NYSTAR was pleased to see that you recently won a five-year $2.2 million NIH grant as well as being selected by the NIEHS to receive an "Outstanding New Environmental Scientist Award". What does this mean for you?
It will allow me to dramatically increase the size of my research team and allow us to study cell signaling pathways initiated after exposure to environmental carcinogens and mutagens. In addition, it will provide increased training in disease models and allow me to purchase some key pieces of equipment needed to study cell signaling pathways.
Why did you pick cancer genomics as your focus of interest?
It is relevant to human health, from both an environmental and genetic perspective. In addition, it is an interdisciplinary field that has application in basic, translational, and clinical sciences.
Describe an average day for you at the University at Albany.
I try to get to work by 7:30 am to answer e-mails, take care of administrative issues. Around 9 am I will start talking to researchers in my lab to hear about experimental results and plan future experiments. This goes on for about 2 hours. The next part of the day (11-3) is variable and consists of lunch on the run and either being involved in scientific or administrative meetings with my colleagues, or in the lab performing experiments. In the late afternoon, I am back in my office to do paperwork and read scientific journals and I try to leave by 7 pm to get home and see the kids before they go to bed. After dinner, I usually break out the laptop to do some manuscript writing and go to bed by 11 pm.
Please describe your top three scientific accomplishments.
(1) Developing high throughout screening methodology and using it to identify genetic modulators of DNA damage. (2) Developing computational approaches to model genomic and global data sets. (3) Identifying protein targets regulated by DNA damage
Why you feel this research is or will become useful?
Our work on DNA damage signaling has the potential to be exploited for therapeutics related to cancer treatment. In addition, it has application in biomarker discovery and for biotechnological approaches in protein expression.
Where do you see your research going as you continue on in your career?
We will continue to move our basic findings on DNA damage signaling into animal models and hope to identify small molecule inhibiters of signaling enzymes for use in translational studies.
Who are your key research and development partners?
My colleague here at the center, Dr. Doug Conklin, is a major collaborator, as are scientists working at the Wadsworth New York State Public Health laboratories, SUNY Albany, Wake Forest, and MIT.
What challenges do you and your team encounter in research and development?
The biggest challenge is maintaining a steady stream of money for research and development. This money is used to pay salaries and buy supplies, and without it no research would be performed.
You were awarded a Watson grant on the basis of your work researching cellular responses to chemotherapeutic drugs used to treat cancer. How has the Watson award money impacted your research?
The Watson Grant was great because it allowed me to hire researchers and generate data that was used for my NIH proposal. It gave me a head start over most new researchers and allowed me to be very competitive on the national stage.
Did you like science as a child?
I was into math at an early age, and found my way into science late in high school and then into college.
As a child, what did you dream of becoming?
Like most kids, I thought I was going to be a professional athlete, but that morphed into interests in math and science. For a while I thought about medicine, but I really enjoyed research.
Why did you become a scientist?
The exploratory nature of science is very exciting as is the ability to address human health issues.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I like to spend time with my family, play tennis and basketball and go to the movies.
How do you keep up with the daily progress made in the field of cancer genomics?
I go to meetings, read journals and talk to lots of other scientists
What changes do you anticipate seeing in your chosen field of research during the next 20 years?
I anticipate that we will have better computational models to analyze cell signaling pathways, which will increase the speed of research.
What advice would you give someone interested in learning more about or considering a career in cancer genomics?
I would tell them Google it on the internet to learn more. In addition, they should go to a talk by anyone in the field and see if it inspires them.
Could you please name some of your most recent publications?
Begley, T.J. 2005. Interactomes as a base unit in systems biology. Biosystems 1: 2-8.
Begley, T.J., Rosenbach, A.S., Ideker, T., and Samson, L.D. 2004. Hot spots for toxicity modulation identified by genomic phenotyping and localization mapping. Molecular Cell 16:117-125.
Workman, C. T., Mak, H. C., McCuine, S., Tagne, J. B., Agarwal, M., Ozier, O., Begley, T. J. , Samson, L. D, and Ideker T. 2006. A systems approach to mapping DNA damage response pathways. Science. 312:1054-9
What keeps you up at night?
The kids... or a good movie.
|
Accomplishments
