"I took this award not as applause for a job well done, but as the weight of 'do even better.'"
Im Mi-hee, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), received the L'Oréal Korea-UNESCO For Women in Science Academic Advancement Award this year. She was recognized for identifying a cellular protein that causes Alzheimer's disease. Because the award has typically gone to life scientists, Im, a chemist, drew even more attention. Meeting in her Daejeon lab 4th, Im said, "It seems they highly valued the fact that I continued my research steadily and that I took on new challenges."
A full member of The Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST), Im previously received the Hansung Science Award, the S-OIL Next-Generation Scientist Award, the Woman Scientist and Engineer of the Year Award, and the RIGAKU-ACCC Award (Asia's top female coordination chemist). Im studied chemistry at Ewha Womans University and received her master's degree from the same graduate school. In 2006, she earned her doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for research in bioinorganic chemistry.
Im said taking on the intractable problem of Alzheimer's disease was not easy. While she was an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, she began looking for a new research topic and grew interested in brain diseases and Alzheimer's, but her Ph.D. adviser discouraged her, saying, "No one has earned tenure by studying this field." Im said, "Even so, I decided I should study the topic I was truly curious about rather than take the safe route," and added, "I steeled myself to produce results within five years, and if it didn't work out, I resolved to return to Korea and start over."
Reality was tough, as her adviser had warned. Until then, it was known that Alzheimer's disease occurs when amyloid-beta protein, which originally protects neurons, escapes outside brain cells and clumps together. The abnormal protein aggregates were thought to destroy neurons. Im studied what role metal ions play in the aggregation of amyloid-beta protein. But at the time, some in academia even argued that Alzheimer's had nothing to do with amyloid-beta, fueling controversy. As a result, securing research funding was not easy.
Im carried her data herself and visited labs across academia. She would attend even small group meetings to present experimental results. In this way, she visited more than 30 labs and did not shy away from department seminars. Whenever results came out, she shared them immediately, and she even organized failures into papers. After holding out for four years, she finally secured research funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Alzheimer's Association.
Along the way, results accumulated one by one. Starting with elucidating how the amyloid-beta protein that causes dementia interacts with metal ions, she expanded her work into multi-target compound research and target discovery for dementia therapeutics. Based on knowledge gained from small-molecule studies, she analyzed the causes of neurodegenerative diseases using a molecular-level network approach and, in the process, identified for the first time in the world the mechanism by which toxic aggregates that cause dementia are formed.
Im said, "We confirmed that metal ions affect proteins and alter their structure, changing their function," adding, "By comprehensively analyzing these links, we are taking on the development of a new class of therapeutics that suppress toxicity and restore cognitive function."
After earning her Ph.D. at MIT, Im conducted postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology. She taught at the University of Michigan for six years before returning to Korea in 2013 as a professor at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST). In 2018, she moved to KAIST.
Im said that basic research is grueling both in the United States and in Korea. As one example, she recounted how a student in her lab conducted a 48-hour cell experiment only to discover at the end that it was contaminated with bacteria. It was not just two days of experimental time lost. Counting the preparation for the cell experiment, at least six months were wiped out.
"Basic science research advances by constantly going through trial and error like this," Im said. "That is why long-term, stable support is all the more essential to make results possible." In that regard, she said that without the Leader (Creative) project from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) secured in 2022, she would not have even attempted to connect the causes of Alzheimer's at a molecular-level network scale.
Im said, "Because I had a research project with long-term support, I was able to try new things rather than stay with what I had always done," and added, "The government prefers eye-catching research results, but disease research takes a long time from identifying the cause. Once results emerge, the ripple effect is large, so I hope they will wait and trust us."
When asked about her goals going forward, Im immediately answered, "To newly discover or create something others have not thought of." She said, "I have run for more than 20 years as an independent researcher, but I have achieved only about 20% of my goals," adding, "Going forward, I want to expand molecular network analysis by disease and organ to reach 30% to 40%, and help colleagues and juniors carry on the remaining parts and produce results."
Lastly, Im said there is something she especially wants to tell her juniors. "Research is such a grueling path that many juniors hesitate to take on new challenges. Even if things are hard now, I want to tell you that you are not alone. There will always be seniors and colleagues beside you ready to help, and if you just reach out your hand, they will join you."