Congratulations to all of the winners of the 2020 Lasker Essay Contest. This year, the Lasker Foundation’s annual Essay Contest invited scientists to describe how a notable scientist has inspired them – through the scientist’s personality, life experiences, and/or through their scientific contributions. With hundreds of essays submitted from contestants around the world, the Lasker Foundation awarded eleven essays write by Emily Ashkin, David Basta, Avash Das, William Dunn, Safwan Elkhatib, Laurel Gabler, Kwabena Kusi-Mensah, Lisa Learman, Olivia Lucero, Hannah Mason, and Samantha Wong, respectively. To learn about the winners and read their essays, visit the Lasker Foundation.
One name may look familiar, as NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholar Hannah Mason has been named a winner of the 2020 Lasker Essay Contest. Hannah is a fourth year NIH-Cambridge Scholar pursuing her PhD in the laboratories of Dorian McGavern at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and Ole Paulsen at the University of Cambridge. She studies how the brain’s immune system responds to and is shaped by repetitive head injury and degenerative processes. After Hannah completes her PhD, she will return to her home state of Georgia to attend medical school at Emory University. She hopes one day to be physician-scientist designing therapies and treating people with neurodegenerative diseases. Here is the winning essay from Scholar Hannah Mason:
My Gym Genie: Gathering Inspiration from Dr. John Schiller
I remember the first time I met Dr. John Schiller. I was interviewing for a PhD program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The morning’s interview hadn’t gone well, and I just knew I wouldn’t get into the program. I had dreamed of training at the NIH, of discovering a druggable target for neurodegenerative diseases, but now I had to go back in and pretend that those dreams weren’t slipping away. Sitting down for the interview lunch, I never expected to be across the table from someone who had effectively cured a disease that plagued my childhood, someone who would one day become a mentor to me. I sat down across from Dr. John Schiller and was immediately thrown back in time.
I was back in elementary school, sitting on Mrs. Gazeley’s waterbed on my tenth birthday playing Sorry and watching The Ellen DeGeneres Show. I knew she did not have much time left. I just did not know how little.
I do not remember when I first learned of HPV. Trying to pinpoint the date is like trying to figure out the first time I read a chapter book. I can ballpark a period of time, but the exact date seems inconsequential because once I learned, it just became part of everyday life – a chapter a day. In my memory, Mrs. Gazeley, my mom’s best friend and a constant in my childhood, had always had cervical cancer. She had had it in college, and it was back. At the time, I did not understand how she got it, but I knew it was not something she wanted to have. It meant days spent getting chemotherapy at the Oregon Health and Science University. It meant losing her hair. It meant dying.
Until it did not. Two years after Mrs. Gazeley’s death, Gardasil became FDA approved as a preventative measure for HPV and therefore cervical cancer. My mom, usually someone to stay away from any medicine that is not tried and true, had my sister and me first in line at our pediatrician’s office for the vaccine. We were not going to experience what her friend had gone through, not if she could help it. I remember the three shots making my arm sore for days, but each time we went, I knew I was preventing a disease that had both broken me and made me committed to helping people suffering from incurable diseases.
So, as I returned to lunch that day, I realized that I was meeting a great. I was meeting John Schiller, the man who had helped discover and develop the vaccine that protected me from a similar fate to Mrs. Gazeley. I was meeting someone that had accomplished the purest goal in biomedical science – bringing a discovery to people and preventing disease.
Despite my earlier fears, a few months later I found myself a graduate student at the NIH. I was constantly seeing legends of science around campus from Tony Fauci to Steven Rosenberg. No scientist, however, inspired me quite like John Schiller. Occasionally, I would see him at the tiny, windowless campus gym. He always had a smile on his face. Perhaps it was the endorphins, but I liked to think it was just his disposition. Dr. Schiller would ask me how the science was going. As
a first year PhD student, the science was going about how trudging through half melted snow goes – difficult and sloppy. Dr. Schiller, though, would always take a minute and offer his thoughts on whatever idea or hypothesis I was toying with that day. He was my gym genie but instead of offering wishes, he was giving me ideas and advice on how to be a good scientist.
Like any PhD, mine has been fraught with obstacles – mentors lost, projects scooped. Many days I find myself thinking is it all worth it? Will my science ever help people, or is it destined to sit in PubMed for eternity, occasionally cited, but mostly forgotten? I did not start an 8-year path to become a physician-scientist for this, I think to myself. Then I remember John Schiller. I remember his gym words of wisdom on selecting problems that really matter, coming up with a solution, and knowing when to hand a discovery off to the next person in the pipeline to develop. I remember that the goal is always to help patients, not our own egos. I remember John Schiller, who is to me, everything that a scientist should be. He recognizes that science is a team sport. He is focused on improving human health. He is a mentor. I remember John Schiller, and I remember that I, too, can achieve my dreams of making a difference in people’s lives through science.
Dr. Matt Maciejewski, an Associate Director at Pfizer, Alliance Alumni Director, and the first alumnus of the Wellcome Trust – NIH PhD program recently took it upon himself to implement a few of the available methods for correcting the Covid-19 underreporting, and created a simple web-app that can be freely used to visualize the true case number estimates. An accompanying writeup is available on Medium. For those interested in the code behind the app, Matt made it available on GitHub.
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.
