Congratulations Dr James Dooley!

A big round of congratulations to Dr James Dooley, who successfully defended his PhD yesterday.

James has been the senior scientist in the Translational Immunology laboratory since its foundation in 2009, and integral to our success. However James did not come to this status by the standard academic pathway, instead he developed his scientific skills through on-the-job experience in the laboratory of Prof Andrew Farr at the University of Washington (Seattle, US). Under the mentorship of Prof Farr, James developed his expertise in thymus biology, contributing to major breakthroughs in Treg biology and TSLP, and leading the effort on one of the key discoveries from the Farr laboratory - the discovery of the cervical thymus in 2006.

The 13 publications James had with Prof Farr, and a publication with Prof Page Lacy during his brief stay in Canada, convinced the KUL doctoral school that James could enter a PhD without previously going through a Bachelor's degree or Masters degree. James's staggering successes during his PhD validates this trust, and proves that there are multiple successful pathways to developing into a leading scientist.

Among James's key scientific successes during his PhD have been:

• The identification of the role of microRNA in thymus biology, in particular the function of miR-29a in setting the threshold for thymic involution. Led to a first-author publication in Nature Immunology in 2012, and multiple productive collaborations on the role of miR-29a in other tissues.
• The development of a high-throughput immune phenotyping platform for understanding variation in the immune system. The platform was published in Nature Immunology in 2016, and forms the basis for multiple clinical collaborations.
• The discovery of intrinsic variation in the robustnes of beta cells in the pancreas, and how genetic and environmental factors can push the beta cells from a state of robust survival (granting resistance to diabetes) to fragile death or senescence (conferring susceptibility to diabetes). This work was published in Nature Genetics in 2016.

It addition to these key publications, James published many other papers as first, middle or last author, across a sweep of topics ranging from immunology to endocrinology and neuroscience, with an amazing 34 scientific publications during his PhD.

So our deepest congratulations to the well-earned PhD of Dr Dooley!  

Fragility and Resilience in Diabetes

Two summers ago, Tony Cervati was tearful as he drove to the hospital to see his 6-year-old son Kyan, who had just been admitted and diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. “I knew damn well what to do,” said Cervati, a database administrator in Durham, North Carolina , who has led an active and healthy life as a type 1 diabetic himself.

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Journal club: Transmissible cancer may not be so rare

Cancer is a disease of our own cells gone wrong. Normally our cells work in harmony with each other, taking cues from each other as to when to proliferate, when to differentiate and when to die. In cancer, mutation takes away this level of regulation, leaving a "selfish cell" that ignores all of these signals and proliferates uncontrollably, even to the point of killing the host.

There have been a handful of rare cases where cancers can actually physically cross-over from one individual to another, such that the second individual is actually growing cancer cells that are not self, but are fully derived from the original host. This has been seen in a few human cases as well as well-described transmissible cancers in Tasmanian Devils and dogs. There was even a recent case study that suggests a tapeworm cancer crossed over into the host. In general, however, it is thought that this type of event is going to be exceptionally rare. Even ignoring the protective effect of our immune system killing foreign cells, it is not like cells from one individual can just float through the air to colonise another. Except, of course, under the water.

A paper just published in Nature looks for transmissible cancers in mussels and clams and finds three examples of cancer cells from one individual clam or mussels infecting and growing in other indiviudals of the same, or even different, species. With high population densities and water flow acting to directly transfer cancer cells, it is probably that transmissible cancers are actually a common feature in many marine environments.

Nature 2016, in press. Widespread transmission of independent cancer lineages within multiple bivalve species. Metzger, Villalba, Carballal, Iglesias, Sherry, Reinisch, Muttray, Baldwin, Goff.

Congratulations to Dr Stephanie Humblet-Baron!

Earlier this year Dr Stephanie Humblet-Baron published a major study on the disease mechanism behind the lethal inflammatory disease Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH).

Today she was awarded an FWO post-doctoral mandate to continue her ground-breaking work on HLH! The congratulations of the Translational Immunology Laboratory go out to Stephanie for this well-earned recognition!

EU-LIFE Science Newsletter

Collaboration news from VIB & Babraham Institute

Enormous diversity is observed in the human immune system, the majority of which is non-genetic in origin. In a collaboration between the VIB and the Babraham Institute, Adrian Liston and Michelle Linterman dissect the causes of immune variation and find age and cohabitation to be the principle drivers.

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A PhD in science is the gateway to a great career

From inside academia we often bemoan the horrible bottleneck that young scientists need to squeeze through in order to land a professorship. The number of post-doc places is far lower than the number of PhDs, and the number of professorships opening up is smaller again, leading to only 2% of PhDs ending up as a Professor. Does this make it a bad career decision to get a PhD in science? No!

The thing that we usually forget to mention, is that while 2% of science PhDs end up with a Professorship, 98% of science PhDs end up having a successful career. A PhD in science is such fantastic training that graduates are highly sought out for diverse jobs that go way beyond active research - including policy, communication, regulation, administration and business development. Only 2% of science PhDs stay unemployed*, far below the population average.

So yes, there is certainly a bottleneck in the academic career pathway. But I also want my PhD students to look at the bright side - as a PhD student you get to spend years doing fun science, contributing to knowledge of the world, and then at the end you are going to be highly sought out on the job market. Some of you will end up in academia, some in research and others in a diverse set of interesting jobs that you cannot predict today. But you will all be a success. 

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* A recent newspaper article claims that the figure is 39%, but basically they misunderstood the data they were using, and counted as unemployed PhD graduates who filled out the form months before they graduated

Three major breakthroughs in the immunology field

Presentation of the 2016 Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigator to Adrian Liston

This year’s research prize awarded by Eppendorf goes to Belgium

In 2016, Eppendorf AG, the Hamburg life science company is presenting its highly prestigious research prize for the 21st time. The independent Eppendorf Award Jury chaired by Prof. Reinhard Jahn selected Prof. Adrian Liston (Group leader at VIB Translational Immunology Lab, University of Leuven, Belgium) as the 2016 winner of the Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators.

The Award ceremony took place at the EMBL Advanced Training Centre in Heidelberg, Germany, on June 2, 2016. The laudatio honoring Adrian Liston’s achievements was held by the jury chairman Prof. Reinhard Jahn.

Adrian Liston, born 1980, receives the € 20,000 prize for his seminal work in elucidating key mechanisms by which the immune system avoids attacking its own organism while remaining effective against pathogens. His experiments have paved the way for understanding key steps in controlling regulatory T-cells that are critical for balancing between autoimmunity and immunosuppression. His work opens up the way for new therapeutic approaches towards diseases resulting from a dysregulated immune homeostasis.

Adrian Liston: “My laboratory studies the genetic basis of immune disease through a multi-disciplinary approach that assesses the entire cascade of events leading to disease. We use genetic approaches to identify new mutations causing primary immunodeficiencies, cellular and biochemical immunology approaches to determine the impact of these mutations on the tolerance checkpoints, and disease modelling approaches to study the process of tissue destruction that leads to pathology. Our mission is to identify the most sensitive intervention point in the disease pathway for the development of effective therapeutics… The 2016 Eppendorf Award is a great recognition of the work done by all of the amazing people in my team. I see this prize as a validation of our philosophy to keep a broad perspective of immune diseases rather than focusing in on a single pathway or technique.”

From left to right: Axel Jahns (Eppendorf AG), Reinhard Jahn (MPI for Biophysical Chemistry), Adrian Liston (VIB/KU Leuven), Maria Leptin (EMBO), Wilhelm Plüster (Eppendorf AG), Bas Poirters (Eppendorf Nederland & Eppendorf Belgium). ©EMBL Photolab  

With the Eppendorf Young Investigator Award, which was established in 1995, Eppendorf AG honors outstanding work in biomedical research and supports young scientists in Europe up to the age of 35. The Eppendorf Award is presented in partnership with the scientific journal Nature. The Award winner is selected by an independent committee composed of Prof. Reinhard Jahn (Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany), Prof. Dieter Häussinger (Clinic for Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Infectiology, Düsseldorf, Germany), Prof. Maria Leptin (EMBO, Heidelberg, Germany), and Prof. Martin J. Lohse (Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association, Berlin, Germany).

More information about entry details, judging procedures, and past winners can be found at www.eppendorf.com/award