It’s an adventure.
What are the best lessons you’ve learnt throughout your career?
Building a strong team is vital. There isn’t space for big egos without substance. You need to find people who are willing to learn and receive feedback, but also bring a loud enough voice to the table to champion good ideas. I’m grateful for the group I have around me, including my clinical collaborator Professor Eric Morand.
Your team needs to complement each other as well. I'm a fast mover – I make decisions quickly based on my experience and research expertise. I also rely on people in my team who are more analytical and want to invest in creating a supportive framework for these decisions.
To cultivate the kind of grit needed to succeed in this space, I recommend stopping worrying about how you fit in your field, and work with determination towards your goals. I had to stop focusing on how I fit into my field when I started having my family, because you can't compare yourself to your peers when they're not mothers raising children.
When I was coming up through the world of research, I kept hearing that women who make it through to a more senior stage have a lot of support at home, whether that took the form of family acting as childcare or their partners taking a backseat in their careers. But that has not been the case for me. I've figured out how to take the lead role in all parts of my life by committing to doing the best that I can do within my time constraints.
There is no substitute for hard work, but it doesn't have to be long work – it can be smart work. With enough practice, I'm now able to quickly understand which things need to be moved forward to keep the whole project rolling.
I might be a fast mover, but I’ve learnt that it's important to have patience, and measure progress in years rather than meeting by meeting or month by month. I’ve created a culture in my team where we celebrate the smallest of achievements, and they feel like big achievements because that progress is often so slow to come to fruition.
Finally, I’ve learnt that it’s important to have a baseline of a decent amount of financial security for the research. You might want to focus on the lab work, but you also need to be able to afford the time to focus on having meetings and changing the way you're thinking about the research.
What advice would you give to your young self on how to have an enterprising mindset?
I’d tell myself to be patient when creating my own pathway, because there's no rulebook for it. Some days you can't measure progress, other days you can – either way, stop counting metrics and comparing yourself to other people. Just keep the patients front-of-mind, dust yourself off after a set-back and continue on the journey.
I’m passionate about providing support for like-minded researchers wanting to translate their work into commercial outcomes, and invite anyone looking to start on this adventure to reach out today.