Katarina Misura´s secondment at Open Science

• Post by: fantom
• 30 September 2026
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After months of generating data in the lab, my secondment at Open Science – Lebenswissenschaften im Dialog in Vienna was a refreshing change of perspective, and a reminder of why science communication matters.

Together with Brigitte Gschmeidler and Agnes Mistlberger-Reiner, I worked on teaching material for high school teachers on cancer treatment

We covered topics of current and novel therapies, as well as phases of clinical trials that shape how a drug reaches patients. Researchers know how long it takes for a discovery to make its way from the lab to clinical trials and, finally, to approval. That’s why a real breakthrough feels so exciting. To help students feel that excitement, we built an exercise around a recent example: daraxonrasib, a KRAS inhibitor for pancreatic cancer. KRAS was long considered “undruggable”, so this example shows why every step of a clinical trial matters. Also, we cover topics of critically assessing news on cancer therapy in social media, today’s main source of information for younger students.

Our hope is that students leave the classroom with a clearer understanding of cancer and how it is treated, so they face conversation around it with knowledge rather than fear, and with the critical thinking to judge scientific claims for themselves.

In the end, a breakthrough only reaches its full impact when we share it beyond the lab – something we really foster within the Fantom Project