Author: The Wistar Institute

Read some reflections from the Cheyney University students who participated in Wistar’s Biomedical Research Methods course during Spring 2022.

Lights, lab coats, action! The click of pipettes and low murmur of voices fill the open lab space as students set up experiments. Each undergrad is seated at their own lab station equipped with a row of pipettes, colorful tube holders, and other tools they need for today’s lesson. It is one of the final weeks of Wistar’s Biomedical Research Methods course, taught by Dr. Kristy Shuda McGuire, The Wistar Institute dean of Biomedical Studies, and Dr. Ian Tietjen, research assistant professor in Wistar’s Montaner Lab.

This educational collaboration between The Wistar Institute and Cheyney University engages STEM undergraduates in a hands-on laboratory experience focused on practical bench skills including cutting-edge biomedical research techniques. The students are working on real Wistar science with a focus on cancer biology. The curriculum uses a project based on Wistar research from the laboratory Dr. Maureen Murphy, program leader, Molecular & Cellular Oncogenesis Program, Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center, which centers on African-centric variants of the p53 tumor suppressor gene—the most frequently mutated gene in cancer. Once students successfully complete the course, they have opportunities to continue conducting research through summer internships at Wistar.

Below are some students’ reflections of the BRM course.

“I got to do some of the things here that we only spoke about in virtual lab, so actually pouring the agar plates was really cool. I really liked that, and it was so fun.”

– Sophia Kurian, sophomore. She is studying biology with an interest in pursuing a career involving forensic science and plans to continue research at Wistar through the summer internship program.

“I took this course because I wanted to get a research background. It’s a very fun environment and a program that really showed me practical applications of science. It made me realize science is a lot more of an art. … My favorite skill to learn was definitely working with cell lines in the cell culture lab. I loved using the aspirator.”

– Abdiel Mandella Reynolds, sophomore. He is studying biology with a pre-medicine focus and plans to go to med school. He plans to continue research at Wistar through the summer internship program.

“I picked Wistar’s course because of the hands-on experience. I started school during the pandemic, and it was so different. But here, we get that in-person, hands-on experience, that allows us a broader understanding of science in a lab.”

– Michelle Lucas, sophomore. She is studying biology and her current career goal is to be a travel nurse.

“This course really makes you think about how people use certain tools or mechanisms for all these different applications. It shows you how to use different devices and use your knowledge in a lab. I heard that researchers from UPenn come over here to use some of these really advanced tools which is something I’m happy that I’m around.”

– Mohamedanwar Idress, sophomore. He is studying biology with a pre-medicine focus and plans to go to med school.

The hybrid event marked the conclusion of the Institute’s Life Science Innovation Course that provides experience in biotechnology entrepreneurship.

Students enrolled in The Wistar Institute’s Life Science Innovation course entered the shark tank. They shrugged off nerves, put their best selves forward, and made mock business pitches to a panel of expert biotechnology investors. The students had been preparing their pitch in teams based off technology leveraging Wistar intellectual property and interacted with inventor scientists and industry experts to design solutions to development and commercialization issues.

The competition included pitches from Wistar predoctoral students, Wistar postdocs, Wi-Star interns, and undergraduate students from Cheyney University and La Salle University. Pitch topics covered unique biotechnology and scientific discoveries with clinical potential such as HIV and pregnancy biomarkers and diagnostic testing for ovarian cancer and COVID-19.

The panel of judges included Anthony Green, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Ben Franklin Technology Partners; Donna Cordner, cofounder and managing partner of OKM Capital; and Tom Penn, partner of MVP Capital Partners. After each pitch, the judges evaluated the teams and discussed detailed breakdowns of investment plans, appropriate funding requests, important legal distinctions around Intellectual Property, and establishing an appropriate market model.

“The Shark Tank event is the culmination of months of effort by teams of undergraduate students and Wistar trainees to develop compelling business strategies for Wistar technologies. By examining the complexity of technology commercialization, participants have expanded their understanding of translational science and will hopefully be inspired to apply an entrepreneurial lens to their own research.” says David Zuzga, Ph.D, associate dean of Biomedical Studies.

A reception followed the competition. Please see the album below for photos of the event. 

For more than 20 years, The Wistar Institute has been training community college students with relevant, much-needed skills to attain in-demand jobs in the biomedical and biotechnology fields. Since 2000, Wistar understood that biomedical lab technicians would always be highly sought after for their own labs and beyond, and thus set out to create a program to cultivate this much-needed talent.

That program became the flagship Biomedical Technician Training Program, now a registered pre-apprenticeship program. The opportunity to extend hands-on training allowed Wistar to develop the Biomedical Research Technician Apprenticeship—the first registered, non-traditional apprenticeship in biomedical research in the nation.

Upon being awarded a PAsmart grant of $649,551 from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry, Wistar is now on track to expand both programs further across the region and create additional pre-apprenticeships to offer more students the opportunity to prepare for careers with additional employers in the growing life sciences industry.

In this virtual event held by the Chamber of Commerce, Wistar’s Associate Dean of Biomedical Studies Dr. David Zuzga spoke about workforce development and the value of apprenticeship programs at the Chamber of Commerce virtual event “Finding Emerging Talent in STEM”.

On April 20, 2022, the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia hosted a virtual event reviewing how to address challenges in recruiting and training a STEM workforce. Guest speakers included our Associate Dean of Biomedical Studies Dr. David Zuzga who spoke about strengthening the STEM workforce through education and apprenticeship opportunities such as Wistar’s Biotechnician Training (BTT) Program.

Attracting and retaining STEM talent in the workforce, especially in an increasingly informationally complex and interdisciplinary world, has been a challenge faced by employers and educational institutions alike. As Philadelphia grows into a leading life sciences hub, developing and retaining STEM talent is at the forefront of workforce development initiatives.

Zuzga commented on the advantages of an integrated approach to traditional education with workforce training. He highlighted Wistar’s BTT program which collaborates with Community College of Philadelphia to provide a laboratory orientation boot camp where participants work on authentic Wistar research projects and are then matched with summer internships in academic and industry settings.

“There is a transformation in the program’s participants. It’s remarkable to be so connected to an employer-partner and provide that type of value in a nontraditional program.” said Zuzga. He continues, “It’s essential for employers to begin engaging with educational institutions to better inform the type of competencies they are looking for in a successful workforce.” Zuzga explains that as employers collaborate with training providers to address lab skills that are more specific and relevant, they are creating more value for participants as they receive training more transferable to STEM careers.

Newly published research identifies a mutation associated with scarring of the lungs, revealing a useful diagnostic tool and target for gene therapy.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a fatal lung disease that can cause death within five years of diagnosis. In an international research collaboration recently published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Wistar scientists and colleagues in the Netherlands identified a mutation on telomeres – which protect the ends of chromosomes – that helps explain this disease. This study directly links the telomeric protein POT1 (Protection of Telomeres Protein 1) to IPF.

Emmanuel Skordalakes, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Gene Expression and Regulation Program at Wistar and senior author of the paper, previously published research in Nature Communications that delved into the structure and function of POT1, the protein that binds the ends of our chromosomes (telomeres) and protects them from DNA damage response (DDR).

In this new study, Skordalakes and his team used patient data obtained by their Dutch counterparts and conducted a series of biophysical and biochemical experiments to understand how telomeres with mutated POT1 are linked to IPF. Proteins usually have particular sites, which allows them to bind to molecules that match that specific pocket. The team observed that in this chronic lung disease, the mutated POT1 affected how the protein binds to the telomere and thus its ability to prevent DDR.

“We found the mutated POT1 does not bind the telomere as efficiently as the wild type one,” said Skordalakes. The less effective binding of POT1 leaves telomeres exposed to DDR. When this occurs, cells undergo a process called senescence that stops them from functioning and dividing.

“We looked at the [cells of] these patients and they are senescent,” Skordalakes shares. Senescent lung cells build up and contribute to many symptoms of IPF like difficulty in breathing.

The POT1 mutation will be added to a medical database to be used in hospitals to help diagnose patients with IPF as well as provide doctors a target for gene therapy. Skordalakes says, “When you know that your work has an impact on patients directly in the clinic – that’s what’s exciting.”

Dr. Luis Montaner, Wistar’s Associate Director for Shared Resources, and Mark Drinker, Wistar’s Associate Director for Administration of the Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center, chat about core facilities that support the innovations of our Wistar scientists, particularly spotlighting Wistar’s new Humanized Models of Disease Core.

Q: Can you tell our readers why it is so important that Wistar has Shared Resources? We’re a small biomedical research institute, why do we need it?

Mark: Wistar Shared Resources are mission critical. Every institution needs to have core facilities that support and are tailored to the science taking place in their organizations or institutes. Shared Resources allow faculty to incorporate leading-edge technology into their science in order to advance their research programs. Shared Resources may be created as a result of technology developed within an individual laboratory. For example, a laboratory may develop technology and expertise that is critical to advance their own science, and over time many other labs find they have that same need. This could be the impetus of the technology to be scaled into a Shared Resource designed to meet the needs of many researchers.

Q: Can you explain your work as the Associate Director for Administration of the Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center Shared Resources?

Mark: I work closely with Dr. Montaner, our Shared Resources director, and our Cancer Center leadership to position our core facilities as research engines that serve as extensions of our faculty laboratories. The goal is to maintain state-of-the-art Shared Resources that advance the research efforts of Wistar faculty and research partners. To accomplish this, our Shared Resources all contain technology, high-tech equipment, and exceptional personnel who have the expertise to work with each individual laboratory at Wistar.

Q: Can you describe some of the goals of the new Humanized Models of Disease Core, as its Scientific Director?

Luis: With the new Core under Dr. Zhe Yuan as Managing Director, we hope to generate a resource of humanized mice that could be of service to infectious disease scientists within the Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center, as well as the Cancer Center faculty. This model allows researchers to study how tumors from persons grow or respond to therapy if implanted in mice as well as how the human immune cells interact with tumors. The core is an investment to generate enough expertise in-house so we can bring a humanized mouse (differentiated with the human immune system) to the laboratory. The core will allow Wistar teams to utilize the humanized mouse as needed to move their experiments forward.

Q: What are humanized models of disease and why are they important?

Luis: A humanized model of disease is utilizing an animal model to study human physiology. The ability to study human immune cells within tissue environments for long periods of time (weeks) provides for studies that may better resemble our human body. We can use these models to study the infectious disease process of pathogens that infect human blood cells such as HIV. We can also use it for understanding human tumors.

Q: What was the impetus behind creating the Humanized Models of Disease Core Facility?

Mark: For many years Wistar faculty, including Drs. Herlyn and Montaner, have been developing mouse models to study cancer and infectious disease. Our scientists need to utilize models that closely replicate the human immune system to test their hypotheses. By creating a Shared Resource, we hope to develop a structure that allows Wistar to maintain this promising technology and offer it broadly to our research teams in order to advance their science.

Luis: Innovative science is made possible by the strong support of our donors. This new facility is just one example of the progress Wistar can accomplish with the generosity from our philanthropic community. The ability to propel research forward is facilitated by those who believe Wistar science is an impactful investment for the future. The creation of the new center is supported by a philanthropic commitment to Wistar’s most important priorities, which is to advance our technologies and scientific resources available to our researchers. The discoveries that will be made are the fruits of investing philanthropically in The Wistar Institute.

Q: Can you give me some examples of the scientific information that can be collected from using these models?

Luis: To study novel therapeutic strategies, you can use a tissue culture plate that just has the cells that you want to interact or understand. But once you start reconstituting the way our bodies are, then you must start scaling up into systems too. How well can I reach the blood with this drug that is in circulation to maintain this change? How well can I add a drug that would reach the cells in a physiological state? If it’s an organ system, how well can I get to that organ for my treatment to still work in the microenvironment of the lung, or the liver, or the gut? As we look for what model systems do, we must start scaling into a whole system.

When it comes to generating a platform to pilot test some proof of principle or evidence that this treatment could work in the context of human cell interactions, the humanized mice model becomes one tool that is a lot less costly and a lot less demanding with respect to using limited resources. The use of the humanized mouse model becomes a tool that could potentially give a researcher more confidence that what they’re working on is worth advancing.

Q: Can you describe some of your own HIV research and how it could be impacted by this new facility?

Luis: The humanized mouse model gives you the ability to screen many ideas within a model. Underway in our BEAT-HIV Martin Delaney Collaboratory efforts at Wistar, we are developing and testing novel strategies of viral eradication by 1) activating the immune system to clear HIV-infected cells, and 2) directly targeting HIV by CRISPR CAS9 and other gene editing approaches to rid the viral infection directly from the cells. This model gives us the ability to screen multiple strategies that either target infected cells directly or target the immune system to clear infected cells due to the immunotherapy.

Q: What do you hope that researchers will get out of using this facility?

Luis: As the technology keeps moving forward, the application of humanized mouse models in cancer research are starting to become a higher priority. For example, we can place patient tumors into mice that have compatible immune systems matched with the tumor. It’s also going to be important to test immunotherapies or chemotherapies in the context of cancer eradication as well as for the infectious disease research of the Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center.

We all have a particular signature to our immune systems, and the best model is to generate a mouse that has the same signature of the person that the tumor has been growing in (i.e., creating a personalized research model). Studying therapy approaches where a tumor also matches the immune system of the person in the same mouse allows us to identify personalized cancer therapies. These types of models are now becoming more possible.