Finding Commonality Through Medical Communication

Transcript Generated by AI.

Announcer: 0:00

Welcome to MedEvidence!, where we help you navigate the truth behind medical research with unbiased, evidence-proven facts, hosted by cardiologist and top medical researcher, Dr. Michael Koren.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 0:11

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the MedEvidence! Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Eric Schram, sitting in for Michael Koren today. For those who don't know me, I'm a board certified family physician and long-term clinical research investigator and have been with the Encore Research Group more than 20 years. And I'm really excited today to be sitting or talking to Dr. Christy Kestner. Now, Dr. Kestner is an esteemed neuroscientist, science writer, and science content creator. Welcome to MedEvidence, Dr. Christy Kessner.

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 0:43

Thank you for having me here. It's an honor to be here today.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 0:47

Well, thank you. And is it okay if I call you Christy?

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 0:50

That is perfectly fine.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 0:53

So a little bit about your background. I read your um your bio and quite interesting. You have a PhD in neuroimmunology. You had 10 years uh experience as a benchtop researcher, um, and then more recently involved in creating science content and science writing. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about your background, tell where you grew up and how you got interested in into neuroscience.

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 1:20

Yeah, so um basically my path has definitely not been a straight line and not linear, which has made it all the more exciting. Um actually, I grew up um playing tennis my whole life and like briefly at one point I considered pursuing a career in tennis. Um, but since I was a kid, I just knew I always love science more. Um, and so in college, I was your traditional biology pre-med major. But during this time, my grandmom had Parkinson's disease. So I felt like I was always just curious of, you know, what's causing this? Why is she stricken with this disease? Um, so I feel like that's really what kind of like piqued my interest in a neuroscience. Um, so after I graduated college at the University of South Carolina, I moved back to Atlanta and pursued a master's degree in cell biology. And what was cool here is I feel like that's where I really got a lot of exposure to neuroscience courses. And I feel like there is where I just fell in love with neuroscience. Um, and I just lived and breathed it. I just thought this was just such an interesting field. Um, so after my master's degree, I ended up moving to Charleston and pursuing my PhD in neuroimmunology. So here I basically focused on it's called the complement system, which is part of the immune system. So my overall goal was looking of how this plays a role in brain injury or stroke in patients. Um, and so what was cool is we did a lot of complement um directed therapy development during my PhD. So it really made me aware and realize how you can really modulate the immune system for better patient outcomes. Um, so that's how I got into neuroimmunology. And then after that, I took on a brief postdoc role also at MUSC, just focusing on pancreatic cancer um drug targets. So after all that, I really thought, you know, I'm gonna be a scientist in biotech. Like this is my dream, you know, to transition from academia, being a bench top scientist for years into the fast-paced world of tech. And, you know, with the way the market is, it's just tough to get jobs. Um, and also, you know, I my husband is established here in Charleston. So I couldn't just take off and move somewhere that was offered a position. Um, so it was definitely challenging. So during that process, I felt like I started learning more about scientific writing and medical writing roles. And I thought perk of that was, you know, it's remote. I can work from home, I can travel for conferences if needed. Um, so I got into that and took a freelance scientific writing role with a German biotech and consultant company that I still work for. Um, and then from there, I just was like, you know what? I'm going to expand and build my scientific portfolio. And that's kind of how I um transitioned into creating Brain and Beyond. And so it's definitely been like an interesting path, but it's been like really, really fun and enjoyable too.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 4:53

Wow, that's great. Always great to hear a non-traditional route. Had you always had, you know, a skill and interest in writing, or is that something that just you kind of cultivated?

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 5:04

Yeah, I think honestly, when I realized this is something I was passionate about and really enjoyed was during my PhD. Um, I feel like one of my favorite things during that time was just researching new neurotopics, learning about them, diving into the literature on PubMed, um, and then writing about it and just conveying it to, you know, not only scientists and other students, but I feel like I had a chance to just, you know, disseminate this to the general public too. Um, and I think that's where I figured out that, you know, like doing the science is a lot of fun. But for me and my personality, I thought this was a bigger fit.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 5:46

Wow, that's that's really impressive. Um, back to the time that you were dealing uh and you were doing your PhD and you're working with patients with traumatic brain injury. Were that were these athletes or were these people in like accidents? What what kind of patients were you dealing with at that point?

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 6:04

So actually I focused on animal research. So all of like the treatments I was focusing on were in mouse models. Um and so I definitely got desensitized to this because at first, you know, you get a little emotional about it. Like I have pets, and you know, you want to get attached to them, but you have to think, okay, like I'm helping the greater good. Um, but I feel like where I was fortunate enough not just to have the typical basic science training is um I got grant funding in my um second and third year a T32. And part of that requirement is we had to shadow a physician that was related to your work that you were doing. And so what was cool in our department, we're very collaborated with the neurosurgery department. So for one whole summer, I did get to collaborate with a pediatric neurosurgeon. And I mean, it was amazing. I got to scrub in it on a lot of rare cases. And so I it was like it's really cool just seeing what you're doing at the bench and how you know that can translate to the bedside.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 7:09

Wow. That those sounds like a life-transforming experience. Um, but it's it's interesting in your uh career at some point you you made a decision to pursue um the PhD rather than the MD. Um, what was in what was involved in that decision making?

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 7:28

You know, I always loved science. I love medicine. I think I kind of dabbled just as a kid, if you know, I would be a physician or a scientist. And I think just the older I got, um, especially more like in college and during a master's, I felt like the questions I was gravitating more to is why is this happening? Why is this working? What is it that's causing this disease rather than treating the patient? Um, I think that was like one aspect. And um, I think also just kind of growing up being an athlete. I'm an only child, so I'm very independent and comfortable with that. And I feel like I'm an extroverted introvert, if that makes sense. So people can exhaust me after a while. So I thought it's probably best to stick to the scientist route instead of you know pursuing becoming a physician and interacting with, you know, dozens of patients every day.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 8:26

Yeah, I'm I'm sure the all that important work that that you've done is is helped thousands of patients. And, you know, again, you're also in uh dedicated and committed to, you know, you know, making uh science accessible, right? Not just to the general population, but to to the you know, physicians and and uh you know clinicians. Um kind of tell me a little bit about that and how how you do that.

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 8:57

Yeah, I feel like, you know, just coming from academia, right? It's such a different experience than, you know, being in private practice or, you know, just being a physician, like working outside the hospital setting or even working in tech. It's just it's very, I don't want to say siloed, but I I feel like you're just kind of like stuck in this niche and you're just you're kind of protected from the outside world. Um, and you know, there's people love it. That's great. It wasn't for me. Um, there's nothing wrong with it. Like, you know, I think that we've done a lot of good research that has come through academic science. But one thing I really noticed, especially through my experience being a PhD student, is I think there still is this kind of like antiquated way of thinking of becoming a scientist. And like some things I wish I'd learned during my path was alternate career paths instead of just being, you know, a bench top scientist. Um, I wish there was more like mentoring workshops or like, I don't know, Zoom sessions to discuss about this. Um, and then also I feel like just with the science I was doing during my PhD, a lot of the work is just so cool and exciting. But, you know, most people are never gonna hear about this, right? Unless, you know, you're a physician or scientist and you're reading academic journals. Um, so that was kind of my mission. I was like, you know what, science shouldn't stay behind academic institutions. We should bring this to the public, especially, you know, research or current technology that's being used right now. And let's, you know, disseminate this to the public just in a storytelling manner. And I feel like that's what I've really tried to bring home is to just tell the science in a storytelling way, just to engage your audience where not only are they learning from this, but you know, you're building credibility with them because you're an expert in the field. Um, then also like they're building trust. And I feel like they're feeling empowered by learning more about the science and what's going on.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 11:12

Right. And honestly, I was smiling as you were talking about how there's a lot of expectations and being in silos, and oh, you know, you're we tend to in medical training be very compartmentalized, and you know, um, you follow a lot of people whose traditional path, at least for as being a physician, is like, okay, well, you're just you're you're down this path, and and you know, we're we're not really groomed to be entrepreneurs or we're we're we're kind of worker bees, you know, and and um so hearing your story about um you know looking to in being able to make this pivot and uh seeing and opening up and uh I've seen you make comments say, look, you know, we've got uh you don't have to have this uh traditional path that you can appeal to a wide group of people and and you know can see that yeah, this this is really what we should be should be uh nurturing, whether it's you know in our med schools or in our PhD programs, and um, you know, because we all become, you know, once once we expand our skill sets, I mean we're you know, I think a lot of what you know we were talking earlier about one of the things um that we want to be able to create in a space is you know, working and trying to combat a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there. Um maybe you could meant say a little bit about that and what your experience is with that.

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 12:36

Yeah, I feel like that's honestly another um huge driver of me creating this platform um is just the way the world is right now. Everybody's basically getting their information from social media. And although this is good, I feel like there's a lot of information that is not accurate. And to combat that, I mean, we just need more professionals like physicians, trained scientists, just to step up on this platform. Um, that way you're not only bringing your credibility to the platform, but you're also bringing a unique skill set of just having an evidence-based perspective. And just by having that, you're able to like sift through a lot of you know, the noise. Um, and so by having a lot of physicians and scientists just kind of like stepping up to the plate, I feel like again, this way of being able to communicate either whatever clinical specialty that you're specializing in, whatever science interests you, if you can just disseminate this to the public in an engaging way. Um, I feel like the key here is trust because there's just so much mistrust with what's going on in science. Um, and I feel like kind of how I've been tackling this is, you know, I always add references and sources to all my posts. So that way, like my audience knows, okay, this is credible. I have um basically kind of um, I want to say like a little mini library on like my link in my bio where people can click through and find the post where I was talking about this source. And if they're interested, they can read more in depth about like what I was discussing in a bite-sized manner. Um, so I feel like by just pushing, you know, references, you're establishing your credibility. That is huge. Um, but then on the other hand, I feel like it's tricky too, because sometimes you might have to talk about topics that are uncomfortable, like talking about psilioscibin with cancer patients. And I feel like a lot of these topics can get kind of clickbaity in a way in a way. And so, you know, I feel like people are naturally curious, but without having like the bigger picture, I feel like that's where misinformation can kind of creep in. So I feel like it's our job to kind of like step in, talk about this, show them the evidence, but also show them the limitations, and that way people can engage like in a responsible manner.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 15:13

Right. And we were we were talking a little bit about uh earlier about some of the challenges to do schedule one research. So whatever people don't know what scheduled one means, these are uh typically types of drugs that the government has assigned to certain categories. And here we go, yeah, you know, for controlled medications and you know, psilocybin and cannabis. We were talking about cannabis. Um, but these are very difficult to study uh compounds, even though um you know they've been they've been around for centuries, and more recently in medicine we've used them. So we know the potential therapeutic value, but it can be frustrating because we're scientists. We'd like to, okay, well, we really like design a study, and here's how we like to do that to prove that point. But on the other hand, when we know that something that may be helpful for patients, you know, we want to put our patients' interest first. So I want to be true to my research self, but at the same time, I want to do the best for the patient. So um, and I can I can hear that's the kind of approach I think you have. I can hear that in you. So I'm I applaud you for that. And I hopefully one day we'll be talking about doing schedule one research on we'll come back and do a psilocybin or a cannabis talk, something like that would be fun because everybody asks about it. So I'd love to take a time to do it.

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 16:34

I mean, I with these, I feel like with the public, it's just kind of breaking that stigma too, right? Um, you know, a lot of people just think of you know cannabis research in one manner, and I'm like, you know, it's not bad, especially if you're monitoring this appropriately.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 16:53

Right. And I am a cannabis certifying physician in the state of Florida, so I am nodding my head in total agreement. And uh I'm I'm ready to be uh taking that the next step forward. So maybe may maybe sooner rather than later, but we'll see. Who knows? Um I thought you've uh made a great point about uh we're uh kind of attacking disinformation, uh putting everything out there um and doing it with integrity. And honestly, I've I can say that I've spent the last few hours reviewing and looking at your Instagram reels and uh in the interest of research, right? Not just scrolling on Instagram. Um sometimes that happens, but you know, it's Instagram, it's it's what it's for. But I'm so impressed with the the the quality and the content, you know, and you know, getting back to being able, um, I know part of what you do is to create this visual impact for learning. And I was like, wow, you know, I wish I wish this was around when I was in med school because you know, then it all kind of makes sense. You're like, okay, you're not just out there saying, okay, here's you know, complement, you know, C2 or C14, whatever, you know, you're like, okay, you still can really make this connection. Um, but I, you know, these uh for these reels are short, but they're they're very dense with science. And I'm like, wow, that's that's the real deal. So uh hats off to be able to create such uh succinct and uh effective content.

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 18:27

Yeah, I feel like that's a challenge like a lot of scientists have and struggle with. And I feel like, you know, I've practiced this heavily, even like with my dissertation, kind of, you know, I was always taught, okay, you should be able to break things down so your grandmom can understand it, right? Um so I felt like, you know, I would practice with like my husband, my family. Um, and it's just it's been fun. And like a lot of my friends, I mean, I have a lot of friends that are in healthcare, but some aren't, and they're curious and want to know. So I mean, just even practicing having conversations with them, and you know, they give good feedback of like, hey, you could have explained this a little better, you could have broken this down, or no, this makes sense. I get this now. Um, but it's been crazy because, you know, like you said, you're just used to learning in a classroom setting. And so I've kind of had to get like more creative, more with like the marketing side, I guess you would say, of how to just like hook people in so then they stay for the message. Um, so it's really cool just to see what all is out there. Um, and you know, I haven't even like utilized all these different platforms, but I mean it's I there's just it's untapped potential, and that's why I kind of got into it because I saw, you know, there's a lot of physicians and scientists talking about the misinformation, what's going on with like the current state of our government, but I was like, there's not much that's educational out there for people. Um, so it's been fun.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 20:00

Well no, I'm great important work you're doing. Um, tell me a little bit about you founded uh Brain and Beyond. What's that all about?

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 20:09

Yeah, so um basically I this sounds so cliche, but like in the middle of the night I was asleep and just had some ideas of you know, how can I like start conveying this just to general audiences? So brain, because neuroscience is my favorite subject. And so I thought, you know what, let me expand this into three areas neuroscience, immunology, and oncology, just kind of based off of my experience. And that way I have a lot more content to work with. Um, and so I thought, you know, I'm just gonna like kind of make a theme and rotate through this weekly. Um, and then from there, I thought, okay, I need to like kind of mix it up day to day if I'm posting weekly, just to hook people to get them to stay. Um, so that's where I started thinking of, you know, different themes like myth busters. People love that. It's clickbait, but I'm like to make it in an educational way. Um, you know, like fun fact Friday, same thing. It's a little clickbaity, but I'm like, no, I'm gonna use this to hit them with the science. Um, so I sprinkled that in, you know, with some like tech for Tuesdays, just to make people kind of like what's going on in the world with advancements in each one of those fields. Um, and I thought throwback science, hey, this would be a cool way to talk about history in the field. Um, so that's kind of how that came to be. I mean, when I created it, I thought, okay, my friends are gonna be kind and supportive, and that's probably gonna be the only people that are gonna follow this. And I'll just use this to expand my portfolio. But it's really taken off. And I feel like what really kind of got me to the next level, um, Harvard has a free educational platform called Lab Exchange that you can access online. And so they have an Instagram account, and I reached out to them because I saw that they do like to collaborate with a lot of scientists, and I just said, hey, would this be something you would be interested in collaborating with? And so they, you know, look through a lot of my content, loved it, and then I the rest is history. I've had, you know, more and more collaborations with different people. So it's been like a really cool um and fulfilling journey. And I feel like really the most fulfilling part of it is, you know, I'll get like a lot of people in my DMs that are like, hey, I would love to like learn about, you know, from your experience what you did through your PhD. I'm thinking of doing, you know, this, or, you know, oh, I had a family member who had a stroke. Um, these topics, this is making this like helping me understand this process better. Um, so I think that's like the humanizing aspect of this is that at the end of the day, like I am helping people, which is really, really cool.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 23:06

Very impactful work. And congratulations on it. Sounds like it just keeps scaling to to new heights and and and and all that accessibility and and reaching all the physicians and clinicians. Um it sounds like you're you're spot on with that. So congratulations on that.

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 23:23

Thank you.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 23:24

Um, you also have the your uh your writing uh Endosymbiont, is that correct? You've been part of that platform.

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 23:32

Yep. So um that's the German biotech company that I was previously mentioned. Um, so they focused all of their writing onto a website called Medium. Um, and so all their publications go there. And so what I do for them is um basically there's probably like four or five of us writers. And so we just kind of like split the work evenly. Um, but they assign us a different cell type in the body, and some of it, you know, I have no knowledge about outside of like my neuroscience wheelhouse. And so here again, that's where it's like so useful having a PhD, right? Because you're having a dive down in the literature. Learn about this, where you're kind of creating a literature review. Um, and what's cool there, and I feel like my language there has translated nicely to my brain and beyond, is their focus too, is to make this educational um and very engaging for their audiences.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 24:34

Well, what I've seen in in your content, I think that's that's very approachable, very accessible. Um, I can imagine just what a great resource that that would that is and and would be for for people.

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 24:47

Yeah, yeah. I feel like the biggest takeaway, right, is a lot of people just kind of have this preconcieved notion that science is intimidating, and it doesn't need to be. You know, it can be fun to learn this.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 24:58

That's right. I'm it it's I'm having a great time, honestly. I'm I'm gonna be looking at those Instagram reels uh soon. I like the one with the the pets, you know, how our pets make us feel better. I'm like, oh yeah, the it's all about the oxytocin, right? All those feel love uh and feel good uh brain chemicals. So um one last thing. Tell me um a little bit, what do you see coming down the pike? You know, what what what gets you excited about the the future of neuroscience right now?

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 25:30

Um, well, like the future, I think, with like just the way like tech is headed is just so cool, just kind of seeing where we were, you know, like in the early 1900s, like with lobotomies, which were so barbaric. And so all moving forward to 2025. I mean, uh brain computer interfaces are like the big hit right now. Um, and I was actually reading there's a publication in Nature about a month ago. Um, I can't remember what the clinical trial was. I think I wrote it down. The Brain Gate 2 trial, anyways. But it was a patient who had ALS. And so they implanted this device in his brain. Um, and just by using different algorithms, um, basically these signals were interacting with his neural activity and actually allowed him to produce natural sounding speech. So I mean, we're we're living in the future. I think just with how neuroscience is evolving right now, it's really, really fascinating.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 26:36

Wow. One last question. Um, the other day I was uh doing a talk and we talked about biomarkers and we were talking about um Alzheimer's, and there's more recently some biomarkers that have come out as uh uh P Tau 217 and some other things that are look really good for identifying uh maybe Alzheimer's patients at an earlier stage of the disease. Um and one person asked me and said, Okay, well, look, do you think that there could be like a vaccine out there on the horizon that uh might be possibility for people with Alzheimer's? And we're as a research organization, we have done all kinds of vaccine studies, not just infectious disease. We've done acne, we've done all kinds of things. And at first I was like, wow, that seems kind of like a long shot. But then thinking it through a little bit, so I was said, well, maybe I wouldn't rule anything out. So I didn't know if you had a thought on that.

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 27:35

No, I mean, that's a really interesting point. Um, I think we are closer to that than we were, you know, 20, 30 years ago. I think we still have a long ways to go. And then I think that's another reason why neuroscience is so fun to work in the field because it's tricky. There's a lot we still don't know. Um, like in a case of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's brain injury, and it's just there's so many players to the puzzle. And I think that's what makes it so tricky to treat. You know, you think, okay, it's just this one part of the immune system that's causing it. Well, no, wait, let's step back. Okay, well, then the aging process is a part of this. So it's very multifaceted, and I think that's I we're getting there, but it's we still have a ways to go.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 28:28

Yeah, I'm hoping they're gonna have it all figured out by the time I get to that age where I may have already gotten there, I'm not sure, but I don't know. I'm hoping they're gonna figure uh figure it out sooner than later. Um, last thing, any question uh that you wished I had asked you or would you like to add to add to?

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 28:45

Um, well, I was just gonna say, you know, just thank you for having me and like kind of what you were saying too of like my journey. I feel like what's been cool is this has really led me to more of like an entrepreneurship role, which are things that scientists and physicians don't really know unless you are kind of like thrown into it. Um, and one thing I did want to bring up that I'm like really proud and excited of is I am launching my first mentorship cohort this October, um, which will be focused more on PhD students, like early science communicators in their career, um, science writers, just to give them like more feedback and personalize, like, you know, one-on-one, um, in-person exercises, just stuff you don't get in academia, right? And so, you know, I feel like my journey's been really insightful. And then a lot of the lessons and failures I've made along the way, that's how you grow. And so if I can impart this knowledge on someone else, then I feel like, you know, I'm doing my job. Um, so we'll see. I mean, still growing. It's fun, it's a journey. I mean, I love that I've like gotten to know Chase, Through Med Evidence! I love what you guys are doing here. I mean, it's really impressive.

Dr. Erich Schramm: 30:05

Well, you're welcome back anytime. And I love to pick your brain more on psilocybin and cannabis and anything else you you want to talk about. We we're we'll be here for you. So, but thank you so much for your time today. And best of luck. I know you're gonna knock it out of the park with your program. So thank you. Thank you again so much.

Dr. Christy Kestner, PhD: 30:29

So nice meeting and talking with you today. Thank you.

Announcer: 30:32

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