Two years, seen from two angles: “A great SHoW!”

October 2022 marks the halfway point at LBG-SHoW, the Ludwig Boltzmann Research Group “Senescence and Healing of Wounds”. A good moment to look back on what happened during the first two years of the project and, at the same time, look into its future. In this interview, SHoW’s two co-directors, Heinz Redl and Raffael Himmelsbach, both give a personal review of the past two years. They talk about major and minor successes of the research group, provide information about sharing the management for SHoW and express their wishes for the future of the team, as well as their research areas.

Looking back on two years of SHoW: How was it for you to start this extraordinary group and manage it together?

Heinz Redl (HR): For me, the last two years were simply a great SHoW! The research group has developed just the way we had imagined before the actual start. I am very grateful that we could gather such a wonderful team* – starting with you, Raffael. And this even though we had to overcome quite some challenges. After all, we founded SHoW right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we were forced to do all the interviews online. That was new and unusual, for me at least, but we were very successful. For the biomedical part of the team, we managed to hire the very two people we were eager to work with, Mikolaj and Nadja.  

Your impressions of the first two years of SHoW, Raffael? 

Raffael Himmelsbach (RH): I completely agree with you, Heinz. The research group has developed nicely. We had a start-up phase. During the first months I worked at the Open Innovation in Science Center of the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft (LBG). Then, in the summer of 2020, I moved into our office in the 7th floor of the AUVA Traumazentrum Wien (Lorenz Böhler).  

HR: You’ve settled in well. 

RH: Yes. Before we moved in, the office had been used for meetings and as a storage room for the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute (LBI) for Traumatology. It has significantly changed since we started, I would say. As Heinz mentioned earlier, building our team had a strong impact on the first months. It took a lot of coordination, as well as joint discussions and decisions – regarding who we are trying to find, for which position and how to implement that. We supported Mikolaj in setting up the biomedical team and clearly managed to assemble a great team with Nadja, Razieh, Helene, Karla, Barbara and Tomaž.  

Coming back to the second part of our question, the management of the group: each of you is coming from a different background and yet you share the task of leading SHoW. How do you approach this split position? 

HR: I see it as a wonderful game of ping-pong. From my point of view, it works out smoothly.  

 RH: Yes, ping-pong describes our collaboration as co-directors quite well. We do not necessarily depend on each other to accomplish our tasks or need to coordinate constantly. Issues that affect the whole team we discuss with each other, of course. Some administrative assignments SHoW has to implement because of specifications coming from the LBG – these we do not have to work out between us. Content-wise, each of us has his specific scope.

Looking back now, and especially in the context of research and development, two years is not that long. What has SHoW already achieved?  

RH: We started during the COVID-19 pandemic and still managed to build a great team. This is a success in itself, I would say. Then, there are various smaller and larger highlights. These definitely include the publication of our report on the current situation of wound care in Austria, the “Wundbericht”, and making contacts with people who deal with wounds on a professional level or in private. Thanks to Conny’s and Deborah’s active networking, stakeholders in the domain of wound care now reach out to us by themselves. When Marie joined the team, she opened up new perspectives and contributed many ideas to the work of SHoW. Now I’ll leave it to you, Heinz, to talk about the achievements of the biomedical part of the research group.  

HR: A major highlight for me is the fact that we have already proven that our initial ideas for the group work out and will continue to work out. Initially, there had been some doubts about that. I would like to highlight our publication on this previously unknown activation zone around a wound that appears very quickly, then it is present until healing, and finally disappears again. We expect a lot from “the zone”, as we call it. There is also a lot of progress in our work on vascularized skin equivalents. Thanks to that, we could reduce the number or animal models we need for the other projects. 

What are the challenges in a multidisciplinary collaboration?  

RH: It is a learning process. As administrative director, I am responsible for a team including people whose field I’m not an expert in. That also leads to discussions, of course, because of different working cultures. It is a constant learning process and an ongoing review process, which makes me realize where my own ideas fit and where they are limited.  I have learnt how important exchange is in biomedical research. Research groups create networks by sharing samples, methodological expertise, and access to infrastructure. I was unaware of how important this is to boost productivity.

HR: For me, the biggest challenge in the beginning was that I had to listen to social scientists and thus people from a completely different field for an extended period – and accept that I do not fully understand everything straight away. They use a very specific vocabulary.

But doesn’t biomedicine have these particular terms and expressions, too?

HR: Yes, sure, every research discipline has its own lingo. But collaborating so closely is unusual, I would say. At the same time, it is very exciting. I always like to engage with new topics and fields, and I enjoy learning during this process. 

RH: SHoW has its own bingo with abbreviations that we often use within the group. We have created it half for fun, half for real.

HR: The biomedical field is particularly challenging when it comes to abbreviations.

RH: It is part of our job to ask for clear and understandable explanations of the terms or abbreviations members of the team use during the meetings. When working on a PhD thesis, people are very much focused and hence, thinking outside the box is not that easy.

HR: Within the team, contents should always be presented in a way that everyone is able follow. In the end, we are cooperating in an extremely interdisciplinary framework. 

What has the partnership between biomedical and social science inspired in you up to now? Are there any new ideas that have emerged? 

RH: Several team members are working together on an article on cancer and wound healing. These two topics are often discussed in a similar context. Within this text, we want to explore why cancer and wound healing are interrelated and what can be deduced from that for the research on wounds. The process until each of us uses the same definition or term for the exact same matter is both exciting and challenging. It takes some time until everyone has developed an understanding for the perspective of the other discipline. I hope that we can use the skills we have already acquired during our joint writing efforts for another topic. For example, there are still some clear definitions missing in research, such as what is impaired wound healing. Scientists do not always talk about the same thing in this context.

HR: For this reason we are organizing the Wiggers Conference in Vienna in June 2023. During this event, we want to develop definitions for various basic terms within biomedical research. We are all talking about senescence, but it is not defined precisely up to now when a cell can really be considered senescent and when it cannot. Our team is very happy that many leading scientists in our field have already confirmed that they will join this conference. 

RH: In this aspect we clearly think alike, Heinz. I sometimes also take the part of the “definitional policeman” within the team, pointing out, that we have to be very precise when it comes to terminology.

a. When the two co-directors of LBG-SHoW take a look back on the first two years of this jointly led project – there is a lot they can talk about (Photo: LBG/Moritz Nachtschatt).

At SHoW, working as a team can be many things, but it is certainly never boring (Photo: Raffael Himmelsbach).

What is SHoW up to in the next two years, until the end of the project?  

RH: One of Deborah and Marie’s goals is to develop a health intervention and test it in practice. It will aim at encouraging people with chronic wounds to seek help more quickly. It shall give them access to an appropriate medical treatment. Another goal is that Deborah will successfully complete her PhD thesis on the potential of “value-based healthcare” for wound care. Her thesis focusses on health policy aspects in the field of wound care and healing. Deborah is using the experiential knowledge of patients, family members, health care workers, and caregivers in her research. Conny and I are just broadening our understanding of the state of wound care in Austria. We are working on an estimate of the prevalence of chronic wounds and the corresponding costs for the health care system. Heinz and I would also like to organize a symposium towards the end of the project. We want it to picture both domains of SHoW.

HR: In the biomedical part of the research group, there are three PhD students – Helene, Tomaž and Karla. They have already collected a lot of good data and results and the experiments are still going on. I am convinced that each of them will finish the PhD project successfully. We are also submitting some grants, because we want to continue our biomedical work beyond 2024. There are many topics and ideas coming from SHoW, which are of interest to the LBI for Trauma. I am very convinced that we will be able to continue our research. 

SHoW is based on the concept of Open Innovation in Science. How does the work of the research group reflect on that?

RH: In the founding phase of SHoW, we mainly specified the agenda of the biomedical research team. It was not yet defined how people with chronic wounds and their experiences could be integrated into our work. We first had to find some orientation. For this purpose, we started writing our “Wundbericht”. We now have a cooperation with Barbara Prainsack from the University of Vienna, Deborah’s PhD project. Moreover, people with chronic wounds are not organized in Austria. Chronic wounds are still very stigmatizing. Therefore, we want to develop new approaches to improve health care together with people affected by this disease. For us, Open Innovation in Science means that we document the experiences of the community and include them into our innovation process. At SHoW, we refer to that as co-creation.  

HR: I would like to emphasize that for publishing the “Wundbericht”, you have collected and evaluated data on wounds and wound care in Austria for the first time since 2015. Coming back to Open Innovation in Science, in the biomedical research of SHoW this concept is reflected in Tomaž’s PhD project, for example. He is developing a database with RNA sequencing from skin cells. The RNA shows which sections of the genetic material are being “transcribed” and translated into proteins. The database will be freely accessible on the Internet, other scientists can work with it. An open approach to data that is already available can contribute to facilitate research. Mikolaj has quickly managed to gain many international cooperation partners. Thereby, we have access to samples and material for our laboratories. It is also great to see that these groups want to collaborate with us. 

Your eyes have started shining now, Heinz, haven´t they?  

 HR: Yes, science is incredibly exciting every day. 

Christmas is just around the corner: If you could wish for something for SHoW and its research area, what would it be?   

RH: I wish that as soon as the Christmas holidays are starting, we will have contracts and agreements for all our plans. This would enable us to successfully begin the new year. Having this certainty would be great. 

Do you also have a wish for the research on chronic wounds? 

RH: There should be a bigger focus on nutrition in connection with chronic wounds. It is well known from both practice and literature that many older people do not eat well. They are malnourished or even undernourished. This also affects wound healing. Taking a participatory approach would suit very well for this topic, because nutrition is a domain for experts and at the same time an inherent part of daily life.

What do you wish for, Heinz?  

HR: I see this as a wish to Father Christmas: I would like to have a new building for us to continue our research. It was challenging to find space for our team at the LBI for Traumatology. I particularly want to thank the institute’s director Johannes Grillari in this context. He is also frequently contributing to our questions and efforts and actively supports SHoW. 

Any wish for the area of biomedical research? 

HR: That we will be able to continue working in a multidisciplinary way. 

Thank you very much for the interview! 

* Not mentioned here, but equally important for the team: Without Susi Windwarder´s cautious administration, SHoW could not handle its daily routine. Veronika Hruschka manages the ongoing research and co-founded the group. Edeltraud Günthör is doing PR work for SHoW and is also contributing to science communication. Together with Conny Schneider, she conducted this interview.

31 October 2022