The Alliance aims to bring together Scholars of the NIH Oxford-Cambridge/Wellcome Trust Programme with leading academics, entrepreneurs, financiers, policy makers, and practitioners to help solve the problems that are highly relevant to society. Each year, six Scholars are invited to New York City to attend career development field trips leading up to the Lasker Awards.
A visit to Regeneron provided the Scholars with an opportunity to visualize, experience, and discuss careers in industry. The Scholars were introduced to the post-doc program at Regeneron and learned about their exciting projects and collaborations. Each of the Scholars prepared short presentations, which provided the scientists at Regeneron insight into the exciting work being done at the NIH, Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Manchester. After the presentations, the Scholars were invited to have lunch with scientists and were given the opportunity to meet one-on-one with scientists of their choice. “I had a one-on-one with Dr. Andrew Murphy who is the EVP of Research,” explained Scholar Samuel Katz. “I wanted to ask him about some projects he was on and get his feedback on some ideas I’ve been thinking about. It was a very interesting discussion, I completely forgot to eat!” Scholar Daniel Bronder also met with Regeneron scientists over lunch and stated, “I particularly enjoyed meeting Drs. Crawford and Gurer over lunch and gaining more insights on their respective science. It was really cool to read their papers and then sit down with them to have a conversation.”
Following lunch, the Scholars toured Regeneron’s facilities and learned about the technology they use. Scholar Audrey Winkelsas learned that the Regeneron Genetics Center is generating four to five terabytes of data per day and sequencing approximately 10,000-15,000 exomes per week! They viewed robotized laboratories, challenging their thoughts about what science looks like when tasks such as pipetting and plating are automated. These automations create datasets which facilitate bioinformaticians’ pipelines. The Scholars listened in on a very diverse set of scientific talks, including one about a potential treatment for cardiovascular conditions and one on the response to the Ebola virus outbreak. “The trip to Regeneron was an insightful look into what science in industry really was like. It was refreshing to hear from the representatives how the driving force behind their innovation was not profit, but the science. This definitely broke down some of the preconceived notions I had about working in biotech, and everyone we met was very welcoming and seemed very happy to be working there,” stated Scholar Jessica van Loben Sels.
The following day, the Scholars visited Arsenal Capital Partners. The goal of this visit was to provide the Scholars with a bettering understanding of the role of business and specifically private equity investments in the healthcare sector. Scholars gained an understanding of how Arsenal invests in outsourced business service companies that focused on biopharmaceutical research, development and commercialization, and services to providers and payors with an aim towards improving efficiency and reducing costs. “The visit to Arsenal capital provided a unique introduction to the role of private equity in healthcare and biotech, which I had no previous exposure to. It was very interesting to hear the partners discuss the mission of Arsenal capital in improving healthcare and has created for me a newfound curiosity about private equity,” remarked Scholar Andrei Ramirez-Valdez.
The Scholars presented their research to a group of pharmaceutical executives, healthcare investors, and Alliance Board Directors. Scholar Kathleen Bashant-Day stated that “this was an opportunity to pitch our research in a setting that we hadn’t before been exposed to. It was interesting to see how business-minded people approach science and gratifying that they were excited about what we are doing.”
That evening, the Scholars were the guests of honor at a cocktail reception held in the home of Alliance board member Ann W. Jackson. Guests included individuals representing science, business, academia, private industry, philanthropy, the Lasker Foundation, and their 2019 essay contest winners, as well as New York City area alumni and NIH OxCam program faculty.
We gratefully thank Dr. George D. Yancopoulos and his colleagues at Regeneron, Arsenal Capital Partners, and with the supporters of the International Biomedical Research Alliance for their contributions to the experiences and events that provided an invaluable visit to New York for the Scholars.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) Founder, President & CEO, Richard Bendis, hosts the BioTalk Podcast — conversations from the BioHealth Capital Region with some of the most accomplished and exciting business, academic, and government leaders in the biohealth industry. This episode, Mr. Bendis interviewed Dr. Michael Lenardo, co-founder of the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program. In this Podcast, you will learn more about the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Lenardo’s research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the impetus for starting the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program.
Dr. Lenardo is known for discoveries of molecular mechanisms of immunological tolerance, seminal work on programmed cell death, defining new inherited genetic diseases of immunity, and developing targeted therapies that have saved the lives of children suffering from certain of these devastating diseases. Dr. Lenardo was also elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019. Dr. Lenardo said, “It is a tremendous honor both for me and the NIH intramural program and recognizes not simply my efforts, but the many talented trainees and collaborators who worked with dedication on our research. It has been a wonderful adventure in scientific discovery and understanding.”
Election into NAM, which was previously known as the Institute of Medicine, is one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. The academy serves as a source of expertise by providing independent, evidence-based scientific and policy advice to inspire action across the private and public sectors regarding critical issues in health, medicine and science. Of those members, four faculty members of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been elected this year. Dr. Michael Lenardo joins Drs. Julie Segre, Luigi D. Notarangelo, Andre Nussenzweig.
In August, we shared with you a video made in 2009 highlighting the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program. Where are those program alumni now, ten years later? How has the program and the support from the Alliance helped shape their careers? We reached out to each of the alumni interviewed in the original (somewhat fuzzy by today’s standards) video to share with you their continuing stories, starting with Kristina Cook.
Kristina Cook completed her DPhil in 2009 in Christopher Schofield’s lab (Oxford) and William (Doug) Figg’s lab (NIH/NCI). Her thesis focused on inhibiting an oxygen sensing pathway to develop novel anti-cancer drugs. Low-oxygen (hypoxic) environments are a universal hallmark of all solid cancers. Cancer cells exploit this environment to activate a transcription factor known as hypoxia inducible factor or HIF, which increases metastasis and chemotherapy resistance. Kristina’s collaborative DPhil project identified a new mechanism for inhibiting HIF and set up a high throughput screen at the NIH to identify a number of new HIF inhibitors.
During Kristina’s time in Oxford, she met her partner and now husband, who is Australian. When she finished her DPhil, Kristina moved to Sydney and took up a post-doc in a new area of research studying post-translational modifications of proteins.
Kristina explained: “I enjoyed the work and developed new skills, but ultimately my love of hypoxia came calling. I was lucky to secure fellowships and started my own lab in this area in 2017. In addition to continuing the work on tumor hypoxia and HIF inhibitors, my lab has an interesting project on obstructive sleep apnea (hypoxia!) and cancer. We’ve also started an exciting project on circadian rhythms and hypoxia. My nerdy side was really excited to see two Science papers come out this year on a new oxygen sensing pathway independent of HIF and we have started work in this area as well.”
“I absolutely loved my time in the NIH OxCam program. Studying alongside some the world’s greatest researchers at renowned institutions is hard to beat, but the NIH OxCam program is so much more than that. One unique aspect of the program was the leadership and mentoring components. Top-notch science isn’t the only important quality for running a lab, and skills in leadership, mentoring and team-building are equally important. The NIH OxCam program had a strong focus on developing these qualities and they have served me well as I build my team. It is fantastic that the NIH OxCam program prepares their students to be future leaders and mentors. When we build strong teams in a supportive environment, we have the best chance at making ground-breaking discoveries and changing clinical outcomes. I made many lifelong friends in the OxCam program and these friendships were essential to getting through graduate school. We still like to catch up through Skype today.”
Kristina lives in beautiful Sydney, Australia. Kristina, her husband, and their four-year-old son love going to the beach and spend every weekend there in the summer (making us all jealous as Australia’s summer is during our winter). They love to travel as a family and have been to many places including Vietnam, Thailand, Hawaii, Mexico, and the U.S.
Since 1945, the Lasker Foundation has highlighted how basic biological discoveries drive innovative clinical therapies and techniques and how science stokes our curiosity about the intricate and often beautiful processes that underlie all life forms.
Over the course of their seven decades, the Lasker Awards have come to be known as “America’s Nobels,” in part because of their standing as America’s most prestigious biomedical research awards, and in part because those selected so often go on to win the Nobel Prize. Eighty-eight Lasker laureates have received the Nobel Prize, including 41 in the last three decades. Today, that number has increased by three.
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly awarded William G. Kaelin Jr, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza “for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability” today. They identified molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying levels of oxygen.
In 2016, the NIH Oxford-Cambridge/Wellcome Trust (WT) scholars had the opportunity to attend the Lasker Awards which honored these three physician-scientists for their discovery of the pathway by which cells from human and most animals sense and adapt to changes in oxygen availability, a process that is essential for survival. Alumni David Bulger, Joanna Cross, Alexander Weiss, Andrew Breglio, Keval Patel and Huayu Ding conversed with the 2019 Nobel Laureates, along with Ralf F. W. Bartenschlager, Charles M. Rice, Michael J. Sofia, and Bruce M. Alberts who all received the 2016 Lasker Awards.
The Alliance congratulates William G. Kaelin Jr., Sir Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza, as well as, all of the winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize.
