Hila Kakar is a Scientist and a Trainee Clinical Scientist working in the Immunopathology lab at ICPMR, Westmead Hospital. Her curiosity as a child has paved the way for her to look beyond the routine tests and explore how we can use our existing technology in new ways to improve patient care for a range of conditions like Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer’s Disease.

What you do and why it matters?

Every day I per­form, analyse, and trou­bleshoot a range of com­plex immunopathol­o­gy tests. How­ev­er, a big part of my role also involves look­ing beyond the rou­tine, work­ing on trans­la­tion­al research, val­i­dat­ing new bio­mark­ers, and explor­ing how we can use our exist­ing tech­nol­o­gy in new ways to close diag­nos­tic gaps and improve test­ing availability.

At the end of the day, every­thing I do comes back to patient care. Every sam­ple we test rep­re­sents a real per­son wait­ing for answers, and every result helps guide a diag­no­sis or even a treat­ment plan. Even though I don’t see the patient direct­ly, I know the qual­i­ty of our work makes a dif­fer­ence in their jour­ney and that makes me proud.

What I love most is being part of NSW Health Pathology’s big­ger pur­pose – con­nect­ing sci­ence, lit­er­a­ture, data, and inno­va­tion to deliv­er bet­ter care for peo­ple across NSW.

Tell us about your sci­en­tif­ic career path and what inspired you to work in Immunopathology?

My love for sci­ence real­ly start­ed when I was a kid. I was always curi­ous about how things worked and why. That curios­i­ty only grew stronger over time. When I stud­ied Immunol­o­gy at uni­ver­si­ty, I was com­plete­ly drawn to it. It’s com­plex, dynam­ic, and so close­ly tied to human health. That’s when I knew this was the career for me.

My first role was as a trainee sci­en­tist in trans­plant immunol­o­gy back in 2008, which gave me my first real appre­ci­a­tion of how sci­ence direct­ly impacts patient care. After that, I worked in var­i­ous immunol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ries, which gave me broad expo­sure to dif­fer­ent test­ing method­olo­gies, patient pop­u­la­tions, and clin­i­cal chal­lenges. Each expe­ri­ence added a new lay­er to my under­stand­ing of Immunopathology.

I joined NSW Health Pathol­o­gy in 2015 as a sci­en­tist in Immunopathol­o­gy, and five years ago, I was for­tu­nate to move into the trainee clin­i­cal sci­en­tist posi­tion. That role was a real turn­ing point. It’s giv­en me the time, sup­port, and men­tor­ship from my three super­vi­sors to explore inno­va­tion, research, and val­i­da­tion projects that all feed back into improv­ing patient care.

What’s a proud moment or inter­est­ing case you’ve worked on?

There are two moments I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of, one as an advo­cate for sci­en­tists and one as a scientist.

As part of my trainee clin­i­cal sci­en­tist role, I also serve as an RCPA trainee and stu­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Two years ago, I worked on advo­cat­ing for a reduc­tion in the sci­en­tist reg­is­tra­tion and exam­i­na­tion fees. I’m proud to say we were able to make that change hap­pen, and it’s now ben­e­fit­ing many sci­en­tists and trainees across the country.

From a sci­en­tif­ic per­spec­tive, a high­light of my train­ing has been my trans­la­tion­al research on eval­u­at­ing blood neu­ro­fil­a­ment light chain, or NfL, using the ultra­sen­si­tive sin­gle mol­e­cule array plat­form. NfL is a mark­er of neu­ronal degen­er­a­tion, and neu­rol­o­gists can use it to mon­i­tor dis­ease activ­i­ty and treat­ment response in con­di­tions like mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis. Our team at ICPMR West­mead was the first lab­o­ra­to­ry in Aus­tralia to gain NATA accred­i­ta­tion for this assay, which was an incred­i­ble milestone.

Look­ing ahead, we’re explor­ing how this same tech­nol­o­gy could be used to val­i­date blood bio­mark­ers for Alzheimer’s dis­ease, ALS, and even trau­mat­ic brain injury real­ly open­ing new doors for diag­nos­tics in neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive conditions.

What do you like to do to unwind out­side of work?

Out­side of work, I real­ly enjoy being out­doors, espe­cial­ly bike rid­ing and stay­ing active. It’s a great way to clear my head and recharge. I also love bak­ing with my daugh­ter, it’s our lit­tle tra­di­tion, even though we can nev­er seem to repli­cate the same recipe twice! It’s those sim­ple moments togeth­er that real­ly help me switch off from busy­ness of work and feel refreshed again.

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