First Annual Postdoctoral Fellow Research Symposium

For the symposium, postdocs were invited to present posters highlighting their current research, much of it projects that were still in their very early stages. The posters were presented to an audience of colleagues from Memorial Sloan-Kettering and the Tri-Institutional research communities (which includes The Rockefeller University and Weill Cornell Medical College), and the event allowed the postdocs to interact with colleagues outside their own programs and potentially to gain insight and guidance from those who had faced similar challenges in their own work.

"We thought it would be important to have an event that would showcase the ongoing research accomplishments of Memorial Sloan-Kettering's research fellows," said Denise Cruz, postdoctoral program specialist in the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs. "The symposium also provided a venue for interaction among fellows and other members of the research community. Because the event was such a success, we are planning to make it an annual tradition."

"The poster session provided me with the opportunity to talk to scientists from different fields about doing genetic screens," elaborated Karel Liem, a research fellow in the laboratory of Sloan-Kettering Institute Developmental Biology Program Chair Kathryn V. Anderson. "People at Sloan-Kettering do research in many areas, and there's expertise in so many different fields."

Dr. Nurse entertained and enlightened the audience with stories from his own years as a postdoctoral fellow.

Training the next generation of scientists is an important part of Memorial Sloan-Kettering's mission. Currently, there are a total of 407 research fellows conducting research at the Center, as well as 63 research associates. Postdoctoral training takes place after young investigators have completed their graduate degrees and generally lasts a few years, until the researchers are recruited to longer-term positions in academia, industry, or alternative careers. For scientists just beginning their careers, fellowships provide an opportunity to initiate independent research projects under the guidance of experienced mentors who can offer advice and also laboratory resources.

"Postdocs are the heart of the research at Sloan-Kettering Institute," said Dr. Anderson. "They carry out many of the experiments, but they also provide energy and intellectual direction for much of the work here. The postdoc symposium provided formal recognition for this central component of our research community."

Posters presented at the symposium covered a wide range of topics, from basic research characterizing gene functions and immune system activities to more-applied research that addressed improving imaging technologies and potential new cancer treatments.

Dr. Liem's poster focused on the development of genetic screens in mice to identify genes that play a role in the embryonic development of motor neurons, the nerve cells that control movement. He is leading the project, which is studying mice that have certain genes knocked out with the chemical ENU to determine which of those genes play a role in the development of the motor neuron system. The neurons are labeled with a protein that appears fluorescent under a special microscope, and one of Dr. Liem's painstaking tasks is to examine litters of mouse embryos to determine which ones carry genetic defects.

"The lines of scientific inquiry that will arise from the study of these mutant mice are still in the beginning stages," Dr. Liem explained.

A poster from the laboratory of Charles L. Sawyers, Chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program within Memorial Hospital, identified potential new drugs for prostate cancer patients who have developed resistance to more traditional treatments. The compounds were selected based on cell lines and animal models that mimic resistance in humans to anti-androgen drugs, which are used in patients with advanced prostate cancer that does not respond to radiation or surgery. The new compounds have a mechanism of action that is different from existing drugs, and based on collaborative work with Memorial Sloan-Kettering's Experimental Therapeutics Center, one of the compounds is now in an early-stage clinical trial and another is being tested in mice and rabbits.

(From left) Paul Nurse, Sloan-Kettering Institute Director Tom Kelly, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering President Harold Varmus talked before Dr. Nurse's keynote address.

Nicola Clegg, a postdoc in Dr. Sawyers' laboratory, and Chris Tran, a research specialist, presented the poster together. "When someone joins your lab, you steer them toward a project that you think is ripe," Dr. Sawyers said. "I saw that this project was ripe, but I didn't know whether it was going to work or how it would go. The members of my team, including Nicola and Chris, have done all the work of refining the idea, running into brick walls that didn't lead to the right places, and figuring their way around."

"Overall, I think the research symposium was really successful," said Dr. Clegg, who is also a new member of RFAC. "For me, the highlight of the day was the keynote address from Dr. Nurse held after the poster sessions. He really connected with the student and postdoc audience, and gave a humorous and inspiring description of his own journey as a student and postdoc."

Dr. Nurse, a pioneer in the field of yeast genetics, drew appreciative laughter from his audience as he shared the story of his lifelong work in understanding the cell cycle -- focusing particularly on his own time as a young researcher. His talk was peppered with wry observations about the ways research is pursued in the 21st century as opposed to his own youthful experiences. Referring to an early research project, he recalled, "I was using a newly invented laboratory machine called a Beckman Amino Acid Analyzer. . . [it] took 2 hours and 42 minutes to complete each run to analyze all the amino acids. And it had a very interesting feature, which was that if it was to break down during the 2 hours and 42 minutes -- even at 2 hours and 41 minutes -- it would dump all the data it had accumulated up until that point."

This led Dr. Nurse to jury-rig the machine so that "it would work nine times out of ten -- a big improvement, but unfortunately rather dangerous." Dr. Nurse was forced to babysit his improvised device, keeping an eye on it to see that it didn't explode. To pass the time, he read scientific papers, and in so doing happened upon a paper in which scientist Leland Hartwell described how he used budding yeast and genetics to isolate cell division cycle mutants. "It was absolutely beautiful work," Dr. Nurse said. "I thought, 'This is the way I have to go.' And what was really good about it is that he didn't mention a Beckman Amino Acid Analyzer anywhere."

Dr. Nurse went on to share the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Dr. Hartwell and Tim Hunt.