MUSC students attend international training to become next generation of redox biologists

Life is nothing but an electron looking for a place to rest. – Nobel laureate physiologist Albert Szent-Györgyi

Three MUSC students, Kathleen Klinzing, Thomas Dempster and Kathryn Glorioso, recently travelled to Debrecen, Hungary, for a one-week intensive training in redox biology. Redox biology is the study of redox reactions, or the transfer of electrons between molecules in living things, and has implications in diseases researched at MUSC. The three Ph.D. students gave a strong showing at the training, receiving awards for high exam scores, poster presentations, group presentations and class engagement.

They joined students from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, Hungary’s National Institute of Oncology and the University of Debrecen and the University of Nebraska and University of Montana. Collaboration among these universities, as well as MUSC, has made the long-running training possible, with funding provided by the South Carolina Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant awarded to MUSC’s Redox Research Center, headed by Kenneth Tew, Ph.D., the John C. West Endowed Chair in Cancer Research.

"We have run this course for over a decade. It has been a singular success and has benefited many students in ways that simple didactic classes do not.”

-- Dr. Kenneth Tew

“We have run this course for over a decade. It has been a singular success and has benefited many students in ways that simple didactic classes do not,” said Tew. “Electrons are the basis for biology and learning redox concepts is critical to all life processes.”

Danyelle Townsend, Ph.D., director of the COBRE Redox Biology Core, serves as course coordinator for the training program. MUSC trainees receive credit through the College of Graduate Studies.

The program offers trainees the opportunity to develop relationships with both leaders and scientists-in-training in the field, offering a unique networking opportunity that builds a tight community for those interested in redox biology, despite the miles that separate them.

“The program not only created an incredible training experience, but it also created an incredible shared culture, which I think is such a unique thing to do,” said Glorioso, a Ph.D. candidate in the Jennifer Stancill Lab.

Dempster, a Ph.D. candidate in the Kristine DeLeon-Pennell Lab, agrees. “Science is super global, and you have all these people that are all spread out, but it just keeps getting more and more tight-knit,” he said. “So then it seems like Hungary and Montana and Nebraska and South Carolina and Sweden aren't so far away.”

Klinzing, an M.D.-Ph.D. candidate in the Shikhar Mehrotra Lab, is grateful that the Redox Center has chosen to invest in the training of young scientists early in their careers, when it can bear the most fruit.

“It’s so important to invest in training young investigators,” she said. “A lot of time and money can be saved if young scientists learn to communicate well with others and understand the field really well before just diving into it.”

 

This international effort was designed to provide world-class training in redox biology to research students.

It is vital that researchers-in-training build their expertise in redox biology, as many of the metabolic processes necessary for cellular life depend on redox reactions. Studying the redox system, both in a healthy state and when it is overwhelmed, can help scientists to understand how disease develops, especially chronic diseases linked to inflammation, such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. It can also help them to identify molecular targets for new treatment approaches for those diseases.

Klinzing studies cancer, Dempster studies heart disease and Glorioso studies diabetes. Despite studying very different diseases, all three students were thrilled for the opportunity to learn more about how redox biology affected cellular metabolism. The training in Hungary was intensive and challenging, but very worthwhile, said Glorioso.

“The lectures were very much like drinking from a fire hose, but in a good way,” she said. “Everything we learned, I felt like I could take back to the lab with me.”

Those lectures were also taught by giants in the field. “You’d be starstruck sometimes,” said Glorioso.

“It’s so important to invest in training young investigators. A lot of time and money can be saved if young scientists learn to communicate well with others and understand the field really well before just diving into it.”

-- Kathleen Klinzing

Trainees were asked to present a poster on their research and group presentations on what they had learned during the training, helping them to engage with the content actively. They also sat for a final exam at the end of the weeklong training session. Both Glorioso and Dempster won an award for getting a perfect score on the test. Klinzing came in with the highest score after adding in the bonus questions. Her group also won the presentation competition. Glorioso received a second-place award for her poster presentation, and both she and Dempster were recognized for their exceptional class engagement, asking many probing questions of the lecturers.

Klinzing's research lies at the intersection of cancer immunology and cellular metabolism. She is studying energy pathways in the context of cell activation, exhaustion and death to optimize the longevity of T-cells, a type of white blood cell critical for mounting a specific immune response against cancer. She is grateful to have learned which cellular assays are best suited to answering which questions and feels better equipped to design robust experiments.

Dempster also studies T-cells but focuses instead on how they affect wound healing after a heart attack. With the training under his belt, he plans to study how heart attacks affect the metabolism of T-cells.

Glorioso studies insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells and how redox proteins might protect against diabetes and could be using redox signaling for insulin secretion. The training introduced her to other redox proteins involved in insulin secretion and provided her with a more comprehensive understanding of redox reactions in diabetes.

All three encourage students with an interest in redox biology to sign up for next year’s redox training program, which will be in Sweden. They stress that, though the program is challenging, it is designed specifically for students early in their graduate careers, and organizers don’t expect applicants to have a high degree of expertise in the field ahead of time.

The COBRE grant can fund up to five or six trainees from MUSC, so graduate students should watch for the College of Graduate Studies’ email in early spring announcing that applications are open.