dan tennant and aga gambus (also tennant) · talks national/international meetings 2015: belgian...
TRANSCRIPT
How to start a lab (and other stories)
Dan Tennant and Aga Gambus (also Tennant)
School of Cancer Sciences, University of Birmingham
Lecturer in Cancer Biochemistry
CR-UK post-doctoral fellowship, Beatson Institute for Cancer Research
Professor Eyal Gottlieb
MRC PhD at University of Manchester/PICR
Professors Caroline Dive
and David Tomlinson
BA (Hons) and MSci, Cambridge University, UK
Where Dan has been…
School of Cancer Sciences, University of Birmingham MRC CDA Fellow, Birmingham Fellow
School of Cancer Sciences, University of Birmingham
independent research
Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship
Professor Julian Blow’s lab, Dundee
CR-UK PhD at Paterson Institute for Cancer Research,
Dr Karim Labib
MSc, Jagiellonian University , Poland
Where Aga has been…
Timeline
Dan
Aga
PhD starts
PhD starts
2002
PhD ends
2005 2006
PhD ends
Post-doc starts
Post-doc starts
Post-doc 2 starts
2007
Thomas born
Post-doc ends
2011 2010
Lectureship starts
Post-doc 2 re-locates
2013
Fellowship starts
Two very different PhDs!
Labib, K. and Gambus, A. Trends Cell Biol (2007). Gambus A, Jones R, Sanchez-Diaz A, Kanemaki M, van Deursen F, Edmondson R, Labib K. Nature Cell Biology (2006) Kanemaki M, Sanchez-Diaz A, Gambus A, Labib K. Nature (2003) The Pontecorvo prize awarded for the best Ph.D thesis from CR-UK-funded students Michael Dexter Young Investigator award, Paterson Institute for Cancer Research.
Aga Dan
Two post-docs
Second post-doc (Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowhip – 4 years) Gambus, A and Blow JJ (when independent in Birmingham) Cell Cycle (2013). Gillespie PJ, Gambus A and Blow JJ Methods (2012) Gambus A, Khoudoli GA, Jones RC and Blow JJ J Biol Chem (2011)
“First” post-doc Gambus A, et al. EMBO J. 2009
Aga Dan
Frezza C, Zheng L, Tennant DA, Gottlieb E. PLoS ONE (2011) Tennant DA and Gottlieb E. J Mol Med (2010) Frezza C, Tennant DA and Gottlieb E. Cancer Cell, (2010) Tennant DA and Gottlieb E Nature Reviews Cancer, (2010) Tennant DA, Durán RV, Boulahbel H, Carcinogenesis, 2009. Tennant DA et al. Oncogene (2009) MacKenzie ED, Selak MA, Tennant DA et al. Molecular and Cellular Biology, (2007)
So what happened?
• Dan got lectureship in Birmingham (when Thomas was 8 weeks old)
– start-up of 1 yr technician salary and a hypoxia workstation
• Aga brought her final 9 months of fellowship to Birmingham
– negociates a 1 yr salary + consumables in order to find new money.
How Dan started his lab
1. Telling everyone how important his area of research was in order to
understand theirs!
2. Writing many many many grant proposals
3. Collaborating with everyone
4. Accepting all invitations to speak/go places, etc.
5. Getting lucky
Grant applications
2011 2012 2013 2014
1
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 9 11 12 13 14
5 2 3 4
£15,000 £160,000
£89,000
£184,000
£6,000
6
£116,000
Collaborations lead to ‘space-filler’ papers
Liu Y, Tennant DA, et al. PLoS ONE, (2014) Adam J, (about 10 authors), Tennant DA, (another 5 authors). Cell Reports, (2013) Favaro E, Bensaad K, Chong MG, Tennant DA, (another 8-9 authors) Cell Metabolism, (2012) Ashrafian H,…(about 8 authors), Tennant DA, (about 10 more authors). Cell Metabolism, (2012)
Talks
National/International meetings 2015: Belgian Association for Cancer Research, Brussels, Belgium 2014: American Association for Cancer Research, San Diego, USA 2014: International Symposium on Pheochromocytoma and Paraganglioma, Kyoto, Japan 2014: European Association of NeuroOncology meeting, Turin, Italy 2014: The Association of Science Education Conference, Birmingham 2013: European Congress of Pathology, Lisbon, Portugal 2013: Precision Medicines in Breast Cancer Symposium, London, UK 2012: MiTOX meeting, Oxford, UK 2011: International Symposium on Pheochromocytoma and Paraganglioma, Paris, France
Other 2014: University of L’Aquila, Italy 2014: School of Biological, Biomedical and Environmental Sciences, University of Hull 2014: The Brain Tumour Charity Grantholder Day, Farnborough 2014: Wellcome Trust Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford University 2013: Shenzhen University, Guangdong, China 2013: Manipal University, Manipal, India 2013: MRC Research Centre, Cambridge 2011: AstraZeneca, Macclesfield, UK
The good and the bad of this approach
• Good
– Huge fun
– Great collaborations
– Interesting and challenging research
– Risk(?!)
• Bad
– Risk
– Huge amounts of work
– Family/work life balance(?)
– Making life hard for yourself!
Dan’s lab
2nd supervisor (collaboration)
MRes
MRes
MRes
Project grant Project grant Clinical collaboration
2nd supervisor (collaboration)
CASE award (collaboration)
Out of the blue
Start-up, now on project grant
How Aga started her lab
1. Used remaining consumables in my Henry fellowship to buy all the
necessary bits of equipment and stuff to do experiments
2. Learning what people do around me and coming up with
compatible project
3. Applying for many many fellowships
4. Getting lucky
5. Going for meetings, giving talks and posters…
Dorothy Hodgkin Royal Society Dec 2010
Uni Researcher - Royal Society David Phillips – BBSRC Birmingham Fellows
2011 2012 2013
Dorothy Hodgkin - Royal Society
MRC Career Development (over 1 million, me and RA)
Sir Henry Dale - Wellcome Trust
Birmingham Fellows (PhD student)
CRUK Career Development Officially started the lab
£2k £15k £20k £5k £2k
• Fellows workshop UoB - June 2013 (talk)
• CSHL conference - September 2013 (poster)
• EMBO Ubi-Ubl conference - October 2013 (talk)
• Cell Cycle Club - October 2013 (talk)
• GSN meeting - January 2014 (talk)
• International symposium “cell proliferation and genome integrity” Santander - April 2014 (talk)
• Cancer Sciences away day – June 2014 (talk)
Let them know that you exist…
Aga’s lab
Final comments
• Everything starts from data
– Conferences
– Seminars
– Papers
– Collaborations
• Try to cultivate a positive and enthusiastic attitude
• Things go wrong – keep going – move on!