First awarded in 2016, the International Biomedical Research Alliance’s Innovation Award recognizes novel solutions in biology or medicine and acknowledges discoveries of unusual importance, application, or magnitude that make use of new or unusual methods, paradigms, or approaches to solve important problems in biology or medicine. Again in 2021, the Innovation Award was generously sponsored by BioHealth Innovation Inc. For the first time, this award was presented, ex aequo, toOlive Jung and Lawrence Wang for their individual accomplishments.
Olive Jung is an NIH-Oxford MD/DPhil Scholar in the Class of 2019, whose mentors are Dr. Marc Ferrer at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and Dr. Eleanor Stride at the University of Oxford. Lawrence Wang is an NIH-Oxford MD/DPhil Scholar in the Class of 2018, whose mentors are Dr. Robert Seder at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Dr. Simon Draper at the University of Oxford.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the huge need for physiologically relevant in vitro assay platforms to investigate viral infectivity and to serve as clinically predictive drug screening platforms for the efficient and fast development of therapeutics. For Olive’s Ph.D. thesis project, she has been developing a microfluidics-based tissue model of the human blood-brain barrier with a complex, physiologically relevant cellular composition and organization that mimics the human brain tissue.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Olive pivoted her thesis work using the same assay platform to develop a physiologically relevant lung tissue model of the lower respiratory tract to mimic the primary site of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection and the lung region most affected during the terminal stage of COVID-19. Olive developed a novel vascularized, lower respiratory tract multi-chip model for the alveoli. The model includes a perfusable microvascular network consisting of human primary microvascular endothelial cells, fibroblasts, and pericytes. She developed biofabrication protocols that enable the formation of differentiated lung epithelial layers at the air-liquid interface on top of the vascularized tissue bed.
Olive thoroughly validated this lung epithelial tissue model using a range of technologies, including fluorescence microscopy, flow cytometry, and electrical resistance measurements. These vascularized, perfusable microfluidic lung tissue on a high throughput microfluidics plate is a unique, ready-to-use physiologically relevant assay platform that will enable the development of respiratory viral infection and disease models for research investigation and drug discovery.
“I was very surprised and honored to be recognized with and awarded the Innovation Award during the workshop! This past year has been a difficult time for many graduate students – some of us had to re-allocate our resources and time to help the general scientific community and the public understand the SARS-CoV-2 and COVID19 better, with the goal of developing models and platforms to identify effective therapeutics. I am incredibly grateful that the NIHOxford-Cambridge community, as well as the International Biomedical Research Alliance and BioHealth Innovation, have decided to recognize the work – I am just lucky to represent all of the students who have been part of this collective effort. I want to emphasize that my work came to fruition only because of my NIH team at the 3D Tissue Bioprinting Laboratory and support from my UK mentors who were more than understanding of my transient tangent from my Ph.D. project. I hope that in the near future, these collective efforts from all of us will help to reduce the emotional, economic, and social costs of the pandemic, and prevent further lives from being lost,” stated Olive.
Upon graduation, Olive will return to medical school to pursue her journey as a physician-scientist. We wish her much success in her future and look forward to reading about Olive’s achievements.
First awarded in 2016, the International Biomedical Research Alliance’s Innovation Award recognizes novel solutions in biology or medicine and acknowledges discoveries of unusual importance, application, or magnitude that make use of new or unusual methods, paradigms, or approaches to solve important problems in biology or medicine. Again in 2021, the Innovation Award was generously sponsored by BioHealth Innovation Inc. For the first time, this award was presented, ex aequo, to Olive Jung and Lawrence Wang for their individual accomplishments.
Lawrence Wang isolated an antibody (L9) against a malaria protein that defined a novel site of neutralization on the dominant protein covering the infectious sporozoite. This work, published in Immunity also provides a detailed mechanism for this and other human monoclonal antibodies mediated protection in vivo. He also showed that this is currently the most potent malaria monoclonal antibody in the literature. Based on these data, the Vaccine Research Center has initiated a clinical development program of the L9 monoclonal antibody and it will be tested in humans for protection in 2021.
Following the demonstration that L9 is safe and effective in the Phase 1 trial, studies are planned next year in Africa in 1–10-year-olds. The Gates Foundation has made L9 its top priority as a potentially new intervention for the prevention of malaria. Overall, Lawrence’s outstanding scientific work in terms of discovery and mechanism has been quickly translated into clinical application. Lawrence will also be submitting two additional manuscripts this year on his current work and has exciting data on some new antibodies to other stages of malaria infection.
“I was deeply honored to learn that I had won the 2021 Innovation Award for my discovery of a highly potent antimalarial monoclonal antibody called L9. I had the good fortune of isolating this antibody approximately two months after I started graduate school in August 2018 during a practice run of our lab’s antibody isolation protocol. Subsequently, I was swept away in an exhilarating tidal wave of scientific investigation and found myself collaborating with other people in my lab at the NIH Vaccine Research Center (VRC) and around the world. Working in tandem with this team of highly skilled scientists, we showed that L9 was more potent than all previously published monoclonal antibodies at preventing malaria in mice exposed to infected mosquitos and that this antibody-targeted a new site of vulnerability on malaria parasites. This data was published in a Report in the October 2020 issue of Immunity, with an image of a malaria parasite being destroyed by L9 featured as the cover of the October 2020 issue. Given its high potency in mice, the VRC decided to develop L9 for a clinical trial which commenced in September 2021. In fact, the first volunteer was infused with L9 in mid-September, approximately three years after I first cloned the sequence of this antibody in the lab. None of this would have been possible without the vision and guidance of my PI, Dr. Bob Seder, as well as the collective efforts of everyone who worked on the L9 project at the NIH and around the world. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity of working alongside such a dedicated group of people to translate this antibody-based malaria drug into the clinic and hope that L9 will one day significantly contribute towards eradicating malaria for good,” remarked Lawrence.
Upon graduation, both Lawrence will return to medical school to pursue his journey as a physician-scientist. We wish Lawrence much success in his future and look forward to reading about his achievements.
Dr. Paul Tesar, Professor in the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, was awarded the 2021 Distinguished Alumni Award which recognizes achievements of an exceptional nature in scientific and medical inquiry, professional practice, and enhancing the lives of others both personally and professionally. This Award is not given in recognition of a single remarkable achievement but is reserved for an NIH-OxCam alumni who has attained and maintained extraordinary impact throughout their career in their chosen fields of endeavor and in their service to society at large. This Award, created in 2020, was bestowed upon Dr. Tesar at the 2021 NIH Global Doctoral Partnerships Research Workshop July 13-15, 2021.
Dr. Tesar completed his DPhil in 2007 from the University of Oxford. Under the tutelage of Professor Sir Richard Gardner and Dr. Ron McKay and published a landmark paper in Nature describing the discovery of a new type of pluripotent stem cell, epiblast stem cells. This work stands among the most recognized in all of stem cell biology and earned Paul some of the highest graduate student accolades, including the Beddington Medal from the British Society for Developmental Biology and the Harold M. Weintraub Award from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Dr. Tesar returned home to join the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine faculty in 2010 as an Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation Scholar. He is currently a Professor and Dr. Donald and Ruth Weber Goodman Professor of Innovative Therapeutics at CWRU School of Medicine in the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences. His laboratory has pioneered new regenerative approaches to treat nervous system disorders including multiple sclerosis, neuromyelitis optica, pediatric leukodystrophies, cerebral palsy, and brain cancer. Dr. Tesar’s scientific achievements have been recognized with a number of prestigious awards including being named a Robertson Investigator of the New York Stem Cell Foundation in 2011. One of only four international awardees, the honor recognizes and supports scientists leading their generation in stem cell research.
Additionally, Dr. Tesar received the International Society for Stem Cell Research Outstanding Young Investigator Award in 2015, the New York Stem Foundation – Robertson Stem Cell Prize in 2017, and the Diekhoff Award for Graduate Student Mentoring in 2018. In 2019, Paul was recognized as one of Crain’s Cleveland Business’ “Forty Under 40” and named a “Homegrown Hero” in Academic Research by Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer. He recently earned the National Institutes of Health honor for outstanding mentorship, the 2021 Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship. He was recognized yet again for his innate mentoring style, which is an “amalgamation of lessons learned from his own scientific mentors, and, notably, from years of participation on competitive sports teams.”
Dr. Tesar was nominated by fellow NIH OxCam Alumni Dr. Justin Lathia. “It is my utmost pleasure to nominate Dr. Tesar as he continues to be on the forefront of his field, not only innovating, but also remaining committed to excellence in all he does. He is a great teacher, mentor, and colleague and truly exemplifies what it is to be a scientist,” remarked Dr. Lathia.
Dr. Tesar co-founded a Cleveland-based biotechnology company, Convelo Therapeutics, now partnered with Genentech, to advance new therapies from the laboratory into clinical testing to better the lives of patients and their families.
The International Biomedical Research Alliance’s Outstanding Recent Graduate Award was created to recognizethe noteworthy and distinctive achievements of an individual who has graduated from the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program within the last two years. The honoree embodies the values of scientific innovation and collaboration leading to seminal biomedical discoveries at an early stage in their career. The 2021 Outstanding Recent Graduate Award was bestowed upon Zachary (Zach) Fitzpatrick during the 2021 NIH Global Doctoral Partnerships Research Workshop July 13-15, 2021.
Zach is currently a Senior Scientist at Spark Therapeutics, a Philadelphia-based gene therapy company dedicated to harnessing the therapeutic potential of viral vector-mediated gene transfer to treat debilitating hereditary diseases. He is drawing on his background in gene therapy development and neuroimmunology to help support the development of gene transfer-based biologics for central nervous system disorders.
His work, published in Nature in the autumn of last year, described a previously unappreciated link between the gut and meningeal humoral immunity, showing that IgA+ B cells and plasma cells are educated in the intestine but re-locate to the wall of the dural venous sinuses, providing a defensive shield at this internal barrier that is critical to prevent the spread of pathogens from the blood into the brain. “It was a huge finding to see such a similarity between IgA clones in the gut and the brain,” said Zach during an interview with Gates Cambridge, adding that it could unlock new routes for understanding neuroinflammatory pathways and their role in diseases like multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s where research has already shown a link to the gut.
Zach was nominated by his UK mentor and NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program Director at the University of Cambridge, Prof. Menna Clatworthy. Prof. Clatworthy noted that “Altogether, Zach’s work makes a remarkable contribution to this field, and I feel recognition with these awards would be entirely appropriate.”
“It’s an absolute honor to have received the Outstanding Recent Graduate Award from the International Biomedical Research Alliance, I’m extremely grateful to have received support from the OxCam program to pursue graduate studies at two world-class research institutions – the University of Cambridge and the NIH – and from my mentors and peers,” Zach stated.
A graduate of the Louisiana State University, Zach will receive his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2021 as a Gates Cambridge Scholar in the prestigious NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program under Dr. Dorian McGavern (NIH/NINDS) and Prof. Menna Clatworthy (University of Cambridge). Zach hopes to develop immunomodulatory and gene-based therapies to counter neurodegenerative diseases.
Beginning in 2020, The International Biomedical Research Alliance introduced two recognition awards to honor Scholars in the NIH Oxford-Cambridge/Wellcome Trust Scholars Program who demonstrate exceptional community service and leadership. These awardees were nominated by their peers to be recognized for their exceptional leadership and service, not only to the Scholars Program but also to the greater community. It is always an honor to be recognized, but especially notable when the recognition comes from peers who have a unique and focused view of the awardees and their efforts. The ceremony to honor the winners was held during the 2021 NIH Global Doctoral Partnerships Research Workshop, titled Celebrating Science: Looking Back and Looking Forward, virtually from July 13-15, 2021.
The recipient of the International Biomedical Alliance Leadership Award is a role model for their peers and possesses the ability to inspire others to be better and do better by encouraging creativity, cooperation, promoting respect for others, emphasizing collaboration, demonstrating initiative, and adapting to new and changing needs and circumstances. The outstanding Leader has a keen sense of organization and embodies leadership in all that they endeavor, combining clarity in thought with humility in character. The recipient of this award is Yasemin Cole. Yasemin is an NIH Gates Cambridge M.D./Ph.D. Scholar in the Class of 2021, whose mentors are Dr. Zhengping Zhuang at the National Cancer Institute and Dr. Eamonn Maher at the University of Cambridge.
Yasemin has been involved in multiple leadership positions in the midst of a pandemic, which brought many challenges to the transition to graduate school. Concurrently, she worked closely with NIH OxCam Program Leadership and fellow NIH OxCam Scholar Neha Wali to help implement an F30 grant writing Bootcamp workshop and has worked tirelessly as the Chair of the Workshop Planning Committee to organize the Workshop. Yasemin constantly encourages creativity and collaboration as Chair of the Workshop Planning Committee and demonstrates exceptional organizational skills as she juggles multiple moving parts to ensure things run smoothly. She is a role model for her peers and someone admired by her classmates for her many strengths.
“By focusing on hereditary paraganglioma pheochromocytomas cancer syndromes, I study the intersection of cancer genetics, embryology, and metabolism. Over the past year, I led the organization of the 2021 Global Doctoral Partnerships Program Workshop which was successfully attended by over 200 NIH OxCam Scholars, Alumni, Principal Investigators, and distinguished guests. It’s been an honor to be recognized for my effort to bring together the OxCam community during these difficult times,” stated Yasemin. After Yasemin completes her Ph.D., she will continue her medical studies at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.
The recipient of the Building a Better Community Through Service Award honors an individual who continuously places significant importance on the well-being of their community. Committed to social responsibility, they invest their time and talent to elevate and inspire others and, in doing so, uplift the community as a whole. The recipient of this award is Kritika Singh. Kritika is an NIH-Rhodes DPhil Scholar in the Class of 2020, whose mentors are Dr. John Schiller at the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Eleanor Stride, and Dr. Udo Oppermann at the University of Oxford, and Dr. Ralph Mazitschek at Harvard University.
As a first-year student, Kritika has navigated the transition to NIH OxCam amid a pandemic with grace and has established a strong camaraderie not only with classmates in her year but with upper-year NIH OxCam Scholars as well. As the class of 2020 Representative, and even before she was officially a member of the Student Leadership Board in that capacity, Kritika constantly took the initiative to create virtual social events for the Class of 2020 and has always been open and willing to facilitate events that bring the community closer together. She also serves in multiple roles within NIH OxCam and outside of the Program. As a result, Kritika clearly demonstrates her passion to serve the greater community and promote well-being in many different roles, as she is always willing to lend an ear for students to talk to about whatever is going well or isn’t going well in their lives. Her thoughtfulness, work ethic, and genuine personality make her deserving of the Building a Better Community Through Service Award.
“I am conducting my DPhil at the intersection of bioengineering, chemical biology, and immuno-oncology and am focusing on developing therapies that can be widely adopted in high- and low-resource settings. Apart from research, I am actively involved in community building activities such as being the 2020 Representative to the Student Leadership Board, the Co-Chair for the Career Development Seminar Series, the Student Rep on the Lasker Lessons in Leadership Committee, and on the Workshop Planning Committee. I am also the Board Director of Operations for the Rhodes Trust and Gates Cambridge Trust Global Scholars Symposium and was previously the Welfare Officer for Magdalen College at the University of Oxford. After my DPhil, I plan to go to medical school and pursue a career at the intersection of biomedical research, clinical practice, and global health policy,” shared Kritika.
“Yasemin and Kritika are exemplary Scholars whose outstanding leadership and service have helped improve the OxCam student experience and NIH community overall,” remarked Kristi Porter, Ph.D., Managing Director and Director of Recruitment, NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program. “I am continually amazed by their extraordinary talent and dedication and commend them for their remarkable contributions.”
