Sanford Burnham Prebys scientists Ani Deshpande and Pamela Itkin-Ansari recently released episode six of the Discovery Dialogues Podcast focused on Metformin and other medications with origins as plant poisons.
Scientists and science communicators detail how caustic compounds meant to deter eaters of plants were harnessed to treat diabetes
The US Food and Drug Administration approved Metformin for use as a diabetes drug more than 30 years ago. This medicinal compound—prescribed to patients to help control high blood sugar—was discovered in nature through a toxic herb found in a variety of medieval remedies.
Sanford Burnham Prebys scientists Ani Deshpande, PhD, and Pamela Itkin-Ansari, PhD, recently released episode six of the Discovery Dialogues Podcast focused on Metformin and other medications with origins as plant poisons. The podcast features surgeon and writer Ambarish Satwik, MD, as well as endocrinologist David Nathan, MD, and Nir Barzilai, MD, a geneticist and longevity researcher.
Meet one of our early-career scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute: Ambroise Manceau, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Cosimo Commisso, PhD. Manceau studies pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma — the most common form of pancreatic cancer with only a 13% five-year survival rate.
When and how did you become interested in science? When I was very young, I was a bit of a nerd when it came to reading reviews of new scientific studies written for kids. Especially anything related to biology.
I lost sight of that interest at some point in my teenage years. I tried going into computer science, but I realized very quickly that it wasn’t a good fit for me. That forced me to do some deeper self-reflection about what I really wanted to do, and that brought me back to biology.
I started studying biology at college, and everything just clicked into place. I really found my way when I went to college.
What brought you to the Commisso lab at Sanford Burnham Prebys? I have an uncle that I always admired who is a researcher here in California. From talking with him, it sounded like a great place to work and live as a scientist. When I was an undergraduate in France, I decided to do a four-month internship abroad in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California.
I absolutely loved it, and I knew I wanted to return when I could. Because you can finish your graduate school program a bit faster in France, I decided to go back to France to earn my doctorate and then apply for postdoctoral positions in Southern California.
I was looking for labs conducting interesting research in the region, and that is when I found the Commisso lab. It has been a terrific fit for me.
What are the key areas of research you focus on? My broad focus is on metabolism and organelle biology in pancreatic cancer. My main project looks at macropinocytosis, which is a cellular process that allows cells to gather extra resources from their surrounding environments. Pancreatic cancer cells use this process as an adaptation because they exist in an environment where resources are scarce, and they need to find fuel for their expansion.
I study the contents taken in when pancreatic cancer cells contort their cell surfaces to create pockets called macropinosomes. By analyzing every single protein located on macropinosomes, I found that calcium and zinc transporter proteins present in macropinosomes also are required for macropinocytosis.
These proteins have never been targeted before in pancreatic cancer. By continuing to research them, our long-term goal is to use this strategy to cut the nutrient supply to tumors and see if we can inhibit tumor growth.
What motivates you about your research? One thing I enjoy is how you adjust your hypothesis based on what you are learning from the experiments. You need to adapt your hypothesis as you gain knowledge, but you don’t always realize it because it can happen one little step at a time.
Then you look at your project a year later, and it is very satisfying to see how much it evolved and how much you changed your mind by following the data.
Also, now that I have attended pancreatic cancer conferences and met with physicians and patients, I have more appreciation for the need to improve upon available therapies.
What do you like about working here? The people at Sanford Burnham Prebys embrace collaboration. They also are very curious, knowledgeable and kind. With the core facilities, workshops and other opportunities for learning and networking, we have so many resources available to us.
Then add on top of that the location in San Diego, which is a great hub for biomedical research and the biotech industry. And we have the Southern California coast, culture and weather for when we aren’t working.
Have you had an influential mentor? In addition to my uncle, my thesis mentor and principal investigator back in France were very influential in my professional development. Here, I feel like Cosimo is doing everything he can to get the best out of me, including supporting me to go to workshops and conferences.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not in the lab? I’m a bit addicted to rock climbing, and San Diego is a great place to be a climber. I have access to an incredible indoor climbing gym, but I also can go climbing outdoors within a 15-minute drive from where I live.
I also play a bit of tennis, go running and relax at the beach. And I’m painting some, which is something I used to do on rainy days in France. We don’t have many rainy days here, though, so I always want to be outside.
Postdocs at Sanford Burnham Prebys are pushing the boundaries of science every day through curiosity, collaboration, and innovation. This series highlights their unique journeys, what inspires their work, and the impact they’re making across our labs.
Meet one of our early-career scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute: Dana Mamriev, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Maximiliano D’Angelo, PhD. Mamriev studies the gateway between the DNA stored in the cell’s nucleus and the rest of the cell to better understand how changes in this junction contribute to cancer development.
When and how did you become interested in science? As a teenager, I was very into sports, and I was endlessly fascinated by the human body. I wondered what makes an athlete faster, stronger or better able to perform under pressure.
I started digging a bit into aspects of athletic performance and realized how much depth there is to molecular biology. I began to see that there are different types of muscle cells, how food is broken down to lipids, carbohydrates and amino acids, and that we have different metabolic pathways.
That was the beginning of my interest in science. When I started college, I took a few courses in biology and chemistry. I was immediately hooked. Before long, I knew I wanted to get some hands-on experience in research.
What did you imagine you would be doing professionally, and how did it evolve? Growing up, I was an athlete on the Israeli national team. I started racing kayaks. Later, I transferred to sailing in a two-person boat called a 470 because it is 470 centimeters long.
I raced in world championships, European championships, world cups and other events. It was fun, and I was quite serious about it until the age of 21 or so.
But even while training and competing, I was equally drawn to science. As an undergraduate, I joined a lab for what I thought would be a one-year research project on cancer and programmed cell death (apoptosis). I loved it so much that I stayed through my undergraduate studies, my master’s degree, and eventually my doctoral training. That experience cemented my commitment to a career in cancer research.
What brought you to the D’Angelo lab at Sanford Burnham Prebys? What drew me to the D’Angelo lab was its focus on fundamental mechanisms that drive cancer. Nuclear pore complexes are central to so many cellular processes and understanding how they go wrong in cancer has the potential to open new paths for treatment. That combination of basic science and translational impact made the lab the right fit for me.
During my PhD studies, my main project focused on breast cancer. So, I thought it could be a nice transition to study nuclear pore complexes in breast cancer. That ended up becoming my first project at Sanford Burnham Prebys.
What are the key areas of research you focus on? Our lab studies the nuclear pore complex. It’s basically a grouping of 32 proteins that are embedded in the nuclear envelope dividing the nucleus from the rest of the cell.
It is shaped like a pore and acts as a gate that controls what molecules come in and out of the nucleus where we store our DNA. In addition to this role in transport, the nuclear pore complex has many other functions, including in the cell cycle, gene expression and chromatin organization, and more.
The levels of some of the proteins in the nuclear pore complex are known to be elevated in different types of cancer. I focus on studying these changes in the nuclear pore complex in breast cancer and in lung cancer. I’m trying to understand how these changes are contributing to cancer developing and spreading to other parts of the body.
Middle image: Confocal image of an H1437 lung cancer cell showing nuclear pore staining (red) and mitochondria staining (green). Image credit: Dana Mamriev from the D’Angelo lab | Sanford Burnham Prebys.
What motivates you about your research? I think my main motivation is that I really like what I’m doing It’s the thrill of discovery and the challenge of solving difficult problems. Research often feels like piecing together a complex puzzle. When the data finally come together, it’s deeply rewarding. I especially enjoy the moments when a stubborn experiment finally reveals something new; those breakthroughs make all the effort worthwhile and inspire me to keep pushing forward.
What do you like about working here? We have a friendly and collaborative environment at Sanford Burnham Prebys. And we have many seminars that people attend and get to know each other, which helps with building collaborations. Also, the core research facilities here are top-tier and enable cutting-edge research.
Then you have San Diego as a hub for research, and especially here in La Jolla with all the great institutes around us. And we have all these biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies nearby as well. It is an outstanding place for scientists.
Have you had an influential mentor? Throughout my training, I’ve had, and still have, the privilege of working with mentors who are not only accomplished scientists but also generous teachers. Each brought something different: dedication, curiosity, discipline and patience. Their examples have been a constant source of motivation in my career.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not in the lab? I took up cycling after moving here and joined the San Diego Bicycle Club. I like to join their weekly rides, and sometimes I bike to work.
I started racing here as a cyclist. I’m familiar with racing in other sports, but racing in cycling was completely new for me. And I found it a bit funny that all the racing experience I have in kayaking and sailing is not helping.
I had to learn new strategies for when to conserve energy and when to go all out. I even got dropped from the peloton of competitors in my first race, so I’m learning the hard way. It just motivates me to better understand the sport, and to keep training and get better.
Postdocs at Sanford Burnham Prebys are pushing the boundaries of science every day through curiosity, collaboration, and innovation. This series highlights their unique journeys, what inspires their work, and the impact they’re making across our labs.
Meet one of our early-career scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys: Alexandra Houser, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Shengjie Feng, PhD. Houser is a structural biologist studying ion channels to better understand how the brain works.
When and how did you become interested in science? A family friend of ours was a scientist. When I was younger, she would take me to the woods near where my dad worked as a mechanic to look for owl pellets and put the tiny skeletons inside the pellets back together.
When I ended up going to community college, I found the science courses were the most interesting. I earned my associate’s degree in biology and then transferred to a university.
What did you imagine you would be doing professionally, and how did it evolve? I am always in awe of people that knew what they wanted to do their entire lives because I had no idea.
I remember back when I didn’t even know that research happened on university campuses. I was really surprised when people told me I could go work in a lab. I remember asking what class to sign up for and they said I could just go talk to a scientist if I was interested in what they were doing.
Soon after that, I started working in a lab on motor proteins such as kinesin, which I found fascinating. When I was getting closer to graduating with my bachelor’s degree, my mentor said I had a lot of potential as a scientist and that I should go to graduate school.
I told her that I couldn’t afford grad school, and she told me about tuition remission and getting paid a living stipend. I thought, “Oh, my god, I have to do this!”
Over time, I’ve gotten more and more into biochemistry, and now I’m here working as a biochemist.
What brought you to the Feng lab at Sanford Burnham Prebys? I learned about her research because we were working in similar fields. In grad school, I worked on sodium ion channels. Shengjie works on potassium ion channels.
I used to host an ion channel journal club in graduate school. I gave a presentation on one of her papers and loved it and then saw that she was starting a lab.
Sodium and potassium ion channels play a big role in the brain. What generates the electrical signal is the difference between sodium and potassium inside and outside the cell. It’s the balance of those two ion channels that turn neurons on or off.
In graduate school, I basically looked at how neurons turn on through sodium ion channels, and now I’m looking at how they turn off via potassium ion channels.
What are the key areas of research you focus on? Someone once told me that some people prefer areas of science that are broad in scope and where you have to make more generalized assumptions, and others like areas of science where you can unequivocally determine if something is this or that.
I am in the unequivocally this or that camp. I do what I like to call protein selfies. When you take a selfie, you take a bunch of pictures and pick the best one. With a protein selfie, I take more than a bunch. A few million more.
Because proteins are so small, I need to average these millions of pictures together to see what it looks like. And then with an image of the structure, we can get ideas of what the protein does and how.
What motivates you about your research? I’ve worked a lot of jobs in my life, but this feels different. Sometimes I just stay late because I’m excited and it’s fun. I may be seeing something for the first time that no one else has ever seen.
When you’re doing basic research, sometimes you just find really cool stuff!
What do you like about working here? I love the support that’s here for postdoctoral researchers. Honestly, it’s been almost universally positive. I don’t think that is true everywhere.
The postdoc community here is so active organizing standout events such as family day and holiday gatherings. We have tremendous opportunities for workshops and industry tours.
I’ve also enjoyed events put on by the Workforce Engagement & Belonging team, especially this summer’s book club. It was great getting to meet people from administrative offices and other labs, all the different people that make up Sanford Burnham Prebys.
How do you hope your work will advance science and/or improve health? As a basic scientist, I feel like my research will help other researchers make an impact in the future.
I’m doing everything I can to explain a protein’s structure and how it influences function. I imagine someone years from now will use my science to develop a new drug for this protein target. My work can help them understand areas where a drug could bind the protein, for example.
What are your hopes for the next stage in your career? I’d really like to go into industry. It often goes that the more successful you are as a principal investigator, the less time you can spend at the laboratory bench conducting experiments.
And I love being at the bench.
Have you had an influential mentor? My undergraduate mentor made a major difference in my career. I had a lot to learn. I didn’t know anything about academic science. He was really good at pushing me but also giving me room to fail.
He taught me so many things that I use all the time, such as how to focus on the big picture of your science. In structural biology, you can analyze your data for five years. Understanding your big question helps you know when you’ve reached the resolution needed to answer this question. Then you can move forward with the next question.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not in the lab? I’m a big reader. I read books all the time. My fellow lab members make fun of me because even when I’m eating lunch, I’m always there with my books.
I also like cooking dinner together with friends and going to the beach with my son and my dog.
Postdocs at Sanford Burnham Prebys are pushing the boundaries of science every day through curiosity, collaboration, and innovation. This series highlights their unique journeys, what inspires their work, and the impact they’re making across our labs.
Alexandra Houser, PhD, a postdoctoral associate at Sanford Burnham Prebys in the Feng lab, with Mesa-wide Postdoc Pitch Competition emcee R. Luke Wiseman, PhD, a professor at Scripps Research. Image Credit: Sanford Burnham Prebys.
Feng lab member Alexandra Houser impressed the judges with her pitch on the importance of turning off brain cells
Turning off neurons in our brain is just as important as turning them on, according to third-place Postdoc Pitch Competition contestant Alexandra Houser, PhD.
Houser, a postdoctoral associate at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in the Feng lab, discussed how our ability to have complex thoughts is due to a sequence of on and off signals—akin to a version of Morse code—that neurons use to communicate to one another. She studies proteins called voltage-gated potassium channels that are an important facilitator of these neuron-to-neuron interactions.
Better understanding of the structure of these proteins—and how it changes in aging or in diseases such as epilepsy—may help future scientists develop new treatments.
Joining Houser at the contest was fellow Sanford Burnham Prebys scientist Jessica Proulx, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in the Adams lab. She presented her work regarding how aging interferes with the harmonious balance of transcription factors and chromatin regulators that control which genes are turned on or off in different types of cells.
Proulx shared the team’s success in restoring the activity of a master transcriptional regulator of liver cell identity—HNF4 alpha—using viral-mediated gene delivery tools. This approach may underpin future treatments for age-associated liver dysfunction.
Houser and Proulx were selected to participate in the inaugural Mesa-wide Postdoc Pitch Competition held at Sanford Burnham Prebys on October 23, 2025, after being named the two best presenters at the qualifying event for the institute’s postdoctoral researchers on September 30.
Jessica Proulx, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in the Adams lab at Sanford Burnham Prebys. Image credit: Sanford Burnham Prebys.
The Postdoc Pitch Competition was hosted by the Torrey Pines Training Consortium and sponsored by local companies Yamay Bio, BD, Complete Genomics, Hamilton, TriLink Biotechnologies and Wilson Sonsini. The event featured scientists from Sanford Burnham Prebys, Scripps Research, the Salk Institute and the University of California San Diego. Participants were asked to present their work in a compelling, accessible and engaging pitch—and in three minutes or less.
Event recording now available for panel discussion with scientists held on October 14, 2025
David A. Brenner, MD, president and CEO of Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, welcomed members of the San Diego community to the latest event in the “A Conversation About” community engagement program on October 14, 2025.
Attendees participated in an engaging afternoon exploring the connections between aging and metabolic disorders. Brenner moderated the discussion among three featured panelists:
Debanjan Dhar, PhD, associate professor in the Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys
Rohit Loomba, MD, MHSc, professor of Medicine at the University of California San Diego and chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at UC San Diego Health
The event was introduced by Reena Horowitz, founder of Group of 12 and Friends at Sanford Burnham Prebys, whose support has been instrumental in fostering dialogue around science and health within our community.
Watch Recording
The “A Conversation About” series brings together Sanford Burnham Prebys researchers, clinicians, and community members to explore how aging influences key health issues that affect older adults. Each session highlights current findings, innovative collaborations, and opportunities to translate scientific discoveries into improved health outcomes.
Previous events included:
A Conversation About Aging and Cancer: Examined the links between aging and cancer and featured a discussion of a current breast cancer research collaboration. Click here for the recording of the event.
Sanford Burnham Prebys president and CEO David Brenner, MD, meets with speaker Susan Tousi, MBA, CEO at DELFI Diagnostics, prior to the inaugural event in the Women in Science Lecture Series.
The series highlights the groundbreaking work and unique perspectives of women leaders in the biomedical sciences
Susan Tousi, MBA, CEO at DELFI Diagnostics, opened the event by discussing the lessons she learned throughout her career journey. At DELFI Diagnostics, she is leading a team focused on improving the detection of lung cancer. The company’s goal is to make lung cancer screening more accessible through a blood test that is analyzed by applying machine learning and next-generation sequencing.
Prior to this role, Tousi served as a senior vice president for more than 10 years at Illumina, Inc., including as chief commercial officer for three years. During her tenure, she contributed to making genomic sequencing more affordable as the cost of sequencing a single genome fell from more than $5000 in 2013 to $200 in 2023. Tousi also borrowed from her experience developing consumer printers for Eastman Kodak and Hewlett-Packard, emphasizing the importance of making Illumina’s sequencing machines easy to use for clients in research labs, hospitals and clinics.
“My time at Illumina was amazing,” said Tousi. “I had the absolute privilege of seeing our genomic capabilities installed in 155 countries around the world.”
Tousi concluded with her optimism about how technology is transforming healthcare.
“I think we are on the precipice of major shifts in technology with the advancement of AI and where we’ve come with genomics, multiomics and the access to large-scale molecular data,” said Tousi. “I think you know these new technologies like blood-based liquid biopsy testing are going to allow us to find disease earlier, to treat it more precisely and monitor its recurrence across many disease areas.
“This can be the dawn of a new beginning in science and the advancement of healthy lives.”
From left: Brooke Emerling, PhD, and Susan Tousi, MBA
Image credit: Sanford Burnham Prebys
Kevin Tharp, PhD, assistant professor in the Cancer Metabolism and Microenvironment Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys, then moderated a fireside chat and audience question-and-answer session with Tousi and Brooke Emerling, PhD, director and associate professor in the Cancer Metabolism and Microenvironment Program. Topics included: different gender-based expectations in scientific fields; the importance of mentorship and paying it forward; dealing with the emotional toll of studying diseases more prevalent in women; and programs providing opportunities for future leaders in science and medicine.
The Women in Science Lecture Series features quarterly events and is part of broader efforts at Sanford Burnham Prebys to foster an environment that nurtures the success of individuals from all backgrounds. The series is hosted by the Office of Workforce Engagement & Belonging and highlights the groundbreaking work and unique perspectives of women leaders in the biomedical sciences, while fostering mentorship and collaboration across the Torrey Pines Mesa.
Women in Science lectures are free and open to the public. Registration is open for the next event in the series on February 11, 2026.
Institute News
Q & A with Postdoctoral Researcher Rouven Arnold, PhD, from the Adams Lab
Meet one of our early-career scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute: Rouven Arnold, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Peter Adams, PhD. Rouven is a geneticist studying how aging affects the identity of individual cells. His goal is to protect people from common age-related diseases such as heart disease, cancer and dementia.
What are the key areas of research you focus on? I’m interested in cell identity and how cell identity changes during aging. In our bodies, we have about 30 trillion cells, all with the same genetic information. So how does a liver cell know that it’s a liver cell and not a brain cell?
The answer is epigenetics, a layer of control governing the expression of genes in our DNA. With aging, we see a loss of cell identity or, in other words, epigenetic erosion. And that can eventually contribute to age-related diseases.
I’m particularly interested in a protein called HIRA, a histone chaperone. I study how this protein tries to maintain the cell’s identity as we age and prevents the onset of age-related diseases. The goal is to help people age healthier.
This is an important point to emphasize whenever we talk about aging research. The goal is not to live forever. We are trying to help people live healthier for longer.
When and how did you become interested in science? For me, it clicked when I was in high school and we covered genetics in biology class. I found it incredibly fascinating to learn how traits are passed on and how mutations lead to diseases.
I also realized that even small discoveries can make a huge impact. This gives every biomedical scientist a sense of purpose in advancing knowledge and improving health.
What did you imagine you would be doing professionally, and how did it evolve? I have always been connected to the research world because my parents are both biologists. I did not grow up knowing I would become a scientist. My fascination began in high school and didn’t fully solidify until college. At that point, genetics became my main focus and something I truly enjoyed pursuing.
What brought you to the Adams lab at Sanford Burnham Prebys? Before starting graduate school, I worked in several labs in Germany. I gained experience in cancer and heart research. When I started my PhD, I realized that much of my previous research was connected to aging.
As we age, many age-related diseases tend to pop up, such as cancer. After my PhD, I was looking for a postdoctoral research position in aging research and I found an opening in the Adams lab. I was already familiar with his work because he’s well-known in the field, so I was very excited to apply.
I haven’t regretted it at all as I’ve had a wonderful experience with this team.
What motivates you about your research? Sometimes, research can be very challenging. But there are other times where everything falls into place. And then you get this perfect moment, which is incredibly rewarding.
In those moments, you can reflect on the entire process, from generating your hypothesis and designing your experiment to executing it and seeing an exciting result, and everything just aligns. When you have one of these experiences, you remember why you are in science, and you reap the rewards of learning something completely new. That’s a pretty amazing feeling.
Being a scientist also means you share the same passion and curiosity with all the people around you. And that’s motivating you to do even better science, because you are inspired by the collective enthusiasm.
What do you like about working here? Sanford Burnham Prebys stands out for its collaborative environment. Everyone here is friendly and always eager to help you. Whenever I have a problem in the lab, I can walk down the hallway, talk to someone, and we come up with solutions.
I also think that the core facilities here are exceptional. They provide a tremendous boost to my research.
What are your hopes for the next stage in your career? My wife and I are both German, so we do plan to return to Europe. I want to take everything I have learned here and continue working as a scientist.
There are several places in Europe, such as Germany, Switzerland and Portugal, with emerging aging research institutes, and more and more universities are starting departments focused on aging research. I’m hopeful that I will be able to continue contributing to this field after my postdoctoral training.
Have you had an influential mentor? Peter (Adams) has been an incredible mentor. He is very supportive and always eager to connect me with people I can learn from or collaborate with to advance my project and grow as a scientist.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not in the lab? I enjoy rock climbing and being out in nature. Also, I feel like when you live in Southern California, you have to try surfing. It’s really challenging, but it’s also a lot of fun so I’m still working on getting better at it.
Postdocs at Sanford Burnham Prebys are pushing the boundaries of science every day through curiosity, collaboration, and innovation. This series highlights their unique journeys, what inspires their work, and the impact they’re making across our labs.
Scientific achievement is typically measured in terms of the work of its principal investigators, their labs and colleagues. But good science requires safe science. In an essay published in Lab Manager,Jennifer Ramil, MBA,director of environmental health & safety at Sanford Burnham Prebys, recounts her own journey from bench to biosafety.
What began as curiosity at the bench, she writes, can evolve into a calling to protect researchers, shape safer labs and strengthen institutions.
Institute News
Q & A with Postdoctoral Researcher Tsunghan Hsieh, PhD, from the Tian Lab
Meet one of our early-career scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys: Tsunghan Hsieh, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Xiao Tian, PhD. Hsieh studies stem cell biology and regenerative medicine to learn how to protect brain health during aging.
When and how did you become interested in science? When I was in high school, I became interested in biology. I started to study biology more and more so that I could go to university and advance to fields such as molecular biology and immunology.
Then I totally changed my track to focus on immunology because I found it so fascinating.
How has your scientific career evolved? After I completed my master’s degree in Taiwan, I wanted to see how people use biology in the business world. I went to industry for a few years, and there I was exposed to different companies and distinct products in a variety of fields.
I learned that I needed a PhD to get access to the most exciting technology in this field, so I started to apply for PhD programs around the world. Eventually I received funding from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University and went to Japan to complete doctoral studies in immunology.
What brought you to the Tian lab at Sanford Burnham Prebys? I was torn about staying in academia or going back to industry after earning my PhD. I decided that academia gave me the best chance to do something truly new and innovative.
After three years working in different roles in Japan and the Netherlands, I realized that I was most interested in the latest biotechnology. I needed to go to the country with the best biotechnology in the world.
Xiao and I connected on LinkedIn and began discussing his lab’s research on healthy aging. After one conversation, I decided to move to San Diego and join his lab.
What are the key areas of research you focus on? My major project is to study how to reverse the aging process of neurons and other cells. During the aging process, neurons and other cells gain a very different phenotype.
We’re interested in a common mechanism behind this aging phenotype. As cells age, the chromosome structure and transcriptomic profiles become quite distinct from younger cells. If we can reverse this process, we may be able to help the brain stay healthier as people age, and less prone to conditions such as dementia that are more likely to afflict older individuals.
What motivates you about your research? One thing that drives me is that I’ve found something that I truly like to do. Every day I walk into the lab with questions that I want to answer. If you have that kind of innate curiosity, science is a great outlet for it.
What do you like about working here? I learned in my early scientific career that I was not as excited about fundamental research. Here at Sanford Burnham Prebys and in Xiao’s lab, I’m working on more translational science that fits my interests. I want to work on technology that benefits people and has the potential to be approved by regulators, commercialized and disseminated.
How would you describe the culture here? Another one of the best things about working here is the people are friendly and open to collaboration. There are no hierarchies or traditions that get in the way of discussing potential collaborations.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not in the lab? Outside of work, I’m usually taking care of my kid, getting her everywhere she needs to go and trying to enjoy some time together as a family. And I am also enjoying the region’s delicious tacos and learning Spanish!
Postdocs at Sanford Burnham Prebys are pushing the boundaries of science every day through curiosity, collaboration, and innovation. This series highlights their unique journeys, what inspires their work, and the impact they’re making across our labs.
