Female doctor has important research on allergies

Dr. Trinh Hoang Kim Tu has 29 scientific articles published in international journals (of which he is the main author of 14 articles), 4 scientific articles published in domestic journals and participates in many volunteer activities for the community...

Bringing her baby, only a few months old, to receive the 2023 Golden Globe Award for outstanding young scientists, Dr. Trinh Hoang Kim Tu was happy to both fulfill her duty as a woman and be honored for her research achievements.

To help more patients

Having nurtured the dream of becoming a doctor since childhood to be able to treat her parents, Dr. Trinh Hoang Kim Tu (now 35 years old) has tried her best in her studies. When she became a general practitioner student at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ho Chi Minh City, while assisting her teachers in scientific research, Ms. Tu realized that there were patients who were successfully treated, but there were also many cases of failure. So why? Ms. Tu began to have the idea of finding the answer and the student that year realized that depending on each patient, there are different characteristics, tentatively called risk factors that make the patient more likely to get sick, which we have not yet found.

Nữ tiến sĩ có những nghiên cứu quan trọng về bệnh dị ứng- Ảnh 1. — *Dr. Trinh Hoang Kim Tu (sitting) is passionate about research topics on food allergies...*

"To know who has risk factors, we must understand how the disease mechanism affects each individual, the only way is to do more in-depth research," the female doctor said. So after graduating from university and working for a while, Ms. Tu went to Korea to study a combined master's and doctoral program at the Department of Allergy - Clinical Immunology at Ajou University Hospital (Korea). Talking about the opportunity to come to the field of allergy - immunology, the female doctor said: "When I was a student, I followed an Associate Professor - Doctor of the school to learn how to do research on respiratory diseases, in this type of disease there are groups of allergies and immunity. At that time, this was a very new field, research facilities were not available, my own knowledge was also limited, so I was determined to study and started to like the research field more because I could help many patients, instead of just treating one person at a time." The work that Dr. Tu was most proud of and satisfied with while she was a graduate student in Korea was the topic of late-onset asthma in the elderly. With her research topic, Ms. Tu discovered the substance OPN (Osteopontin). If this substance increases, it will be a sign that people are at higher risk of asthma when they get older. Therefore, this substance has the potential to be used to predict asthma onset in the elderly.

Nữ tiến sĩ có những nghiên cứu quan trọng về bệnh dị ứng- Ảnh 2. — *...and hopes to help allergy patients in Vietnam receive treatment like in the world.*

In 2020, when she returned to Vietnam, Ms. Tu accepted a job at the Center for Molecular Biomedicine, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ho Chi Minh City. Here, the school assigned her the task of establishing a clinical allergy and immunology research group, and Ms. Tu was the group leader. The young female doctor said that in Korea, asthma is a matter of concern, but for Vietnamese people, allergies (food, drugs), atopic dermatitis are more important; so when she returned to Vietnam, she changed her research direction. And this is also the topic that helped Ms. Tu win the Golden Globe 2023. Ms. Tu said: "First, when I read the documents, I saw that Vietnamese people eat a lot of seafood, so the rate of allergy reports is also very high. Some allergic patients have mild symptoms, but there are also severe cases such as anaphylaxis. My question is how to diagnose and manage people with food allergies better. And my research will find an effective method for this problem." To diagnose seafood allergies well and correctly, the young female doctor said that 3 techniques should be used: skin prick test, cell activation assessment and molecular allergen. More specifically, Ms. Tu shared: "Previously, to diagnose allergic patients, in the skin prick test technique, we often put the allergen on the hand to test. However, in Vietnam today, the source of allergens cannot be imported, so I brought the allergen creation technique from Korea. That means we take Vietnamese seafood ourselves, separate the allergen inside, and then use it to test the patient." With this technique, we will not have to depend on foreign allergen sources, but the cost is also cheaper and more suitable for Vietnamese people. "My research aims to isolate and produce allergens that are suitable and specific to Vietnamese people and develop in vitro testing techniques to increase the accuracy in diagnosis, prognosis of allergies, and the risk of reactions in patients to each type of food consumed. Thanks to that, it can help reduce severe reactions in patients," the female doctor shared passionately.

Overcoming my phobia of mice to do research

To achieve success in allergy research is a process that Ms. Tu made efforts and proactively equipped herself with knowledge and skills while still in Korea. Ms. Tu said: "When I was in Korea, I also did a topic on food allergies and drug allergies, but it was only a side topic. So every time I finished my topic, I asked the professor to let me go to the clinic to observe patients with food and drug allergies. Usually, I would work in the lab from 8am, and at 6am, I would go to the department to follow the professor to the emergency room, see how doctors here diagnose patients and record those techniques." Talking to Ms. Tu, even though she was talking about her research projects, she was also very humorous. That also seemed to be a way for her to help herself relax and feel more comfortable after hours of burying herself in research. Talking about the difficulties, Ms. Tu did not forget to tell the tragicomic story of the times when she threw away the mouse she was holding in her hand while doing experiments because of her fear of this animal. Ms. Tu said: "Thinking back, it's really funny. Because I used to be very afraid of mice, but when doing research, I had to hold, play with and do experiments on this animal. There were times when I was holding it in my hand, the mouse struggled and I threw it away (laughs )".

Nữ tiến sĩ có những nghiên cứu quan trọng về bệnh dị ứng- Ảnh 3. — *Ms. Tu and the clinical allergy and immunology research group at the Center for Molecular Biomedicine, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ho Chi Minh City*

As a doctor, having never done research before and knowing nothing about laboratories, when she came to Korea, Ms. Tu had to face many challenges. "The first days were very difficult, sometimes I wanted to go back to my country. The difficulty at that time was how to learn experimental techniques in a relatively short time. People have to study for several years about those techniques, but I only had a short time to study and then had to practice immediately. When I first started doing experiments, I failed continuously, I had to learn to find out why it was wrong and explain the reason to the professor to ask to do it again," the young female doctor recalled. After many years of tireless research, Ms. Tu is happy to be on the right path that she wants: "I am trying to help Vietnamese patients' rights be equivalent to those in the world. Because an allergy patient abroad will be given about 5 tests to confirm the diagnosis, then treated with medication. In Vietnam, on the contrary, there is a lack of allergen sources, or if the patient does not go to the right specialist, sometimes just listening to the medical history and guessing, the medication is not good. I really hope that the things I do, even though small, will help patients have a reasonable diagnosis method, and control the disease more closely". Currently, Ms. Tu is both teaching and researching and examining and treating allergies and immunology. Ms. Tu is happy to have built a research group specializing in allergies and immunology, and this is also one of the first groups following the clinical-laboratory linkage model at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ho Chi Minh City.

Thanhnien.vn

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