Research paper gives recent graduate a star turn

Calling Hadia Hussain a cover girl would give the wrong impression, but a paper authored by the recent U of T Mississauga graduate and her colleagues is, indeed, the lead article in the September issue of Obesity Reviews, a top journal in the field of obesity research.

“While writing the paper, I knew it was leading to publication, but I couldn’t imagine this journal with the [strong] impact factor,” said Hussain, a 2014 Honours BSc graduate in biology. “It makes it all very amazing.”

Hussain conducted the research for her paper as an independent research project for course credit during the summer of her third undergraduate year at UTM. She chose to work with Jayson Parker, a medical biotechnology lecturer, because the research opportunity he offered appealed to her.

“I had little knowledge of obesity,” Hussain said. “But building a knowledge base while researching was very enjoyable.”

Parker, who has an MBA and a PhD in physiology, is a former investment banker who worked with a number of pharmaceutical companies. When he returned to academia, he realized that there were no studies that explored the failure rates for drugs that have been tested to treat specific conditions, so he set about to fill that gap with research.

“The failure rate for drug tests is important for physicians to know, because they are always being asked to recruit patients for clinical trials,” Parker said. “How can we help them choose studies with a better likelihood of success, so there is a better use of resources?”

Investors in biomedical companies, too, want to have an idea if the drug in which they plan to invest has a reasonable chance of succeeding in clinical trials.

Parker’s students are conducting a series of studies into the success rates of drugs being tested for specific medical conditions, and Hussain chose to review the available information about anti-obesity drugs. Parker and Hussain recruited Dr. A.N. Sharma, one of Canada’s top obesity experts, to serve as the subject expert.

Using her computer, Hussain worked largely with information that is publicly available, evaluating drugs that were either on the market or in clinical trials between 1998 to Sept. 2014. The criterion for success was approval for the drug to transition from one phase of testing to the next, or on to market.

Hussain’s research revealed that 92 per cent of obesity drugs undergoing clinical testing fail. However, she also found that the transition probability for combination therapies – combining more than one drug – for obesity was 40 per cent, about 10 times more successful than for single drug therapies.

“In clinical trials, you are only judged on one endpoint, but for obesity, we showed that it is beneficial to combine two variables and look at them simultaneously,” Parker said. “It has a big effect on improving trial success rates.”

Hussain said she felt very fortunate that Parker gave her the opportunity to write the paper based on her research, even though it took a year to get the draft ready for publication.

“We went back and forth for quite a while,” Hussain said, “and even after we submitted it, the reviewers asked for more revisions. Now I know what to expect from the publication process.”

Since finishing her research project, Hussain has realized that her real passion is to improve health conditions for people globally, as well as locally, so she will be turning her talents to public health. She plans to return to school for her master’s degree in public health – and being the lead author of a publication in a major journal certainly won’t hurt her chances.