Visitor of the Week: Philip Salu

Meet Philip Salu of the North Dakota State University! The Ghanaian citizen is a Ph.D. Candidate and member of Prof. Katie Reindl’s lab. He attended the 2022 course on Metabolomics last month; his first in-person course since the pandemic that he found “frankly refreshing”.

Tell us about your research.
The focus of my research is on drug-resistance development in pancreatic cancer. Our main goal is to better understand the underlying mechanisms using appropriately developed cell line models.

How did you decide to focus on this area/project?
Drug resistance in cancers is a complex phenomenon that is commonly talked about, yet the root cause is not fully understood. There were earlier attempts in my lab at developing specific drug resistance models and so it was a natural thing for me to pick up this project since there is still a lot of discovery to be made.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
My scientific journey began with the desire to work in a field where a lot of exciting discoveries have been made knowing that there are even greater prospects ahead. This is of course fueled by my curiosity and open-minded attitude to solving problems.

What impact do you hope to make through your work?
I hope to contribute to scientific knowledge regarding the mechanism of drug resistance development in pancreatic cancer. The disease condition has an abysmal survival rate, therefore, any knowledge that contributes to increased disease susceptibility to therapy will have significant implications for patient survival.  

Where do you see yourself in five years?
Soon, I see myself starting a post-doctoral training to further understand the metabolic needs of cancers and their resistant phenotypes. I would also like to work in a lab that is into biomarker discovery before starting independent research of my own.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
Being a researcher gives me the ability to be open-minded and inquisitive. I derive joy from the successes and channel the failures into an energy of motivation.

What drew you to apply to this course?
I have always wanted to determine changes in metabolic signatures of the cells I work with. So, when I found this course on the CSHL website, I knew I had to take it. 

What is your key takeaway from the Course; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
The field is very diverse and what you do including procedures and equipment are very relevant in obtaining accurate data. I have come to appreciate the importance in finding ways to use instruments that are available to me in answering basic questions. Also, this course has given me insight into things I should consider when preparing my samples and running them to get consistent data that truly answers my questions.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this course?
I will highly recommend this course to anyone interested. But more importantly, make connections, friends and share knowledge. The prospects are just boundless.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Course?
The most memorable moment of the course for me was our “Beeromics” experiment. How we sampled different beer brands each night and the effort it took our instructors to run about 200 samples while making sure all other student projects are taken care of amidst instrument breakdowns.

Is this your first in-person course/workshop since the pandemic? If so, any thoughts you’d like to share?
Yes, this is my first in-person course since the pandemic and it was frankly refreshing to have face-to-face interactions again. It's very interesting how in-person meetings are more fruitful compared to online interactions.

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
My favorite thing was our sailing trip on the 138-year-old Oyster Sloop, Christeen. I really did enjoy how the vessel’s history was told by one of the captains.

Philip received a scholarship from Regeneron to cover a portion of his course tuition. On behalf of Philip, thank you to Regeneron for supporting and enabling our young scientists to attend a CSHL course where they expand their skills, knowledge, and network.

Thank you to Philip for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured scientists - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Image provided by Philip Salu

Visitor of the Week: Kyle McAndrews

Meet Kyle McAndrews of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC)! Kyle is a 4th year doctoral student in the Cancer Research Graduate Program and a member of Tony Hollingsworth’s lab. He attended our 2022 workshop on Pancreatic Cancer.  

Tell us about your research.
My project is focused on the pancreatic ductal glands, which are a progenitor niche of the main pancreatic duct. We are interested in determining their contribution to pancreatic cancer initiation and progression.

How did you decide to focus on this area/project?
My undergraduate degree was in Wildlife Ecology and Biology and I actually did not plan to become a lab rat, but I was hired as a lab technician in Dr. Sarah Thayer’s laboratory at UNMC, which is where my project began and I became excited about pancreatic cancer research, especially how and where in the pancreas it is initiated.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
I first became interested in science when I was a child through my father’s (and later my own) aquarium hobby. I found myself wanting to learn more and more about the natural world. I also had a lot of great science teachers and professors throughout my education that were truly excited about science and encouraged me to continue learning.

What impact do you hope to make through your work?
I hope that my work can help us understand some of the earliest events in the initiating processes of pancreatic cancer. Any knowledge gained surrounding the earliest stages of disease will have important implications for detecting the disease and intervening sooner.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
Being on the cutting edge of what we know is extremely exciting, the seemingly infinite complexity of Biology is mind boggling and being a part of advancing human knowledge is both fulfilling and important.

What drew you to apply to this course?
Some of my lab mates had attended previously and had an amazing experience.

Kyle sectioning frozen tissue sections of mouse pancreas.

What is your key takeaway from the Course; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
That all of the models which we use to study disease have limitations and that we always need to keep this in mind when making conclusions about data. There are seemingly infinite cell to cell interactions happening at all stages of pancreatic cancer, many of which we are just beginning to scratch the surface. This course has helped broaden my perspective and allowed me to look at my own project from angles that I had never previously considered.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this course?
Ask questions, make friends and connections to everyone here! There is so much knowledge and experience and having such an intimate setting with leaders in the field is truly priceless.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Course?
Honestly the fact that everything was so casual was a relief. I definitely packed too many polos and pants. Seeing experts in the field from around the country just be who they are and not in their normal professional setting was awesome.

Is this your first in-person course/workshop since the pandemic? If so, any thoughts you’d like to share?
This is my second in-person course/workshop since the pandemic. It was nice to interact with people from outside of my normal routine and setting, which has at times been hard or impossible in the last couple of years.

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
Playing card games with other attendees after our long days and going for a run down to Lloyd Harbor Road when I could fit it in before dinner was great. As a native Nebraskan I appreciate any second I can spend near salt-water.

Kyle received a scholarship from the Helmsley Charitable Trust to cover a portion of his course tuition. On behalf of Kyle, thank you to the Helmsley Charitable Trust for supporting and enabling our young scientists to attend a CSHL course where they expand their skills, knowledge, and network.

Thank you to Kyle for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured scientists - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Images provided by Kyle McAndrews

Visitor of the Week: Nicholas Hiers

Meet Nicholas Hiers of the University of Florida! The second year PhD student from Dr. Mingyi Xie’s lab joined us at this week’s Regulatory & Non-Coding RNAs. This not only is his first meeting at CSHL but his first one as a researcher and he made his debut with a bag; presenting a poster titled “The target-directed miRNA degradation interactome in cancer.” Here is Nicholas on his poster presentation experience: “This was my first in-person poster, and I think it went very well. I got to talk about our lab’s science to a bunch of big names and fresh faces, and I also got some nice feedback and a couple new ideas from it as well.”

Tell us about your research.
My research primarily relates to dysregulated small non-coding RNAs (microRNAs) as it relates to cancer progression and severity. I specifically study the mechanisms that determine microRNA birth/biogenesis and death/degradation to better understand altered microRNA-mediated gene expression in cancers.   

How did you decide to focus on this area/project?
The degradation of microRNAs recently became a hot topic in the non-coding RNA field, so I was eager to take on a project related to that area. My PI described this subject as a sort of black box, and the prospect of discovering something both novel and impactful was too good to pass up.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
I can confidently say that the inspiration for my scientific journey is personal curiosity. I desperately want to better understand how life “works” and this curiosity is generally what fuels my investigations.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
This is difficult to choose, I personally really enjoy research as a creative outlet, but I also get a lot of personal fulfillment and pride from the work that I do.

What drew you to attend this meeting?
It is not everyday that there is a conference for almost exclusively non-coding RNAs, how could I pass up that? That, and the stacked lineup of talks from many of the big names in the field.

What is your key takeaway from the Meeting; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
My main takeaway is that this field is full of such great and diverse science, much of which is of such quality that it is personally motivating for me to reach that standard.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this meeting?
Just come! Everyone is friendly, the campus is gorgeous, and you will get so many fresh ideas and perspectives from all the talks/posters.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Meeting?
That’s a tough one, but probably getting to see my coworker Tianqi give a talk on her research. It was really exciting to see her explain her science to all of the bigshots in the field, and she ended up nailing the talk!

Is this your first in-person meeting since the pandemic? If so, any thoughts you’d like to share?
It was, it was also my first conference in general. I feel like the pandemic has made everyone far too used to isolation, and it was really nice to just be around a lot of like-minded people in my field now that the pandemic has settled down.

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
Without a doubt, the best thing about this meeting has been the opportunity to hang out with a bunch of friends and colleagues from around the world. I have not experienced anything like this since becoming a researcher, and it has been such a positive experience that I will 100% be returning to CSHL.

Thank you to Nicholas for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured researchers - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Image provided by NIcholas Hiers

Visitor of the Week: Matthew Jessop

Meet Matthew Jessop of the Institute of Cancer Research (United Kingdom). Matt is a postdoc and this is his first in-person meeting since the pandemic. He is a member of Sebastian Guettler’s lab, and is at CSHL for The PARP Family & ADP-ribosylation meeting where his poster presentation of “Structural basis of tankyrase activation by polymerization” was met with “in-depth discussions about what [they’re] working on and…some [new] ideas about other things [they] could try.”

Tell us about your research.
I’m working towards solving the structure of Tankyrase, a protein involved in signaling pathways that often go wrong in cancer. By understanding Tankyrase’s structure, we hope to build up a model of how it functions in the cell to be able to design new drugs to target these pathways.

How did you decide to focus on this project?
I’ve been working in structural biology for a few years, but I really wanted to work on a project that had real-world implications for human health. The team I’m working in is also very multidisciplinary, which means that we’re constantly learning from each other and giving each other fresh ideas.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
I’ve been lucky to have amazing mentors over the past few years, both when I was studying in New Zealand and during my PhD in France – Dr. Irina Gutsche and Dr. Ambroise Desfosses taught me a huge amount about electron microscopy and made me passionate about the technique.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
Eventually I’d love to start my own research group and keep working in structural biology of proteins involved in human disease, either in the UK or back home in New Zealand.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
Even though the problems we work on can be challenging, having the chance to increase our understanding of these complex biological processes at an atomic level is really exciting.

What drew you to attend this meeting?
There was an amazing speaker line-up at this meeting, and being able to see the latest unpublished work was a really big drawcard. Even with all of the ways that conferences have changed recently, there really is no substitute for getting together in person with experts in the field to talk about recent developments and fresh ideas!

What is your key takeaway from the Meeting; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
There have been some exciting new experimental techniques for studying PARPs presented at this meeting, and we hope to try and use these for our own project in the future.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this meeting?
I would say go for it! The whole conference is particularly well-run, and it’s in an amazing location too.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Meeting?
For me the poster session was a highlight – as well as presenting my own poster I got to walk around the room and see the huge variety of work being done in the PARP field. There are people from all different scientific backgrounds at this meeting, which means that you get lots of ideas from fresh perspectives.

Is this your first in-person meeting since the pandemic?
This is my first in-person meeting since before the pandemic. While virtual conferences have been great for the past two years in keeping us connected, and hybrid meetings such as this one give people options to still attend if they’re unable to make it in-person, the networking that happens outside of the scientific presentations is really valuable.

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
Being able to walk down to the harbour and get some fresh air during breaks was fantastic, it’s a wonderful place to have a conference!

Thank you to Matt for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured researchers - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Image provided by Matthew Jessop

Visitor of the Week: Eman Helmy Thabet

Meet Eman Helmy Thabet of Alexandria University where she is a lecturer in the Medical Physiology Department, a member and researcher in the Centre of Excellence for Research in Regenerative Medicine and its Applications (CERRMA), and helps run the experimental animal facility. She joined us at the virtual Mouse Engineering Minicourse from June 15th to 18th. This is her first CSHL course experience and it “was more than what [she] had envisioned. [She] got introduced to many concepts of genetic engineering of which [she] was unaware.”

Tell us about your research.
Currently I work on the isolation of cardiac stem cells, the precursors of beating heart cells, from mouse hearts. By exposing them to different conditions and testing their regenerative abilities we aim to understand how they can be used to treat heart diseases.

How did you decide to focus on this area/project?
I was always fascinated by stem cells and thanks to the multidisciplinary nature at CERRMA, I am able to research the ability of germ cells to regenerate postnatally and preserve ovarian function and then switch gears to another dogma of cardiac stem cells and the challenges of their isolation and therapeutic potentials in ischemic heart disease.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
To start with, I have always been supported and encouraged by my parents to pursue excellence in my scientific career. My first professional inspiration in research is former PhD supervisor and now current PI, Professor Radwa Mehanna. Dr Mehanna is a professor in the Medical Physiology Department and also runs the CERMMA lab. Her passion for stem cell research is contagious to those around her and is what spiked my curiosity for stem cell research. Dr. Mehanna’s leading personality and team spirit attracted me to shadow her and absorb as much of her knowledge and expertise. I was blessed and privileged to have her as my PhD supervisor, whom without  I wouldn’t have graduated. Dr Mehanna is, so far, the only PI I have seen who completes all the administrative work, funding applications, and gets her hands wet in the lab by conducting cell culture experiments and mouse dissections herself.

Excited and eager to learn more, I then spent a year at the University of California, San Francisco on a Fulbright Scholarship and meeting Professor Diana Laird was the ultimate takeaway of my adventure: she steadily walked me through a period of profound growth in my researcher career. Through our weekly meetings, she introduced me to a great deal of good science. I learnt how to think critically, develop out-of-the-box ideas (wacky science!), and how to self-learn new techniques and improvise during challenging situations; such as lab shutdowns during the pandemic. More importantly, I learnt “the art of making mistakes.” Dr. Laird always had a way of reshaping situations so that all experiences became learning opportunities and never failures. Her continuous one-on-one mentorship throughout my stay at her lab was a treasure. Professor Laird will remain an inspiration that will continually fuel my research career for years to come.

What impact do you hope to make through your work?
I would hope to contribute to generation of new cell lines or mice at our facilities that in turn would greatly impact our research and open new opportunities for us and future researchers.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
That I get to play around and create science. I am always excited by new ideas and techniques, and very eager to try them.

What drew you to apply to this course?
I knew nothing about mouse genetics. I gradually started listening to webinars on the JAX website that I found to be very helpful and introductory. But I hoped to learn and understand more so I am able to manipulate mouse genomes and produce genetically modified animals to model numerous diseases.

What is your key takeaway from the Course; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
Some of my key takeaways were constructing alleles, creating reporter lines or mice, getting to know more about CRISPR and its applications and, lastly, troubleshooting some of common scenarios that can happen during breeding and colony management and might be puzzling to researchers.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this course?
Get acquainted with the helpful websites and databases provided in advance by the course instructors, read some basic mouse genetics, and hop on!

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Course?
One of the course instructors is my former PI, Diana Laird. I loved reconnecting with her and remembering how pleasant it was to meet with her weekly (as much as it seemed stressful at the time!). Also loved seeing my former lab members, Bikem and Eliza (who would occasionally Slack me when I needed to get to a breakout room and was lagging behind :)).

Thank you to Eman for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured researchers - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Image provided by Eman Helmy Thabet