Kirsty Smitten harbors fantasies of one day receiving a Nobel Prize for her scientific work – and rightly so, given that it could save millions of lives and avert a medical catastrophe.
At just 28 years old, she has achieved something that has not been achieved in almost 40 years: she has created a new class of antibiotics.
She is leading the fight against antimicrobial resistance – what the World Health Organization calls one of the greatest threats to global health – in which bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites have evolved over time and become unresponsive to drugs.
In a devastating twist of fate, however, this biochemist extraordinaire must now face the fact that she may not be close to receiving any awards. Kirsty has just months to live after being diagnosed with heart cancer – a deadly disease so rare it only affects two people a year in the UK.
‘How? I mean, really, how did that happen?’ asks Kirsty when we meet at the Cornish Bolthole, where she’s spending a week recovering between rounds of chemotherapy with her chestnut lab, Bailey.
“I eat healthy. I don’t drink much, I don’t smoke. And I exercised every day until my diagnosis.
“There are no words to express how sad I am that I may not be there to see how our potentially Nobel Prize-winning work might unfold. My only hope is that the work will continue without me. I’m sure it will.’
At just 28, scientist Kirsty Smitten (pictured) has achieved something not achieved in almost 40 years: she created a new class of antibiotics
HONORED: Kirsty at Sheffield University where she earned her PhD and founded her research company
Drug-resistant bacteria like MRSA are already responsible for more than a million deaths a year, and it’s predicted that by 2050 that number could rise to 10 million.
With her team at Metallo Bio, a company she founded with support from her PhD supervisor at Sheffield University, Kirsty has developed two antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, including pneumonia and meningitis, that have become resistant to the usual drugs used to treat them and infections developing in wounds and after surgery.
After proving successful in laboratory and animal trials, the next stage of development will be human trials, beginning with hospital-acquired pneumonia. If it proves effective as expected, Kirsty hopes the treatment will be approved by 2030.
This brilliant scientist, who has a PhD in chemistry and was named to Forbes magazine’s prestigious 30 under 30 list for science and healthcare in 2020, also spends her free time raising money for food banks.
IT’S A FACT
There are around 150 cases of antibiotic-resistant infections in NHS hospitals every day, according to the Government.
She has so much more to offer the world, but as a scientist – despite understandable “why me?” moments. Anger – Kirsty is a pragmatist. She knows her cancer was caused by a rare genetic mutation, not her lifestyle. But it’s that anger that drives them to brood over research and try to buy as much extra time as possible with the same tenacity that may ultimately help save the world from antimicrobial resistance.
“I get mad at friends when they say, ‘I’m not feeling well today,'” says Kirsty, examining the needle that’s now firmly lodged in the vein in her right arm, “because then I’m like, ‘You can bitch about it ? to someone else?”
“It’s a bit unfair because I asked her to be normal with me.
“Sometimes anger overwhelms me. I was watching a television news report about a convicted rapist the other night and was upset because I wanted to know why I was only given months to live when there are people like him committing terrible atrocities in the world.
“It seems so unfair. But still, I don’t wish that on the worst person in the world.”
Kirsty has cardiac angiosarcoma – a tumor in her heart. If she were to choose the surgery required to remove it, there is a significant risk that she would bleed to death. And if she survived the operation, she would only gain a few years at most. This type of tumor will grow back and is likely to spread or rupture, causing your heart to fail.
While Kirsty’s legacy could save millions of lives, now she won’t get the chance to pursue her other ambitions: falling in love, settling down and starting a family.
“Thanks to the treatment I am infertile. There was no time for an egg retrieval,” she says.
‘I am also single. It wouldn’t be fair to be in a relationship without knowing how little time I have left.
“And anyway, who wants to date someone with terminal cancer?”
The first inkling that something was seriously wrong came last November when Kirsty woke up one night with excruciating chest pains.
At the time, her family was mourning the loss of her apparently healthy father Kevin, 61, a retired businessman who had suffered a heart attack while playing soccer in Portugal three weeks earlier.
Kirsty’s mother Sharon, 60, took no chances and took her to the emergency department at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital near her home in Solihull.
Kirsty played soccer and hockey every day and went to her gym regularly, so the doctor said he thought her pain was probably a pulled muscle in her chest and planned to send her home on painkillers. But Kirsty, who perhaps has more understanding of the human body than most, refused to go, insisting the pain was too severe and that it warranted an X-ray, which was duly taken. The doctor also performed blood tests.
A few hours later, two medical specialists took her to a room, where they explained that the clotting factor in her blood was elevated, which could indicate a pulmonary embolism — a potentially fatal clot in the lungs. They also said that the right atrium of their heart is three times larger than it should be.
Heparin, an anticoagulant used to reduce the blood’s ability to clot, was given and an emergency CT scan was ordered the following day.
Illustration of antibiotic resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria
Kirsty recalls, “After the scan I saw a consultant and he said, ‘Good news, you don’t have a pulmonary embolism but we found a 6cm mass in your mediastinum [the space in the chest that holds the heart].”
“He said there could be many things other than cancer. But I think even at that point I knew the fate that lay ahead of me.”
An MRI followed. Kirsty was told the mass was irregular and accumulated a lot of dye, which doctors used to make it easier to see on the scan – all bad signs.
She understood more about the terrible effects than her mother and older brothers Matt and Dan.
“I have a good knowledge of oncology through my work and I realized that it is cancer,” she says. “I warned my family that an irregularly shaped mass that collects a lot of dye really isn’t good.”
Due to the delicate positioning of the tumor and the risk of severe bleeding, Kirsty underwent numerous surgeries before her final diagnosis.
“It took three months, seven scans, 15 blood tests, a minimally invasive biopsy and major heart surgery to tell me I had angiosarcoma,” says Kirsty. “It’s the most aggressive type of sarcoma, or what I call ‘the death sentence.’ They told me I only had seven months to live.’
Since her diagnosis on February 8, Kirsty has undergone six rounds of chemotherapy and is taking 48 pills a day. These include strong painkillers, anti-nausea medication, antacids, an antihistamine to ease the chemo-induced rashes, and iron for their low red blood cell counts—all in the knowledge that they can’t save their lives.
Kirsty’s attempt to save the world
Kirsty Smitten’s company, Metallo Bio, may have discovered a solution to one of the world’s most pressing medical problems.
Antimicrobial resistance – when bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites become immune to drugs – is projected to kill 10 million people a year by 2050.
If no solution is found, it means that infections that could easily be treated with antibiotics can no longer be fought. It will also do otherwise simple surgeries where infections are common, such as B. Hernia repairs and hip replacements, which are potentially fatal.
No new antibiotics have been developed in almost 40 years. While finding substances that can kill bacteria is relatively easy, it is extremely difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to find ones that are also non-toxic to humans.
Recently, researchers have started looking for alternatives.
Studies show that certain metals have properties that prevent insects from reproducing and spreading. Metallo Bio has developed two substances with ruthenium, a rare platinum-like metal proven to kill some of the most drug-resistant – and deadliest – insects.
Although they need to be tested for several years, they could eventually be used to coat medical devices like catheters and stents, sites where drug-resistant infections often lurk.
No wonder she also occasionally needs lorazepam — a drug for anxiety and insomnia.
Kirsty has never suffered from these mental illnesses, but they have been a constant unwanted companion since November.
“I would have panic attacks while I was sleeping and before every scan,” she says. “I didn’t know what was happening – I’d never had a panic attack before, so I thought I was having a heart attack.
“The worst thing is waking up in the morning with aches and pains from chemo and wondering if this will be my last day. I have the same fear before I go to sleep, wondering if I might die in the night.
“Hopefully I’m stable enough that that doesn’t happen at the moment. But if I start to deteriorate, it will probably happen very quickly.
Kirsty is as knowledgeable as anyone, having read every scientific paper and personal account available on angiosarcoma. She was in contact with another young British woman with the condition who died in her sleep a few weeks ago.
Kirsty has two main fears as the disease progresses. The first doesn’t look like herself anymore, which is why she wears a cooling cap during chemotherapy, hoping to hold her hair in place. The second concerns the cancer spreading to her brain, affecting her acute intelligence.
She’s also painfully aware of the impact on her family – who didn’t have a chance to process their grief for their father before also dealing with the loss of Kirsty. “Initially, Mum said she couldn’t handle it – but my brothers and I explained that I really need her now and I can’t spend that much energy worrying about her being okay,” says Kirsty. “Since then, she’s been so supportive of me.”
As agonizing as it must be, Sharon accompanies her daughter every step of the way. Kirsty now lives with her at home in Solihull and although this has meant leaving her lab and team in Sheffield, she continues to work from home.
After being told in the Birmingham Heartlands that surgery was too risky, Kirsty did her own research and contacted Professor Robin Jones, Head of the Sarcoma Unit at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital.
He and his surgical team have agreed to meet with Kirsty later this month when she finishes her next cycle of chemotherapy so that she can have surgery soon.
“We don’t know how much time that buys me,” says Kirsty. “Some people have removed the tumor and it takes a year or two before it comes back. Other people have days or weeks. You don’t know what makes that difference.
“I know a woman whose son had an angiosarcoma and it was removed but after six weeks it came back – the cells can’t be completely removed. Unfortunately he died. I’ve also chatted on Facebook with people who have gone two years post surgery and are still in remission so I have to hold on to hope.
“Even after the surgery I have to continue with the chemo to try to keep it in check – so my life will never be the same.”
Kirsty can’t help but hold onto a vague hope that if her cancer is slow to return, her colleagues in oncology will find a cure in time. But given the rarity of her cancer, she knows it’s highly unlikely — and money matters.
IT’S A FACT
Fashion designer Virgil Abloh, former creative director of Louis Vuitton, died of heart cancer in 2021 at the age of 41.
Securing funding to research her own work is challenge enough. This is despite the fact that antimicrobial resistance is already responsible for an estimated 1.2 million deaths worldwide each year. If left unchecked, by 2050 this is projected to increase to ten million a year, replacing cancer deaths and equivalent to one every three seconds.
“I work in medical technology and nobody wants to fund something that is used by just one person in 36 million – that’s how rare my cancer is. So there are no new treatment developments,” she says. “But given that investment funds will not go into rare cancers, I think the government needs to make a specific allocation for research into these cancers.
“Six months ago I had no idea you could get heart cancer and I’m a medical professional. No wonder the diagnosis times are long and there are no treatments – nobody knows about it.”
Kirsty wants to spend the remaining time raising awareness about cardiac angiosarcoma, in the style of Dame Deborah James, who worked tirelessly to raise awareness for colon cancer before she was diagnosed with the disease last year at the age of 40 died.
However, there is a clear difference in the number of people affected: around 43,000 people develop colorectal cancer every year.
“I’ve faced tough odds before,” says Kirsty. “The likelihood of finding a successful alternative to antibiotics was certainly not high, and my type of cancer only affects one in 20 million people.
“In fact, my GP joked that with my track record, it might be worth buying a lottery ticket.
“It’s not in my nature to give up. So I’ll keep working and fighting it for as long as I can.’