Networking by the Bay by Karen Ring, PhD

Networking by the Bay: Bay Area LifeTech event brings academia and biotech together.

By Karen Ring, PhD

(Frank Bos PhD, Aniek Janssen PhD, Gaia Skibinski PhD, Luke Lightning PhD)

Bay Area LifeTech (BALT) held another successful networking event this past Thursday at the Netherlands Consulate General, Office of Science and Technology (NOST) in San Francisco. Founded by Luke Lightning, PhD, BALT hosts local meetup events that bring together members of biotech, pharmaceutical, and medical device industries, as well as academics, investors, executives, and clinicians, to foster an interactive, health sciences-based community. NOST, headed by Robert Thijssen, PhD, and Natasha Chatlein, strives to promote collaborations in the fields of energy, health science, and technology, between the US West Coast, Canada, and the Netherlands. When asked about working with BALT, Natasha said, “This is our third event with Luke and we at the NOST look forward to more opportunities for collaboration. We think of Bay Area LifeTech as a great platform to showcase topnotch research and innovations in the life sciences and biotech field, both here in Silicon Valley as well as in the Netherlands.”

Titled “Rocking Research by Bay Area Postdocs”, the event featured a meet-and-great happy hour sponsored by Cell Signaling Technology, Corning, and Medline. Over 50 BALT members showed up to enjoy dim sum and cocktails over stimulating conversation on hot topics such as stem cell clinical trials and the current financing of biotechnology. The happy hour was followed by three short presentations by local postdocs on cutting-edge research focusing on angiogenesis, Parkinson’s disease, and cancer therapy. Feedback on the event was very positive. Postdoc Mahru An, commenting about the experience, said, “This was my first BALT event and I was glad to find easy conversations with friendly people who were open to talk about the industry and their professional experience.” Likewise another postdoc, Olga Momcilovic, said, “The speakers were really good. This was a great opportunity to meet BALT colleagues, talk about science, and learn from a diverse group of professionals in a relaxed and friendly environment. Not to mention that food and drinks were awesome, too! I am definitively going to another event.”

Below is a brief description of each of the three postdoc presentations:

Frank Bos, recent PhD graduate from the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht and current postdoc in Dr. Ann Zovein’s lab at the University of California San Francisco, kicked off the talks with his take on “True Blood Production”. Frank is passionate about the role of endothelial cells in the generation of blood cells and uses both mouse and zebra fish models to study angiogenesis and the development of the vasculature. More specifically, Frank wants to determine what genes and pathways are important for the development of what is termed the hemogenic (or blood producing) endothelium. Looking to the future, he will attempt to generate populations of definitive hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) (precursors to mature blood cells) from adult endothelial cells by a process called directed differentiation. He highlighted the importance of this research by pointing out that prior attempts to generate definitive HSCs from embryonic stem cells resulted in only primitive hematopoiesis, which is not sufficient to repopulate and sustain irradiated mice that lack their own bone marrow.

Gaia Skibinski, a PhD from London’s Institute of Neurology and now postdoc in Dr. Steve Finkbeiner’s lab at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, gave a talk on cellular models of Parkinson’s disease (PD). She is specifically interested in the LRRK2 mutation, which is responsible for about 10% of familial PD cases. Gaia uses both mouse and human stem cell models to determine the role that LRRK2 plays in PD pathogenesis. Her research is aided by powerful tools that were built from scratch in the Finkbeiner lab. Named Robo1 and Robo2, these high-throughput robotic microscopes can take consecutive images of specific neurons throughout their lifetime. Gaia was able to monitor dopaminergic neuron (the specific neuronal subtype affected in PD) cell death over time in healthy and LRRK2 patient neurons that were derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells. She found that increased levels of LRRK2 in human neurons put those neurons at higher risk of cell death compared to healthy neurons.

Lastly, Aniek Janssen, who received her PhD at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and now researches in the lab of Dr. Gary Karpen at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, rounded of the evening with a discussion on potential anti-cancer therapies. Aniek studies genetic instability and DNA damage in cancer cells. When cancer cells divide through a process called mitosis, the segregation of chromosomes occurs abnormally, resulting in the loss or addition of chromosomes in cells. Chromosome missegregation is a major contributor to tumorigenesis and can lead to DNA damage at the sight of missegregation. Aniek believes that we can target this genetic instability, which occurs in about 80% of all solid tumors, by increasing instability, which would subsequently “tip the balance” and send cancer cells down the pathway of cell death.  Her take home message was that genetic instability, a hallmark of cancer cells, can be exploited for therapeutic purposes.

BALT and NOST will continue to host exciting events featuring the careers and accomplishments of various BALT members. If you are interested in attending a BALT happy hour, the next event will be on August 1st at Lucky Strike Lanes in San Francisco from 5:30-8:30 PM. Additionally NOST will be hosting a Medical Devices event sometime during the fall of 2013.

Karen Ring is a Postdoctoral Scholar in Dr. Lisa Ellerby’s lab at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. To contact Karen, email kring@buckinstitute.org.