Nine square meters in peace. In this blind office with white walls of the Institut Curie, in Paris, Sarah Watson, happy to have recovered this little cocoon of reflection, arises between two worlds: her nearby laboratory, brightened up with plants, and main place of research of his team on sarcoma (malignant soft tissue or bone tumor) and, at the end of a maze of doors and corridors, the collective care office shared with the hospital teams. Two atmospheres at the antipodes for this 37-year-old pioneer with a sunny face, who, since her higher education, rubs shoulders with multidisciplinary approaches.
Arrived among the first in the Paris medicine competition at the age of 17, she followed the advice of the dean of the faculty and attempted the competition for the Ecole Normale Supérieure, “missed by one point in Paris, but succeeded in Lyon”, still remembers this stubborn worker, who frankly asserts “still suffer from impostor syndrome”. Now a doctor and biologist, she is the first oncologist at the institute to pursue a dual career of research and treatment for six years. This pioneering choice paved the way for other transverse profiles.
Protected time for research
“My thesis supervisor, Professor Olivier Delattre [Prix Inserm 2022], asked me if I really wanted to combine the two professions… I answered in the affirmative, but the first years were very difficult, care was in fact always a priority, research being done mainly in the evenings and on weekends. ends. » Financed for two years by the Bettencourt Foundation, Sarah Watson held firm, then… was helped in high places.
The Scientific Council of the Institut Curie – made up of internationally renowned researchers and chaired by the British geneticist Edith Heard – in front of which she passes, in 2019, supports her double approach, and the institute frees up protected time for her research. A breath of fresh air, then resources, for those who recognize having to work on themselves to set limits: “Recently, I have been able to stop systematically answering the hospital on-call phone”, small object still kept close at hand on the table during our interview.
“Sarah is extremely determined to advance research and therapeutic approaches on the patients she cares for, who have very, very serious pathologies, with still low success rates”comments Professor Olivier Delattre. « He is a strong and very important personality in this continuum between research and clinical practice, which is somewhat the DNA of the institute, with our founder, Marie Curie. »
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