Fellows hit the fast track
Thijn Brummelkamp, Fernando Camargo and Hui
Ge charge ahead into independent research
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Dec. 15, 2004) — It began as
an experiment. Take a young scientist, unproven as an
independent researcher, and give her the space, resources
and support needed to launch a lab. Challenge her to
take a risky project from idea to reality under her
own steam. Then, as with any good experiment, examine
the results.
Twenty years later, this experiment—known as
the Whitehead Fellows program—has succeeded in
proving that a little risk can go a long way toward
launching blockbuster careers.
“I believed that there were certain rare people
who could take advantage of a program that gave them
independence without the responsibility of a faculty
member,” recalls Nobel laureate David Baltimore,
who launched the program in 1984 when he was Whitehead
Director. “I can only marvel that what was an
impulsive experiment has been so generative of great
people in science.”
"The program gives Fellows the opportunity—in
a relatively protected environment—to pursue
ideas and projects that are riskier than those undertaken
in a traditional postdoc."
Whitehead Associate
Member and former Fellow David Sabatini |
The latest class—Thijn Brummelkamp, Fernando
Camargo and Hui Ge—recently began their tenures
as Whitehead Fellows, following in the footsteps of
such world-class scientists as David Bartel, Peter Kim,
Eric Lander and David Page. With a little luck and a
lot of audacity, the Fellows program will be a career-defining
opportunity for the trio, who are coming from around
the world to take part in Baltimore’s great “experiment.”
Out of the gates
Fellows are given the space, resources and freedom
to run their own laboratories, rather than being required
to complete a traditional postdoctoral appointment in
the lab of a senior researcher. Candidates cannot apply
to become Whitehead Fellows. Rather, they are nominated
by leaders in the research community who are familiar
with each candidate’s work and academic accomplishments.
“The program gives Fellows the opportunity—in
a relatively protected environment—to pursue ideas
and projects that are riskier than those undertaken
in a traditional postdoc,” says Whitehead Associate
Member and former Fellow David
Sabatini. “Fellows interact extensively among
themselves and serve as each other’s best critics
for new ideas.”
Unlike full-fledged faculty, Fellows have no teaching
responsibilities. They use their time at the Institute
to concentrate solely on building a strong research
program.
The Fellows also gain invaluable experience managing
their own laboratories. They start with Institute funding,
but as their research matures, they find financial backing
from federal grants and other sources.
“The opportunity to work independently early
in my career as a Whitehead Fellow allowed me to develop
my own research program and hone my skills in a way
that is greatly accelerating my progress as an assistant
professor,” says Nir Hacohen, who joined Harvard
Medical School in 2003 after completing a four-year
term as a Whitehead Fellow. “I entered my new
position with a running start, with wonderful students
and postdocs in my lab, and strong ties to the research
community—all of which make a difference in my
current work.”
Knocking out cancer
“Whitehead will be a fantastic place to do research,”
says cancer researcher and Netherlands native Thijn
Brummelkamp. “The most rewarding part of the Fellows
program will be to work together with good and enthusiastic
scientists.”
Brummelkamp spent several years in the laboratory of
Rene Benards at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in
Amsterdam, where he received his doctoral degree in
2003.
Cancer researchers say that the most important feature
of an ideal anti-cancer drug is its ability to selectively
target cancer cells while leaving the normal non-malignant
cells untouched. One strategy has been to develop drugs
that attack the genomes of cancer cells so that they
can no longer grow and divide. In principle, this would
destroy the cancer.
Unfortunately, many current cancer drugs aren’t
specific enough and disrupt the growth and function
of other cells in the body, producing the terrible side
effects associated with chemotherapy.
Brummelkamp exploits a process called RNA interference
(RNAi), which can selectively turn off specific genes,
to study genes implicated in cancer. He and his colleagues
hope to use RNAi to identify vulnerabilities in a cancer
cell’s genetic make-up that can be targeted by
new therapeutics.
“Thijn Brummelkamp has had a spectacular run as
a student in Rene Bernards’s group,” says
Whitehead Member Robert Weinberg. “Many of us
are looking forward to having someone with his talents
and energies among us.”
Bred in the bone marrow
Faced with limited opportunities to explore his love
for science in his native Peru, Fernando Camargo came
to the United States when he was 18 years old. He earned
a scholarship at the University of Arizona in Tucson
to complete a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry
in 2000. He then moved to Baylor College of Medicine
in Houston, where he was a star student in the graduate
program in cell and molecular biology. Camargo, who
received his PhD from Baylor in 2004, arrived at Whitehead
in November.
“Fernando is an extremely creative scientist
and a superb communicator, and has an unparalleled drive
to succeed,” says Camargo’s graduate advisor
Peggy Goodell. Goodell, now an associate professor at
Baylor, worked at Whitehead as a postdoc in the early
1990s. “He has both the scientific and personal
maturity to excel as a Whitehead Fellow, and is guaranteed
to enrich the Institute during his tenure.”
Camargo is working to understand the basic molecular
mechanisms that control cells known as hematopoietic
stem cells (HSCs). Found in human bone marrow, HSCs
have the uncanny ability to differentiate into several
kinds of essential blood cells, such as blood-clotting
platelets and infection-fighting lymphocytes. Camargo
is studying the mechanisms underlying HSC “plasticity,”
the term used to describe a stem cell’s unique
ability to transform into many different cell types.
A deeper understanding of these mechanisms may help
advance efforts to use sem cell therapy to repair damaged
tissues and treat disease.
“The therapeutic potential of stem cells is
tremendous, but there is still a big gap in basic knowledge
that needs to be filled before stem cell biology can
move into the clinic,” says Camargo, who also
studied medicine in Peru early in his career. “I
would like my research to be a major contributor to
bridging this gap.”
Worms (wet and dry)
Like Camargo, new Fellow Hui Ge has followed her love
of science many thousands of miles from her childhood
home. A native of China, Ge came to the U.S. in 1999
when she was selected for a Fu Fellowship, which supports
Chinese students studying at Harvard. Ge eventually
found her way to Marc Vidal’s lab at the Dana
Farber Cancer Institute, where she earned her PhD in
2004.
Within Vidal’s lab, Ge conducted studies aimed
at understanding how proteins interact with each other.
In one experiment, Ge and her colleagues devised a way
to examine how certain protein interactions are conserved
across evolution. The team showed that conservation
of these interactions among yeast and worms—two
systems commonly used to study human biology—was
surprisingly high.
Ge is part of a new generation of scientists working
to integrate bio-informatics studies with traditional
biological experiments—a division often described
as “dry lab” versus “wet lab”
work. She wants to use an integrated laboratory approach
to study gene and protein function, work that she hopes
will advance understanding of human health and disease.
“Because of the information generated by the
human genome sequence, biology increasingly is becoming
an informational science,” says Ge. “But
the way it is now, bioinformaticians have dry labs and
biologists have wet labs, creating a lack of communication
between the two. In my lab I want to use computational
approaches to generate hypotheses that I can then check
in a real model in a wet lab.”
Because most of Ge’s experience has been in computational
science, she is spending a short time in Craig Hunter’s
lab at Harvard to garner more experience working with
the worm C. elegans, the animal model she will
use in the wet lab component of her work. Ge will launch
her lab at Whitehead in early 2005.
“My lab at Harvard was very big, so I am used
to working independently,” says Ge. “But
Whitehead Institute provides an amazing environment,
and I think that the Fellows position will give me a
very good transition into an independent career.”
“I am happy that Hui will be able to continue
her training while starting her own line of research
at the Whitehead Institute,” says Marc Vidal,
assistant professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School,
whose lab she worked in as a graduate student. “Her
ability to address biological questions both experimentally
and computationally is a particularly great asset.”
Trial by fire
The Fellows program isn’t for every investigator.
Fellows are not part of a lab, they are the
lab.
“Playing a managerial role will be totally new
to me and probably the most challenging part of being
a Fellow,” says Ge. Like all new Fellows, she
has never hired anyone, let alone run a group.
Being a Fellow means managing budgets, attracting and
hiring people to work in the lab, managing them and
serving as the lead author on prospective publications.
No matter how collegial and supportive the environment,
Fellows must have the confidence to forge their own
research path. And as their research program matures,
they will also face the challenge of raising funds through
competitive grants.
Current Fellows Mark Daly and Ernest Fraenkel have
successfully made this transition. “The generous
support of the Whitehead Fellows program enabled me
to take off in a new scientific direction,” says
Fraenkel. He is combining structural analysis, bioinformatics
and biochemistry to predict the interaction of proteins—work
that will ultimately lead to a better understanding
of the biology of cancer and human development.
Mark Daly’s lab focuses on understanding patterns
of variation in the human genome and translating that
knowledge into more effective statistical methods for
finding the variation responsible for specific diseases.
“The Fellows program gave me the invaluable opportunity
to explore my ideas in a uniquely unrestrained environ-ment,”
says Daly. “The support of the Institute in my
scientific work and career development through this
program has been immeasurable.”
Like Daly and Fraenkel, new Fellows will receive mentorship
from senior Whitehead researchers and have unfettered
access to the Institute’s scientific and administrative
resources.
Perhaps more importantly, they have each other.
“One of my favorite parts of being at Whitehead
was working with other Fellows—all young, energetic
and smart scientists who really wanted to solve important
biological problems,” comments Hacohen. “This
is the kind of community that needs to be encouraged
in all institutions because it accelerates scientific
progress and makes it more fun to do science.”
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