WUSTL DBBS Immunology

Extremely excited to release our new series featuring Dr. John Atkinson, physician-scientist and a leading expert in rheumatology and innate immunity.

Dr. John P. Atkinson is the Samuel B. Grant Professor of Medicine at WashU and internationally recognized for his discoveries regarding the role of the complement system in immunity. Dr. Atkinson was born and raised in Kansas and attained his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Kansas. After his internal medicine internship and residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, he spent three years at the NIH conducting research in Dr. Michael Frank’s laboratory and taking care of patients with rare inflammatory disorders. Dr. Atkinson began his career at WashU in 1974 and has served both as the Chief of the Division of Rheumatology and the Chair of Medicine. He is a beloved physician, scientist and mentor of our community, having been awarded the Teacher of the Year and Distinguished Service Teaching Award a total of sixteen times.

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John P. Atkinson, MD Dr. John P. Atkinson is the Samuel B. Grant Professor of Medicine at WashU and internationally recognized for his discoveries regarding the…

Extremely excited to release our new series featuring Dr. Gregory Wu, physician-scientist in the Department of Neurology, Division of Multiple Sclerosis
Read the full article on Medium or Twitter !!

Gregory F. Wu, MD, PhD Dr. Gregory F. Wu is a physician-scientist in the Department of Neurology, Division of Multiple Sclerosis. Dr. Wu was born and raised in…

Our series are now live on under . Check out the full collection of our latest features of Dr. Randolph and Dr. Kipnis.
https://medium.com//gwendalyn-j-randolph-phd-a6ca4a18ead0
https://medium.com//jonathan-kipnis-phd-7a89c2f64099

“A senior scientist once told me that if he ever needed to invite someone to speak on an esoteric subject, he would invite me. It is very empowering to know that we’ve brought ‘edges of the brain’ to mainstream neuroimmunology.

You can never be a successful scientist, I believe, without passion for what you do. I think we deal with so much failure in this job, it is very hard to succeed without putting your whole self into it. We live in constant criticism, stress, deadlines, and rejections. No matter how good you are, you will often get rejected and criticized. Even when your paper is almost accepted, the language is still, ‘we cannot accept it in the current form.’ Without having passion, I don’t believe, you can do science as a profession.

We have so many exciting things going on in the lab and I don’t even know where to start. We have a nice lab and people have their own niches, they’re all very exciting. We started working on the meninges in ‘08, very cool story actually. We knew that T cells were doing something good to the brain, but we could never see T cells in the brain. So how are T cells acting on the brain without being in the brain? One day, a postdoc in the lab dissected the brain without removing the meninges like we usually do. She sliced the brain with the meninges and when she stained for T cells, we were like, wait a second, they were actually in the meninges. That is what started our meningeal interest. Back in the day, no one cared about this tissue. A senior scientist once told me that if he ever needed to invite someone to speak on an esoteric subject, he would invite me. It is very empowering to know that we’ve brought ‘edges of the brain’ to mainstream neuroimmunology. The idea that this can translate to humans one day is also very exciting. We’re looking at cells coming in from the skull marrow in the context of neurological diseases. There was always the argument about whether monocytes come into the diseased brain or not, such as in Alzheimer’s disease. And the answers had often been contradicting, because they relied on parabiosis, which suggested there are no peripheral monocyte in the brain. Now we know that there is another source of monocytes in the brain, the skull bone marrow and many of the previous claims have to be revisited in light of these new findings. It also opens possibilities for more accessible therapeutic application. There are many fascinating projects going on in the lab right now and I’m excited to be a part of them, even though I am no longer “the first person to know the answer”, but I am happy that I can at least be the third or the fourth."

This is the 6/6 post in the series featuring Dr. Jonathan Kipnis.

“As a grad student, I remember reading a lot of literature from WashU, but I didn’t understand why it’s both in Seattle and St. Louis. I subsequently learned who is who and where.

I was invited to WashU for the first time in 2015 for a seminar, soon after our discovery of the meningeal lymphatic vessels. Then, I was lucky enough to be invited again for the Bishop lecture here – one of the longest standing neuroscience lectureships in the country. Side note, my scientific hero, Rita Levy-Montalcini, delivered this lecture the year I was born. In 2019, a senior professor from WashU asked me if I would consider moving here as an BJC investigator and I got very intrigued even though I was not actively looking to move from the University of Virginia (UVA). WashU has been the ‘Mecca’ of immunology and the ‘Mecca’ of neurodegeneration research for decades. There are very few places that have such amazing strengths in both disciplines and the idea of developing a neuroimmunology center at WashU was very appealing to me. But I was very happy at UVA and had amazing colleagues and students. UVA is also a place where we made our most important discoveries to date, including the discovery of the meningeal lymphatic vessels. But sometimes, time comes when you need to be challenged by new questions, people, and environment. Being challenged and being out of your comfort zone is how science moves forward. This was not an easy decision, and I called Dr. Holtzman and asked him, ‘What if I move my family and my lab, and six months or a year after, I look back and realized I’ve made a mistake. What will I do then?’ And he said, ‘Jony, people tend to have regrets about things they haven’t done way more than about things that they have done. So, the chance of you regretting not coming is higher than the chance of you regretting coming.’ This is good right? We moved in the middle of the pandemic in June 2020. No regrets, love it here ever since. I love the school, the amazing new colleagues and truly outstanding students. We came here with 19 lab members, and when I see how happy they are in our new place, it reinforces the idea that I made the right choice."

This is the 5/6 post in the series featuring Dr. Jonathan Kipnis.

“‘I wake up, I put the cake in the oven, and whenever I’m ready to leave, I take the cake with me.’ She doesn’t have time for the cake to be ready, but she thinks of bringing cake for us.

I joined Michal’s lab in January of ’99. They just had a paper on the cover page of Nature Medicine, claiming that autoreactive T cells can protect injured CNS. It was completely out of the books, didn’t make any sense and was absolutely fascinating. A year earlier she had another provocative paper saying that macrophages could protect injured CNS if activated in peripheral tissues. This was out-of-the-box thinking and probably over a decade ahead of its time. Michal was a very interesting mentor and if you pushed for your projects, she will give you all support you can dream of. She always encouraged us all, and for me it was really fun, to think in crazy ways. With Michal, nothing was a dogma and everything was up for questioning. When you can uninhibitedly ask questions, it supports creativity, and at some point, one question will stick. We would have brainstorming meetings for hours. Sometimes, I would say, ‘Michal, this is such a great idea of yours!’ But she would say, ‘It was your idea.’ Eventually we would agree that the idea was born in the air. The discussions we had were really very very special.

Michal liked to treat us and would always bring something to lab—chocolates, candies, cakes. Sometimes she would come in with a half-bake cake. She would be like, ‘I wake up, I put the cake in the oven, and whenever I’m ready to leave, I take the cake with me.’ She doesn’t have time for the cake to be ready, but she thinks of bringing cake for us. She is also the mother of four but still traveled like crazy. She would regularly travel to the US and back on the same plane. She would go to Paris on a four-hour flight, give a talk and come back the same day. No matter how long or how short the trip was, she would always bring some treats. Chocolate, sweets, something always. It’s a small thing, but it tells you that your mentor cares. She was very tough but at the same time very caring and supportive. I think I had very productive training in her lab, culminating with a recognition by an award from the Israeli parliament, the Knesset."

This is the 4/6 post in the series featuring Dr. Jonathan Kipnis.

“I went there for rotation and ended up staying ‘forever’. I couldn’t think of doing anything else but neuroimmunology. I knew that it was the only thing I want to do.

The Weizmann is one of the best places to do science in Israel, and arguably in the world. I went to interview at Weizmann for graduate school and was very nervous at the time. Luckily, I was accepted. I had interviewed with Moche Oren, a very famous scientist who cloned murine p53. He called me after my acceptance to see if I would like to work in his lab until school starts. Heck yes, of course I did. I also did my first rotation in his lab and spent almost a whole year with him. Loved it! I said, ‘Ok, there is no way I’m going anywhere else. This is my lab.’ I was very excited and was sure that I would join them.

But then, just for fun, I went to open day for new students. One professor would present each department. This one lady comes up, short and highly energetic, from neurobiology department to talk about neuroimmune interactions and cells that protect injured nerves but can also cause autoimmune diseases. And I thought, this is crazy and fascinating, not that I was able to fully understand what she was talking about. Her name is Michal Schwartz. I didn’t like neuroscience at the time. I thought immunology was my calling, but I was really fascinated by what she was telling us. I remember there was this class that ended at 6pm and one day, I thought I’d step in and see if she was there. She was there and it was a good sign I thought, but she asked me to come back later because she had to go to feed her son. I came back and we talked about science for hours and it was just amazing. So, I started my rotation with Michal and ended up staying ‘forever’. I couldn’t think of doing anything else but neuroimmunology. I knew that it was the only thing I want to do."

This is the 3/6 post in the series featuring Dr. Jonathan Kipnis.

“I realized in that moment that I have now witnessed a discovery of something that no one else in the world knows about, and it was a very empowering feeling.

We eventually moved to Israel when I was in high school. I had to learn a whole new language and because of that I couldn’t take biology in high school. It would’ve been impossible due to the amount of reading, so I opted to take physics and chemistry. Medical schools in Israel has a different system where you start medical school as an undergraduate and for this you need very good scores on the college admissions standardized test. My school grades were great, but I performed pretty badly on the standardized test. There were three sections: math, language, and logic. Having moved to Israel a few years earlier, I didn’t know Hebrew well enough to do the language part in Hebrew and my Russian was not sufficient either at that point. So, I did not make it to medical school, but I’d learned that if you perform really well in your first year of undergraduate, you can switch into medical school during the second year. I thought I would choose chemistry as my major, but the lady at the registrar lady said, ‘Why chemistry, go to biology, seems like what you’re really excited about is medicine and biological sciences.’ So I went to biology, and I remember the first class where the professor talked about transcription and translation and I was like ‘What is this, what is she talking about?’ I had no clue at all what was going on. But the more I read, the more it all made sense to me. After my first year, my grades were good enough to switch to medical school, but I chose not to. I just fell in love with science. Something just clicked.

My very first lab experience was in a lab that studied archaea from the dead sea. These archaea normally lives in 4M of salt, crazy right? Everything else you put in 2M of salt , and they get destroyed and these bacteria live in 4M of salt. It is amazing! I was involved in a project that discovered that these archaea have an extra copy of a gene that was involved in synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acids, building blocks of DNA. I realized in that moment that I have now witnessed a discovery of something that no one else in the world knows about, and it was a very empowering feeling."

This is the 2/6 post in the series featuring Dr. Jonathan Kipnis.

Elated to introduced Dr. Jonathan Kipnis for our new series of ! Dr. Kipnis is the director of 🧠 and an expert in the field of . We are tremendously excited to have him join us as an BJC investigator! (1/6)

“I remember playing doctor as a kid and I was always the doctor discovering medicine, not prescribing it.

I was born in the Republic of Georgia. It used to be a part of the Soviet Union. It has a lot of mountains, beautiful place. The capital city is Tbilisi and that is where I was born. Majority of the country are Georgians; they have a long history of culture and their own unique language, there’s no other language like Georgian, with beautiful writings. I was born there, my parents were born there, but my grandparents had all immigrated to Georgia. None of us are ethnically Georgians. My grandparents were from all over Eastern Europe. Some came after the first world war and others came during and after the second world war. We are ethnically Ashkenazi Jews. I went to Russian school, and we spoke Russian at home. I do speak a little Georgian and understand quite a lot, but it would be very hard for me to communicate in Georgian now. Then, fast forward to 1990, we moved to Israel. I was a teenager and had to study a whole new language, Hebrew. After fifteen years in Israel, I moved to the US. And the thing is, I’ve never lived in a country whose primary language I spoke fluently. I feel that even in my home country, I am always a foreigner. If you asked me where home is, it will be very hard to answer. I was born in Georgia, but I can’t really say that it is my home because we left when I was young. Israel is where my parents and brother live, so it is probably more home. And now I’ve lived in the US longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. So, for me, it is a difficult question to answer.

I grew up in a family of clinicians – my grandmother and father are both MDs. I always thought I would become a doctor, but I never liked the idea of treating patients. I remember playing doctor as a kid and I was always the doctor discovering medicine, not prescribing it. I think I’ve always known that I wanted to go into the medical sciences.

"How the story evolves is a lot of fun. A new chapter.

The earliest trajectory of the lab was studying monocyte-derived cells and for a while, we also studied dendritic cells. I’ve always been interested in the migration part of it, rather than processes like antigen presentation. That interest initially took us to cardiovascular diseases because of the role that monocyte-derived cells played in disease progression, and I really wanted to understand that dynamic. Over the years of attending cardiovascular meetings, I got interested in HDL. It dawned on us that, as it is a molecular particle, somewhat like leukocytes, it moves around the body. It does not get taken up by receptors, as it mostly docks on surfaces of cells and exchanges various cargo. So, we had this idea to study molecular trafficking by tagging and following HDL. That has been really fun, and we want to keep going with it. The new story is, ‘why does the gut makes HDL versus the liver?’ It turns out that has this immunological role of neutralizing LPS to guard the liver and I’m hopeful that real therapeutics that target raising intestine-derived HDL can come of it to improve liver health. LDL also moves cholesterol around the body, but it gets taken up, so it doesn’t circulate the same way as HDL. We keep expanding the organs that we can follow the HDL out from, all the way out to the plasma, so there should be some other exciting developments in other locations as well. So our research theme is and always has been, I guess, really centered how understanding what is outbound from organs/tissues, be it cells or molecules, and what the consequences of leaving the tissue, or not, are. That may seem like such a weird topic but it’s what I’ve always loved to think about. We haven’t given up on leukocyte trafficking and we are currently studying how leukocyte interaction with the vasculature around the intestine affects gut-liver communication. We’ll keep going now with trafficking out of the gut for now and again, how these stories evolve is a lot of fun. A new chapter. "

(6/6) and the final post of series featuring Dr. Randolph.

"When I announced that I would move to St. Louis, I remember people immediately saying WashU is a great place but then asking how could I live in St. Louis. I love living here.

I started off my postdoc commuting into New York City from Nassau County, NY. I had a one-and-a-half hour commute each way and every dollar I had essentially counted. Just to save thirty dollars a month, I would get off at Jamaica Station and go on the E train across Queens to 51st street in Manhattan and then switch to the 6 train and go up to 68th street. I would write out my experiments for the next day on the train and I would take lots of papers to read. Eventually, I moved into Manhattan and then later, with my young family, moved all the way up to Washington Heights. It was a good place for babies, and I loved all the different backgrounds and ages of flourishing people in our building. A few weeks ago, I went to see the movie ‘In the Heights’ with my kids. My son still remembers the neighborhood a little bit, but for me, the movie was very nostalgic. The scenes were very authentic, and I felt very connected.

When I moved to St. Louis, I remember people immediately saying WashU is a great place but then asking how could I live in St. Louis. I love living here. Moving here, I reconnected with more outdoorsy interests. I started growing vegetables in my backyard. I grow southern vegetables, okra and black-eyed peas; they grow super well here. I never had Asian persimmons or fava beans until I lived in New York City, and I really liked them, so I also grow those here. I had this one persimmon tree for eight years and it was very productive. But this year, just few weeks ago, half the tree completely wilted. I looked online and apparently there is this fungal disease that persimmon trees are very susceptible to. It had bloomed in the spring and had so many early fruits on it, which later had all fallen off. I was very distressed about that. We had to cut it down. My husband joked, ‘But that’s what’s holding you in St. Louis!’ I’ve decided that I’m going to plant two new persimmons and I’ve bought different varieties. I don’t know honestly if it will work, but we’ll see. I guess we will stay here a little longer to find out!"

(5/6) series featuring

“You’re here to contribute to the team but you’re also here to tell your own scientific story.

I remember finishing my postdoc thinking I want freedom! Now I look back and it’s ‘oh my gosh, you’re running a lab and you’ve got this money that you told the NIH you’re going to do certain things with it and at the same time, you are training people to guide their own research.’ There’s an inherent contradiction to overcome. I want people to see that they are in control of their own careers, even as a student. One of the beauties of being a graduate student is that the clock counting the time between your first and later papers is not yet running, and that might allow some freedom of exploration. You’re here to contribute to the team but you’re also here to tell your own scientific story.

I think the combination of the people is critical and someone who is a good mentor to some might not be a good mentor to others; I think it really is very personal. It is critical that the mentor cares about the career development of their trainees but how they show that care can more complicated, or rougher, sometimes than young people think. For example, I think there can be scenarios when someone is really helping you even though they might seem critical. When I was a graduate student, someone on my committee pulled me into the department library after an update and said, ‘Gwen, you shouldn’t be so defensive when you try to answer questions.’ I felt terrible for a while, like somehow hyper-criticized, but it was very helpful to me as I processed it later. The remark really helped me identify something I needed, and did, work on. Sometimes, you want to help trainees in that way, but you have to gauge how it will be interpreted. It is different for every person and I had to learn that. For me, I want to help people be engaged and find a scientific trajectory that they feel like they can run with. Communication, honesty, and scientific curiosity can overcome so much. Last year I hit my 20th anniversary of running my lab and we all got together on Zoom, everyone presented a little bit about what they’re doing. People really loved it, especially people in my lab now, for them to meet the people from papers they’ve read. That was helpful for relationship building across the generations of different trainees."

(4/6) series featuring Dr. Randolph