DIALOGUE
The Art of Cancer Drug Discovery
By Ashley P. Taylor
Managing Editor
“Whether I’m giving a talk or just gathering my
own data and keeping records of it, I really do stress
a minimalistic aesthetic,” says Vincent DiGiacomo,
a postdoctoral researcher at the New York University Medical Center, “because it really clarifies data,
in my opinion. Not to quote the cliché, but a picture says a thousand words. It’s as true for science
as anything else. I believe if you can understand
what makes art appealing to people and apply that
to how you represent
your data and gather your
data, you can tap a certain visual understanding.
…Being able to represent
your data in certain ways
can make certain patterns
appear that you might
have missed if you’re not
paying attention to, I
don’t want to say aesthetics, but to some degree,
it’s true.”
He uses a computer program to find drugs that
are likely to bind to cancer cells and prevent the
cancers from spreading. The program tests many
potential drugs against many cancer proteins to see
how well they fit together. Candidate drugs are then
tested against live cancer cells in the lab.
Representing these structures in a journal
article—on the page or screen—requires turning
a 3D structure into a 2D
image.
“It often takes me an
hour to generate a structure
figure, because you have to
consider how you want to
make your point. Of course,
there’s color choices,
number one, so that you
can discern two objects
without them clashing.”
He shows me a figure
representing a protein,
DiGiacomo and I
featuring two off-white
discuss art and science
helices, like corkscrews,
at the end of his long
a red ‘loop’ shaped
day in the lab. “Art is
structure that looks a lot
appealing for some
like shoelace licorice, and
reason,” DiGiacomo
multicolored polygons
says, “and whatever that
representing amino acids
reason is, if you apply
Cancer drug modeling. Image courtesy Vincent DiGiacomo
that are altered through
it to other things, then
mutation.
it may become appealing.” He puts his hands up
in a surrendering gesture, shakes his head, and
“What I’m trying to get across is that there are a
cups his hand around his nose to hide his face,
swiveling in his desk chair. “It’s especially important number of ways that I could show this. It c ould be
oriented the way it is, or I could turn it 180 degrees.
for presentations. When you’re communicating
To a certain point, when you’re showing structure,
your science, there’s just no doubt: beautiful
there’s artistic choices, that’s the point, and if you
presentations get the attention that they should
have an understanding of perception and depth and
get, and boring presentations—people check out.”
color you can communicate more effectively.”
Every paper published in a scientific journal includes
Despite his sense of aesthetics, DiGiacomo does
‘figures’—visual representations of data, which may be
graphs or protein models, X-rays, sequence data, and so not profess any particular knowledge of visual art.
In his spare time, DiGiacomo practices a different
on. Designing these figures in order to clearly present
kind of art—the martial art Shaolin kung fu. He
information requires aesthetic skills.
showed me a YouTube video of himself leaping and
DiGiacomo is a structural biologist, which means spinning in a forest with his performance team.
that his work is particularly concerned with shape.
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SciArt in America October 2014