Inside Thryv - A Conversation with Shannon Hewgill, Research Associate

Curious about the behind-the-scenes of Thryv's oncology program development? Meet Shannon Hewgill, our Research Associate who's work in the lab is helping develop the oncology program from the ground up.

Transcript - Shannon Hewgill, Research Associate

"Hi I'm Shannon, and I'm a research associate at Thryv. The work that I do is on the preclinical side of things, so what we sometimes call the wet lab work. When I describe my job to a L.A. person I basically say I treat cancer cells and immune cells and treat them with drugs and see what they do. That's a highly simplified explanation, but my dad-to-day can vary a lot. Sometimes I have longer experiments in the lab, other days I have a bunch of smaller things and I'm running between lots of things, but I'm also responsible for everything before and after the experiment. I'm planning them based on literature, I'm ordering everything I need, and then after the experiment I'm doing all the data analysis and preparing figures. So there really is no average day , but the work that I'm doing lays the foundation for what we bring to the clinic. It tells us what drugs might be interesting to combine our drug with, which types of cancer are the most promising. It really just lays the groundwork for our clinical research."

What was your career trajectory that brought you to Thryv? "I'm pretty early on in my scientific career. I finished up my Masters a couple of years ago. I did a Master's in Immunology at McGill and then I graduated in the height of the pandemic and started working for a clinical research organization for a couple of years. That was my introduction to working in the industry, and working in cancer research, but I was looking for something different, and that's when I found Thryv."

What motivates you to be relentless in our mission to treat rare diseases? "I'm basically a huge science nerd, and I love the work in a lab and love conducting my own experiments. When I can apply that to a bigger picture, like what we're doing here at Thryv, that makes the work that I'm doing really meaningful."

What are you passionate about outside of work? "I tend to be someone with too many hobbies. A big one for me would be dance. I've been a dancer for most of my life. I actually trained in classical ballet for 15 years. When I went to McGill for undergrad, I joined a dance group there. I was with that group for my undergrad and masters, so for 6 years and covid interrupted my dance training a bit, but shortly before starting to work with Thryv, I got back into some classical ballet classes and I've been able to maintain that which has been really great. I've also been able to go back to my old dance group, they invited me back as a guest choreographer and it's been really wonderful to have that creative outlet outside of work."

Shannon's message for the Thryv community: "When I first started working here, I was really blown away by how such a small group of passionate and talented people could make such a big impact, and I think really represents who we are at Thryv. We're a really great group of people, it's a great environment to work in, and I'm really excited to see what we do in the future, and to be a part of it.”