Reaching potential

Caitlin Nolan James ’19

REACHING POTENTIAL

The emerging Pitt-Bradford-to-medical-researcher pipeline

BY KIMBERLY WEINBERG

A single comment by Dr. Denise Piechnik changed the course of Caitlin Nolan James’s life.

A year before James graduated in December 2018, Piechnik, an associate professor of biology and James’s adviser, was reviewing the capstone project for James’s biology education degree. It was James’s second major, one she had selected because she liked her work in the tutoring center.

She was starting to realize that it was the content she liked, not really the teaching, just as she had earlier realized that being a physician’s assistant (her first major) probably hadn’t been the best choice for her because she didn’t enjoy directly caring for patients.

Fluorescent microscope image of skin cells from Dr. Yvon Woappi's research.

So, Piechnik’s comment had fertile ground in which to plant a seed.

As she recalls it, Piechnik said, “You know, it’s a real shame that you’re not going to grad school.”

In an instant, James realized in her head what she had known in her heart: It wasn’t patient care or teaching that she loved; it was the science itself.

Grad school was something I had never considered. It’s something that you think is reserved for the smartest of the smart.

“Grad school was something I had never considered,” she said. “It’s something that you think is reserved for the smartest of the smart.

Dr. Piechnik really supported my decision to switch my major back to biology.”

Associate biology professors Dr. David Merwine and Dr. Lauren Yaich gave James two independent research projects that she could complete by graduation and use to apply to biomedical research programs.

Today she is doing her doctoral research at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y. The department in which she studies, immunology, focuses on how the immune system attacks cancer. Specifically, she is researching how chronic stress can affect the metabolism of T-cells and what that means for controlling the growth of tumors.

She also has been talking to those a few years behind her at Pitt-Bradford, meeting with students in Yaich’s cancer science class and freshman seminar to talk about graduate school and research. She’d like to give them a bit more time to think about making the same decision she did.

James is one of a handful of young Pitt-Bradford alumni pursuing research as their vocation. Mentorship was a common thread in discussing research with three other Pitt-Bradford alumni, all of whom crossed paths with the same professor at Pitt-Bradford, Dr. Om Singh.

Singh taught biology at Pitt-Bradford from 2008 through 2016, working with students to publish more than 50 research articles. He left in 2016 to become a senior-level reviewer with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is now an independent consultant.

He took mentorship as seriously as he did research. One of the first students he worked with in the lab was Prashant Gabani ’11.

Gabani is now a clinical oncologist, conducting research, consulting with medical technology start-ups, pursuing a Master of Business Administration, and going home each night to his wife and baby in Austin, Texas.

Singh set Gabani on the fast track during Gabani’s first summer in the lab, where Singh created a system that allowed individual students to study parallel projects. For example, if one student was studying the effectiveness of cinnamon on bacterial growth, another student could perform similar tests with turmeric. It allowed him to always have several students working in the lab, and he insisted that if students were doing research that they would publish the results with him.

“He laid down the foundation,” Gabani said. “Every year, I worked in the lab, and I came out with multiple publications. His mentorship in the lab really mentored me in science.”

Gabani graduated from Pitt-Bradford in three years and headed straight to Temple Medical School. It was a path that he said Singh helped him lay out.

“When you’re in undergrad, you’ve just come out of high school, and you really have no idea what the real world is like, and he tells you, ‘This is what you have to do to get ahead in life.’”

Every year, I worked in the lab, and I came out with multiple publications. His mentorship in the lab really mentored me in science.

Gabani said that Singh provided him undergraduate guidance on everything from designing a poster so that people at a conference would ask him questions to learning how to write a professional email that would get a response.

“I had no experience, and he brought a ton, and he knew what it takes in real life to get ahead.”

Gabani’s Dorn House suite-mate at Pitt-Bradford, Yvon Woappi ’11, now holds a doctorate in biomedical sciences and is an instructor at Harvard Medical School. He said that although he’s had mentors since, Singh’s mentorship when he was an undergraduate was critical.

“I think he was probably 60% to 80% of why I became a Ph.D. scientist. A big part is getting that confidence that you can do science,” Woappi said. Like Gabani, Woappi researched and published with Singh. Woappi said, “To this day, people are quite impressed that I was publishing as an undergraduate. It is not typical.”

Prashant Gabani ’11, center, and colleagues

That early experience is one reason Woappi prioritizes mentoring young researchers in the lab, and he’s very close to starting his own lab, having finished his post-doctoral fellowship (which is like a medical doctor’s residency) at Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The world of academic research science has its own proscribed paths. Each university lab is led by a principal investigator, who designs and runs experiments and manages their own lab. Managing a lab includes applying for funding and hiring people to work in their lab.

Sometimes lab workers are graduate students, such as James, who develop related experiments to run and report on. Other times they are researchers whose work is focused on the principal investigator’s research. One thing Woappi will need to consider is what universities have programs with researchers who will be most useful in conducting the kind of research that he wants to pursue. In January 2021, Woappi received a huge vote of confidence from the National Institutes of Health when it named him one of seven inaugural K99/R00 MOSAIC scholars.

Yvon Woappi ’11

The program is meant to help promising diverse researchers transition into their own independent careers at research institutions such as universities or affiliated research hospitals like Roswell Park or Brigham and Women’s. The MOSAIC program will provide Woappi five years of mentored career development, research support, and a $1 million, five-year grant to set up his own lab. One critical aspect of the grant is that Woappi can take it with him to whatever institution offers him an assistant professorship with a lab.

This academic year, Woappi is an instructor at Harvard Medical School, which is usually a transitory position between completing doctoral training and starting a tenuretrack position as an assistant professor. By next year, he should have his own lab at Harvard or somewhere else.

Soon-to-be Doctor of Natural Science Jonathan Josephs-Spaulding ’16 is wrapping up his doctoral dissertation at the University of Kiel in Germany. His research builds on what he began at Pitt-Bradford studying with Singh, Piechnik and Dr. Stephen Robar, associate professor of political science and director of the environmental studies program.

While James, Gabani and Woappi have followed fairly linear paths, Josephs-Spaulding has focused on a blend of his interests, exploring how the environment affects human immune systems and microbiomes, which are all of the microbes living in a given habitat.

Josephs-Spaulding has chosen to pursue his research using a relatively new tool in the researchers’ arsenal – computational modeling. With the advent of gene sequencing, scientists can now make computer models of microbiomes and predict how they will respond to various environments or treatments without having to expose actual patients to potential harm or inconvenience.

During the pandemic, the team he works with was able to create models of different immune cells and simulate how they interact with COVID-19, for example, what causes the virus to replicate more slowly. Critically, it was all research that scientists could conduct safely from home. All they needed were computers.

To this day, people are quite impressed that I was publishing as an undergraduate. It is not typical.

He attributes the root of his interest and supercomputing to a summer project he did at Pitt- Bradford with Piechnik, working with tiny independent computers called Arduinos to study insect ecology.

“That Arduino work with Dr. Piechnik really gave me a springboard to getting into the computer modeling I do today,” he said. “There is no difference in studying environmental effects with humans. I would not have done this without doing that summer program at Pitt-Bradford.

“I think I had a really good environment at Pitt- Bradford,” said Josephs-Spaulding, who majored in environmental studies as well as biology. “There were professors who really looked out for me and encouraged me to explore new topics. They all cultivated a different aspect of me. When people ask me about American liberal arts, I’m super proud of that.”

Where each of these young alumni has landed in the world of medical research had as much to do with luck as it has hard work, starting with the luck of coming to Pitt-Bradford and connecting with professors who believed in them.

Woappi’s path has been classically academic. After Pitt-Bradford, he earned his doctorate in biomedical sciences at the University of South Carolina, where he studied how some viruses, like human papillomavirus, cause cancer. The model for studying this was skin, which led Woappi to an interest in dermatology, which he pursued at Harvard.

He is now studying skin biology and viral oncology and examining how to regenerate tissue. In 2019, he was selected as a Rising Star in Biomedical Sciences by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University and Columbia University.

And he recently added a new title – Dad. “It’s one of the most interesting and dynamic times of my life,” he said, “launching a lab and becoming a father for the first time.”

Gabani is also a busy new father. He continues to conduct research, but it now focuses on patients and how they respond to different treatments. Gabani explained that he designs studies to determine how various treatments — a new drug combination, for example, or radiation protocol – affect his breast cancer patients. Clinical assistants interview patients, and Gabani analyzes the data provided.

He is passionate about the best outcomes for patients, and it is one of the reasons he has his sights on moving into hospital administration, where he feels he can have an impact on the quality of treatment for more patients. In addition to conducting research and seeing patients in the clinical setting, he is also advising a startup focused on creating an online community for breast cancer patients and working on his MBA.

“I’ve always wanted to get an MBA because it gives you that business perspective to medicine,” he said. “You need to know how the health care system works and how to best treat your patients while not putting the system at a disadvantage. That’s the motivation. At the end of the day, my goal is patient care.”

Josephs-Spaulding also values a broad perspective. Following his graduation from Pitt-Bradford, he earned a Master of Health Science in environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. But he also backpacked and explored Asia, teaching English and meeting new friends from around the world, including many Germans, who always seemed up for an adventure.

Having grown up in a multilingual home in South Florida, Josephs-Spaulding has an affinity for languages and has picked up bits of Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese and German. When it came time to find a doctoral program, he kept his options open.

“I wanted to pursue microbiology, and Germany has one of the oldest histories in microbiology,” he said. When the finishing touches on his doctoral thesis are done, he has a 30,000-euro grant (about $34,000 in U.S. currency) to study a chemical found in packaging that leeches into the environment that will mix three of his interests – the environment, human medicine and computers.

There were professors who really looked out for me and encouraged me to explore new topics. They all cultivated a different aspect of me.

While Josephs-Spaulding, Gabani and Woappi are making the leap to the next part of their career, James is steadily making process on the research that will underpin her own career. She has begun research on the thesis that will form the basis of her doctoral research.

Like Woappi, James is working on improving therapies for melanoma patients. Her work is focused on developing a better understanding of immune checkpoint inhibitors, which “take the brakes off” of T cells and allow them to kill tumor cells more effectively. However, “a large population of patients still don’t develop complete responses, allowing the cancer to progress,” she explained.

She and other researchers at Roswell Park are using a common heart drug that has been shown to improve overall T-cell function and may be able to reduce tumor growth.

James’s work in the lab is one way that Pitt-Bradford alumni researchers are improving the world by studying the interface of humans and the environment, researching cures and ways to improve quality of life for patients and leading with patient care in mind.

Jonathan Josephs-Spaulding ’16