The road to obtaining an MD/PhD is not a sprint but a marathon. As Charles (Chad) Coomer well knows. It’s long, grueling, requires incredible endurance, but worth every millisecond.
Chad is completing his MD/PhD degrees at the University of Kentucky (MD) and the University of Oxford (DPhil) under the mentorship of Drs. Alex Compton (NIH/NCI) and Sergi Padilla-Parra (University of Oxford). As an undergraduate student at Western Kentucky University (WKU), Chad worked with Dr. Rodney King to identify and characterize novel bacteriophages to target Mycobacterium species. Through this work, Chad was awarded a Goldwater Scholarship, solidifying his commitment to basic research and to apply the tools learned in his undergraduate laboratory to those at the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program at the NIH/NCI as a summer intern. This work ultimately led to Chad to apply to a Fulbright Scholarship at University College London (UCL) in 2014, where Chad fostered his love of virology and translational medicine by investigating mechanisms of protease inhibitor resistance under Ravi Gupta. Ultimately, his experiences at UCL and in the UK during his Fulbright year motivated him to apply for the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars program.
His work has highlighted the role of several biophysical properties of cell membranes in the context of virus entry, particularly that of HIV-1. To accomplish this, he has developed several advanced microscopy tools in the Padilla-Parra lab, particularly by multiplexing single-virus tracking and fluorescent lifetime imaging microscopy. These tools identified key metabolic influences of host cell membrane properties that facilitate HIV-1 fusion in target cells, which is now published in PLoS Pathogens (https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article/comments?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1008359). By utilizing these tools he developed at Oxford, Chad’s research is currently devoted to understanding how a protein called IFITM3 functions to prevent virus entry. The results of these studies are currently under review, but can be read on bioRxiv (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.14.096891v1).
Chad will be defending his thesis in April 2021. Following successful completion of his PhD, Chad will return to the medical school to finish his clinical training at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Upon his completion of his MD/PhD degrees, Chad hopes to complete his residency in internal medicine and pediatrics whist continuing to investigate the mechanism of cell-intrinsic antiviral proteins in preventing virus infection. His goal is to become an investigator and lecturer at an academic clinical center to train the next generation of clinical scientists.
In his free time, Chad runs competitively for the University of Oxford and the Montgomery County Road Runners. Currently, he is also serving on the NIH COVID19 task force by assisting the testing site at the NIH. Chad often compares completing MD/PhD training to that of running a marathon. “You have to respect the distance,” Chad says, “as each person who’s running this race will train differently to you and complete it (their training) at a different pace. Training for marathon, or as an MD/PhD does not have a ‘one size fits all’ approach, but there are definitely correlates of success: consistency, recovery, and having amazing teammates. The NIH OxCam program is a perfect regimen that definitely incorporates these three factors at the core of their training.”
Jessica van Loben Sels is completing her DPhil in Pathology under the mentorship of Dr. Kim Green at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease and Pr. Ian Goodfellow at the University of Cambridge. Her work has led to the development of several serological assays to monitor duration and breadth of protectivity in patient serum antibodies against human norovirus. She deployed one assay in the field with the help of collaborator Pr. Stephen Baker at the University of Oxford Tropical Disease Center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where she screened infants for protective immunity against a variety of norovirus strains. Her project has elucidated immunological patterns which can inform multivalent vaccine design. Her work as also led to the identification of potentially broadly protective immunoglobulins which can help map important epitopes on the virus and serve as treatment for immunocompromised individuals who are suffering from chronic norovirus infections if the antibodies show therapeutic potential.
She is set to submit her thesis in August 2020. Immediately following submission, she will begin working towards her Masters in Public Health at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her work throughout graduate school has been focused on understanding immunity and disease transmission within vulnerable populations in low- to middle-income countries (i.e. children in Vietnam). Having gained months of international field experience working with various peoples and governments to accomplish scientific goals, she decided she wanted to make a career out of field epidemiology. Upon the COVID-19 outbreak, she has worked with the NIH on the contact tracing team and gained valuable insight into the many facets of public health that respond to disease outbreaks. It is for this reason she decided to pick the concentration of Global Health Epidemiology and Disease Control for her MPH studies. Following the completion of the two-year program, she aspires to be trained by the CDC in the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) fellowship program and attain a career in aiding state and federal governments respond to public health crises.
Each year, the International Biomedical Research Alliance (Alliance) organizes career development field trips for the students in the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars/Wellcome Trust Program. From the Goddard Space Center to MacroGenics Inc., the Alliance provides the Scholars with opportunities to see a broad range of career options and meet with professionals in their fields. They not only hear about career paths and insights, but they are also given the chance to network and discuss their research.
Inspired by former Scholars Program Scientific Director, Dr. Thomas Wynn, the Scholars visited the Cambridge-Boston biopharma cluster for a career development field trip. Dr. Wynn, Vice President, Discovery; Group: Inflammation and Immunology, invited the Scholars to Pfizer KSQ, sharing perspectives of research at “big pharma” versus academia. The Scholars toured the facility, heard from a panel of Pfizer scientists and physicians, and met with alumni Drs. Trey Gieseck and Matt Maciejewski. Pfizer’s Dr. Lori Fitz, Director of Outreach and Technology Platforms, set up an overview of LabCentral, a first-of-its-kind shared laboratory space designed as a launchpad for high-potential life-sciences and biotech startups. The Scholars toured the facility with Luke Wallrich, Senior Manager of Events & Operations, and had small group discussions with LabCentral entrepreneurs, including Dr. Iain Kilty, Dr. Paul Yaworsky, and OxCam alumnus Dr. Stan Wang. “The LabCentral site visit stood out to me the most. I was in awe of the quality of the space and the palpable sense of innovation and talent hanging in the air. I was additionally impressed by LabCentral’s pioneering model for supporting fledgling biotechs (some with only a single person!) and their impressive track record for seeing returns on their investments in the form of successful startups and LabCentral alumni,” stated NIH-Oxford MD/PhD Scholar Lawrence Wang.
Alliance Alumni Director Matt Maciejewski, an Associate Director at Pfizer and head of Data Science in the Inflammation and Immunology Department, organized visits to a range of biotech companies. Following the trips to Pfizer and LabCentral, the Scholars visited Relay Therapeutics, a company that leverages the relationship between protein motion and function, creating opportunities to develop more effective therapies for multiple diseases. Led by Dr. Dipali Patel, the Scholars learned about Relay Therapeutics Portfolio and Platform, had a lab tour with on-site lab scientists, and enjoyed a lunch Q&A panel, including people who have transitioned from academia and higher education to industry.
Following the visit to Relay Therapeutics, the Scholars headed to bluebird bio, where alumna Dr. Molly Perkins, the Director of Oncology R&D, graciously hosted the Scholars. She told her story of transitioning into biotech from a postdoctoral position, as well as sharing that during her time at bluebird bio, it grew to over 800 employees across the U.S. and Europe. The company develops pioneering gene therapies for severe genetic diseases and cancers, and Dr. Perkins is at the forefront of it. “This trip enabled me to see how an idea can grow and become reality in the world of research and medicine. On this trip, we saw companies at LabCentral that were as small as a single person, to early stage startups enabling technology to find new therapeutics at Relay Therapeutics, to companies with several successful clinical trials and rapid growth at bluebird bio. The perspective this trip gave me will help me to enact a vision of turning bench discoveries into new medicines, and I’m grateful for the opportunity we had to take it,” stated NIH-Cambridge MD/PhD Scholar Sean Corcoran.
Since Boston is a global center for both biotech and tech firms, it is no surprise that it is now home to over twenty NIH OxCam alumni. To round out the Scholars experience, alumni were invited to network with the group and share their stories. From their experiences in the program to becoming entrepreneurs, to starting families and sharing adventures, the Scholars were able to hear from alumni and have one-on-one time with them. “The Boston career development field trip represented one of the most impactful experiences in my PhD thus far for it showed me how a physician-scientist can fit into different areas of biotech depending on interests. I was inspired learning the journeys of young alumni of the program that have made the transition from academia to industry. It is always nice to learn what the scholars before us have done and are doing with their degrees. I gained not just career advice from these interactions: I even learned new lab techniques – how to exsanguinate a mouse completely,” stated NIH-Cambridge MD/PhD Scholar Hannah Mason. “I came away from the trip having reaffirmed my desire to one day end up in the biotech space designing and implementing clinical trials: I want to be a part of finish-line science, bringing drugs and therapies to clinic.”
NIH-Cambridge MD/PhD Scholar Mario Shammas commented, “This trip was my first exposure to industry, pharma and biotech companies. I felt as though I was able to see the whole spectrum of company sizes and their stages of development. For me, the most striking thing I learned about was LabCentral and the concept behind it – that you can buy a bench (or even half a bench) and use that for experiments when the company is still in its ‘proof-of-concept’ phase, and to use LabCentral as a springboard to develop into something bigger. It was great to see how small companies like Relay Therapeutics have almost all of their staff focused on the same objective but going at it doing their respective jobs. It was also nice to hear about how bluebird bio was able to grow so rapidly in such a short period of time. We have almost no exposure to industry during our training, and are told very little about it – this trip gave me a much better perspective on what happens in industry, and I am very grateful for having had the opportunity to be part of it.”
Last week, Pfizer KSQ hosted several National Institutes of Health (NIH) OxCam scholars for a tour of our R&D site and a panel discussion on discovery research and development at Pfizer and the industrial R&D career path. The scholars are working on their doctoral degrees in a collaborative program between the NIH in Bethesda, MD and Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the U.K.
Tom Wynn, Vice President, I&IRU Discovery Research and a former director of the NIH-OxCam scholars program welcomed the group and shared his unique insights on research opportunities at a large pharmaceutical company.
In addition, the scholars participated in a panel discussion to interact with and hear first-hand from several colleagues representing many of the disciplines housed at Pfizer KSQ. The panel was moderated by Matt Maciejewski, Principal Scientist, Computational Biology and an alumni of the NIH-OxCam Scholars program.
“It was a great day meeting and interacting with this group of scholars,” adds Tom. “It’s important that we host events like this to ensure that top-tier emerging talent is aware of the caliber of R&D happening at Pfizer.”
After hearing first-hand accounts of R&D at Pfizer, the scholars enjoyed a lab tour led by another NIH-OxCam alum, Trey Gieseck, Principal Scientist, I&IRU, followed by lunch with additional Pfizer colleagues. Their Cambridge visit concluded with a tour of LabCentral and discussions with a few of their resident entrepreneurs.
Thank you to Pfizer for publishing this article and hosting the NIH-OxCam scholars.
“Medical students are often taught that, when they hear hoofbeats, they should think about common things, such as horses,” Dr. Wendy Chung began, “My career has been just the opposite and the only thing I really see are zebras.” During Dr. Chung’s keynote for the Lasker Lessons in Leadership, we heard the unraveling of this cryptic statement in her talk entitled: “Life Lessons from a Zebra Hunter.”
As a high school student, Dr. Chung had the opportunity to spend some time in a laboratory. Raised in South Florida at the heart of the citrus fruit industry, she was told to take a golf cart into a field to see what she could figure out. Fruit flies were a big problem for the citrus industry, and she decided that her science project would focus on why the fruit flies laid eggs in particular fruits. For that work she won first place in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and met researchers at NIH during the weeklong activities in Washington, DC. She went on to study at Cornell University, the college with the best agricultural sciences. One summer she had the chance to return to NIH to work with Seymour Kaufman and to work on phenylketonuria – at the bench and with patients in the hospital. This exposure to patients completed the picture for her as she was able to experience the “soup to nuts” process: from seeing a patient in the hospital and taking blood samples to analyzing the biochemistry and genetics back in the lab. She realized that “banging your head against the wall for so many days, weeks and months” was worth it because someone’s life was truly dependent upon you. After this she decided to pursue an MD, PhD.
During Dr. Chung’s first year as a medical student, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was announced. While her professors disagreed with the concept of funding the HGP, her undergraduate major in economics gave her the courage to “follow the money.” She spent a lot of time throughout her training dreaming of how to apply the information that would come out of the HGP. She was fortunate to finish her training early, just when the HGP was nearing completion. Here, Dr. Chung gave us pearl of wisdom number 1: to skate to where the puck is going to be and become the leaders in the field. This was closely followed by pearl of wisdom number 2: to not necessarily follow the classics. For example, right now we are living in a wealth of data that needs to be analyzed. However, the real powerbrokers are going to be not only those who can code, but those who can additionally understand the biology.
For Dr. Chung, she was beginning her career at the frontier of genomics at a time when most genes had not yet been cloned. During graduate school, in order to continue to remain in touch with the medical side, she went on weekly clinical rounds with her mentor, Rudolph Leibel. On these rounds, she learned about rare diseases, and this was the start of her fascination with uncommon diseases, or “zebras.” While she was collecting zebras during her internship, she discovered pearl number 3: find the right person to help you with your journey. For Dr. Chung, it was her husband whom she described as an incredibly important part of her success. Being a planner, she started to determine where her life was going, for both work and family. Then something unexpected happened that turned her world upside down: the death of their second son. While his cause of death was never determined, she resolved to move her career to where it would have the biggest and most immediate impact on patients.
While working in the clinic, there were times when carrying out a critical genetic test for a patient was impeded due to gene patents, which caused the price of testing to become too costly. However, the worst situations were when a lab that held a gene patent shut down. This meant that no other labs could carry out the genetic test due to “cease and desist” orders, resulting in patients not being able to access critical genetic tests for over 2 years. In some cases, this caused patients to die. Dr. Chung couldn’t fathom why this should be allowed and decided to step in for the public good. After unsuccessful meetings with NIH and congressional staff, she was contacted by an ACLU lawyer, who agreed with her stance and saw gene patenting as a civil rights issue. After being heard in several lower courts, the case ultimately went to the Supreme Court, where the court ruled, in a 9 to 0 victory, that genes cannot be patented. Dr. Chung considered this to be one of her greatest accomplishments as a scientist, and it ushered in a new era for genomic medicine. “Without this victory, we would not have the ability to inform people about their genomes, and the genomics era we now live in would have been hampered,” she stated.
Dr. Chung went on to explain that in order for this progress to continue, we need to bring scientists and the public together; if we can’t get the public to understand what we are doing, we have lost half the battle. Therefore, she is striving to improve this connection by making complex topics accessible to the public. Indeed, her TED talk, “Autism – what we know (and what we don’t know yet),” has had 3.7 million views!
To be inspired, all of us have a role model to ask questions about how to make choices and, throughout this Lasker Lesson in Leadership, Dr. Chung gave us a necklace of pearls to take with us on our own zebra hunt.
