Dear Physician-Scientist Community,

Welcome to the quarterly newsletter of the Physician-Scientist Career Development Program (PSCDP)! Our program is a joint effort between the departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, and Neurology to support and cultivate laboratory-based physician-scientists with career development programming, as well as opportunities for community and collaboration.

A major milestone for lab-based physician-scientists is applying for a career development grant, such as an NIH K08 Award. To help UCSF physician-scientists plan and prepare for a K08 application, PSCDP holds quarterly workshops with topics ranging from an overview of the K08 mechanism to writing tips, and providing hands-on reviews of Aims pages or Candidate Training Plans. These workshops complement grant-writing resources and internal K Award review programs in individual departments. Our next K08 Workshop, in September, will be led by Drs. Rachel Rutishauser and Alison Nair (see more information below). This workshop will introduce the K08, its constituent parts, and successful strategies for preparation and submission, as well as useful writing strategies that increase your chance of success. Look out for future workshops in which small groups will review each other’s Aims pages or Candidate/Training Plan sections! 

Sincerely yours,



Alexandra, Cathy, Sanjeev, and Camille

PSCDP & MSTP Panelist Discussion on "Careers Outside Academia for Physician-Scientists"

Please join us for an in-person panel discussion with industry guests (who will join via Zoom). There will be a happy hour following the discussion. Event details are below:

Tuesday, August 29, 2023

4-5pm, Panel Discussion, 555 Mission Bay Blvd. S. Room 159

5-7pm, Happy Hour, Spark Social, the Cove

Moderators/PSCDP Leadership:

Alexandra Nelson, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Neurology

Cathy Smith, MD, Associate Professor, Medicine, Hematology-Oncology

Sanjeev Datar, MD, PhD, Professor, Pediatrics and Critical Care

Panelists

Jesse Nussbaum, MD, Executive Director, Clinical Research, Merck

Ashley Flynn Ward, MD, Vice-President Clinical Development, MacroGenics, Inc. (formerly with the FDA)

Michael E. Ward, MD, PhD, Senior Investigator, Neurogenetics Branch, NIH

Louis Vermeulen, MD, PhD, Vice President and Senior Fellow, Head of Discovery Oncology, Genentech

Please RSVP using the link below.

NIH K08 Career Development Grant Training in-Person Sessions

Rachel Rutishauser, MD, PhD

Associate Professor, Medicine

Alison Nair, MD,

Associate Professor, Pediatrics

Are you an MD or MD/PhD bench scientist thinking about submitting/re-submitting a K08 award? Or are you already supported by a K08? Two informal in-person sessions will be held simultaneously on September 5, 2023, 3-5pm at Parnassus and Mission Bay Campuses. They will be led by Drs. Rutishauser and Nair, and will include PSCDP leadership, as well as other pre-independent basic science physician-scientists at various stages of the K (pre-, writing-, on-K) to share basic information about the grant mechanism, as well as advice, resources, and support for preparing or revising your application.

September 5, 2023, 3-5pm

Parnassus Campus Library, Room 210

Mission Hall, Room 1405

Please RSVP using the link below.

Previous NIH K08 and R01 Career Development Grant Writing In-Person Workshop.

We had a terrific turnout for this workshop held in May where we splint into small groups led by Drs. Alexandra Nelson, Cathy Smith, Sanjeev Datar, Rachel Rutishauser, and Alison Nair.

In this workshop the participants' draft Aims pages were reviewed, and positive as well as constructive feedback was given to one another. We will be holding this type of workshop three times annually. The next one will be held in December 2023. Please be on the lookout for the invitation.

PSCDP K08 Grant Resources Library

The PSCDP library contains recordings of the workshops, and copies of K08s. If you would like to access it, please use the link below to sign a confidentiality agreement and email camille.perez@ucsf.edu for access to the library.  

Get to know three of our remarkable fellows and junior faculty from each of our participating departments!

Describe your laboratory research.

I am currently a post-doc in Isha Jain's laboratory at the Gladstone Institutes. I am interested in understanding how cells, tissues, and organisms respond and adapt to long-term hypoxia, which I believe is relevant to various diseases such as chronic hypoxic lung disease and heart failure. I am also interested in mechanisms of oxygen toxicity and the role of dysregulated oxygen metabolism in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease. As a I look towards the future, I hope to better understand oxygen and lipid metabolism in the context of cardiovascular toxicities associated with cancer therapies, as well as cardiovascular disease (e.g., heart failure, coronary artery disease).

What made you want to become a physician-scientist or choose your area of research?

While a medical student at UCSF, I was fortunate to receive a Sarnoff Fellowship. As a Sarnoff Fellow, I spent two years in the laboratory of Dr. William Kaelin, studying the mechanisms of remote ischemic preconditioning. The two years as a Sarnoff fellow were extremely formative and shaped the trajectory of my career, as well as my research interests in hypoxia sensing and adaptation.  

Describe a major challenge you've encountered in your career as a physician-scientist.

Balancing my clinical, research, and personal responsibilities is a challenge. However, the diversity of my work is also one of the things I enjoy the most. Strong departmental support and encouragement from my family, friends, and colleagues have made succeeding in all these areas possible.  

Describe something that gives you joy in your current stage as a physician-scientist.

The opportunity to enter uncharted territory in medicine and science, and to be able to explore unanswered questions in biology. I also enjoy being able to collaborate with other health care providers and physician-scientists to reach a shared goal.  

Do you have a recent accomplishment you would like to highlight, like a presentation, award, publication, grant, or new collaboration?

I recently published a first author manuscript in Molecular Cell on the mechanisms of oxygen toxicity, a topic that I became interested in during my clinical fellowship training, when I learned that excess oxygen is associated with adverse outcomes in various clinical contexts. Here is a news article about this work: Researchers Discover How Too Much Oxygen Damages Cells and Tissues (gladstone.org)

Do you have a hobby or fun fact you want to share?

I recently celebrated my dog's 3^rd "Gotcha Day." Baxter is a chihuahua mix who was rescued in April 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown. 

Baxter and Alen!

With Dr. William Kaelin in Newport, RI, to celebrate his achievement in being awarded the Nobel Prize in 2019 

Describe your laboratory research.

I am a neuroscientist, a vascular biologist, and a physician in Neonatal-Perinatal medicine. My lab, the Neurovascular Development lab at crouchlab.ucsf.edu, studies how brain blood vessels grow and interact with other brain cells. Towards these goals, we utilize human and mouse samples, flow cytometry (FACS), bioinformatics (omics!), and cell culture, including organoid models. 

What made you want to become a physician-scientist or choose your area of research?

In part, this interest is inspired from the preterm babies that I care for clinically. Approximately 20% of preterm babies born between 24-28 gestation weeks will develop germinal matrix hemorrhage (GMH). This hemorrhage can cause hydrocephalus, cerebral palsy, and death, and unfortunately there are currently no treatments. It remains unclear why vasculature in this developmental window is particularly sensitive. One critical barrier is the lack of a comprehensive understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of vascular cell development in the prenatal brain. Our research resolves around defining the stages of vascular stem cells in the developing brain and understanding the mechanisms that regulate their functions. We then apply this knowledge to produce novel technologies and therapeutic strategies for different brain hemorrhages in neonatal and pediatric patients. 

Describe a major challenge you've encountered in your career as a physician-scientist.

I still find it challenging to delineate when a project is final enough to submit for publication, and when more experiments should be performed. Ideally the review process would help clarify these goals, but it's a high-stakes process. I will say that I have a strong community of friends and colleagues who are also Assistant Professors, and we ask one another for feedback frequently, in addition to my mentors. 

Describe something that gives you joy in your current stage as a physician-scientist.

I marvel that the most important part of my job is thinking and using ideas and data to discover biologic cure disease. In addition, I'm an extrovert, and I love how science is increasingly collaborative and social. As a part of this job, I get paid to travel, present my research, and talk science with my friends. As an academic physician scientist, I also enjoy mentorship. Seeing an idea grow and manifest through the brain and hands of another person is a beautiful process. Finally, I enjoy science twitter! Send me a shout-out at @elizabetscrouch.

Do you have a recent accomplishment you would like to highlight, like a presentation, award, publication, grant, or new collaboration? If so, tell us about it (related web links welcome).

Thanks for asking. This year, I was awarded a Burrough's Wellcome Next Generation Pregnancy Award to make an impact on diseases impacting pregnant women and babies. https://www.bwfund.org/news/bwf-announces-2023-next-generation-pregnancy-initiative-award-recipients/. I'm proud of this grant because the interview was hard. There are strict time requirements and although I practiced, I found answering questions from interviewers with time restrictions quite challenging. I had previously been rejected from another Burroughs Wellcome Award at the interview stage, but with more experience, I won the award on the second time. This story illustrates how success is science is related to experience, perseverance, and effort more than "talent" or "brilliance". 

Do you have a hobby or fun fact you want to share?

I have twins who are 6 and they occupy most of my time outside of work! Please see the attached picture. We went to the SF Giants game on Kentucky Derby day and this picture is with my husband and my au pair, Virginia. We have had 5 au pairs from Mexico, Columbia, and Argentina over 5 years and they've all been a wonderful addition to our family. This working mom is grateful for all of the support from my family.

Describe your laboratory research.

I study pathways activated by emotion and attention, connecting the thalamus with the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. I’m interested in understanding the role of these circuits in seizures and neuropsychiatric co-morbidities in epilepsy.

What made you want to become a physician-scientist or choose your area of research?

I’ve always been interested in neuroscience and had an opportunity during undergrad to work with a group of physician scientists doing clinical and translational research to treat patients with neuropsychiatric disease and was inspired by how their research positively impacted their patients with chronic disease, and their work with patients focused their research on impactful questions.

Describe a major challenge you've encountered in your career as a physician-scientist.

Finding the right balance between clinical work and research is always a challenge. I’m lucky to have supportive colleagues in both the epilepsy division and in lab in order to make it work!

Describe something that gives you joy in your current stage as a physician-scientist.

Clinical work is definitely challenging but also a source of joy! Working with families of children with epilepsy is inspiring every day and helps keep me motivated in lab too.

Do you have a recent accomplishment you would like to highlight, like a presentation, award, publication, grant, or new collaboration?

Members of the Paz lab and I recently published a review on thalamocortical circuits in epilepsy: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969996123001080?via%3Dihub

Do you have a hobby or fun fact you want to share?

Outside of work I like hiking and camping and am halfway through visiting all the national parks in California.

Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub’s unique program is designed for physicians interested in creating new knowledge that addresses the challenges in human health. Physicians have an opportunity to work closely with scientists and train in disciplines that promise to transform current paradigms of patient care. The program develops the next generation of physician–scientists and equips them with the skills, vocabulary, and knowledge necessary to contribute substantively to biomedical discovery.

An interview with Arun, program co-director:

What prompted the creation of the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Physician-Scientist Program?

The program was the brainchild of Ethan Weiss (the founding co-director at UCSF) and David Cornfield at Stanford. Both of them are MD-trained physician-scientists and recognized that it was growing increasingly rare to find trainees who were excited about going to the laboratory to explore basic science at the end of their clinical training. They spent some time thinking about what the obstacles were that might be contributing to this and identified several things (e.g., availability of research funding, perception that you have to choose between medicine and science, lack of physician-scientist mentors, and absence of a peer support network). With the support of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, they created this program to help address these issues and really to create an “on-ramp” to research for physicians who are excited about exploring discovery-focused careers.

Can you give us an overview of the program and who it is for?

The program provides funding (50% or salary and benefits), a professional development stipend ($5,000 annually), a longitudinal curriculum that provides granular instruction in skills important for research careers (grant writing, presenting your science, navigating mentor-mentee relationships, etc.), and a community of like-minded individuals. The program starts with an intense 2-week “bootcamp” in the summer where we do a mixture of lectures and hands-on experiences (including both experiments at the lab bench as well as development of computational skills). To participate in the program, you have to be a resident or fellow at UCSF or Stanford, be willing to commit 2-years of time with 75% of it dedicated to research, and you cannot have a PhD (this program is only for MD’s).

How and why did you get involved in leading the program?

Ethan Weiss (the founding co-director of this program) is a friend and mentor of mine who got me involved in the program shortly after it began, primarily in helping with fellow selection and in participating in some of the programming (e.g., giving talks, being part of panel discussions, etc.). The fellows were awesome - I had so much fun whenever I got to interact with them as they were all so engaged and eager. When Ethan decided to move on from his prior role at UCSF, he asked if I would be interested in taking on a leadership role in the program and I jumped at the opportunity.

Can you tell us 1-2 highlights/accomplishments to date?

Our fellows are phenomenal, and it is amazing to see their scientific growth as they progress through the program. They have published manuscripts in lots of fantastic journals (Molecular Cell, Nature Biotechnology, Blood Advances, and Cancer Discovery to name a few) and secured a total of 3.3 million dollars in extramural support based on the science they are pursuing! We just had our first research symposium to highlight the work of our “graduating” fellows and the talks that they gave were amazing. 

What are some of your own goals in leading the program?

I think that the community aspect of our program is really important. Being a physician-scientist can be difficult and there are a lot of day-to-day frustrations that can dissuade people from continuing along this path. Having colleagues in your network who are going through the same thing - folks who not only can celebrate the “wins” with you, but also understand and can commiserate with you when you during the tough times - can make a big difference. As our program grows, I’m eager to continue building this sense of community amongst our fellows and encouraging more peer-to-peer mentorship. I’m also eager to find opportunities for our program to interface more with other physician-scientist groups at UCSF and Stanford. 

Please visit the program's website using the link below for more information:

Michael Lee, MD

Assistant Professor, Medicine

K08 from National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute

Project Titled: "The contribution of hypoxia inducible factor-1-dependent glycolysis in lung interstitial macrophages to the pathobiology of schistosomiasis-induced pulmonary hypertension."

Mentor: Brian Graham, MD

Jana Mike, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor, Pediatrics

K08 from National Institute Neurological Disorders & Stroke

Project Titled: "Arginase-1 signaling after neonatal stroke."

Mentor: Donna Ferriero, MD, MS

Vaibhav Upadhyay, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor, Medicine

K08 from National Heart, Lung, & Blood Institute

Project Titled: “Impact of gut bacterial metabolites on lung function and disease.”

Mentor: Peter Turnbaugh. PhD (primary) and Dean Sheppard, MD (co-mentor)

Simon J. Little, MBBS, PhD

Assistant Professor, Neurology

R01 from National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Project Titled: “Determining the circuits and signals of sleep dysfunction in Parkinson's disease through chronic intracranial recordings and closed-loop Deep Brain Stimulation.”



Bruce Wang, MD

Assistant Professor, Medicine

R01 from National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney

Project Titled: “Characterizing zonated hepatocyte sexual dimorphism and its role in fatty liver disease.”

Confidential Consultations

Has a significant issue arisen in your scientific or professional life as a laboratory-based physician-scientist? Would you benefit from speaking with someone other than your primary mentor or other career mentors? If so, you can request a one-time confidential consult with one of the PSCDP leadership team members by using the link below.

Mentoring Committees

PSCDP has organized mentoring committees for ongoing career guidance for laboratory-based physician-scientists in Medicine, Neurology, or Pediatrics during the residency, fellowship and/or junior faculty period. Please visit the following website page for the list of the committee members: PSCDP Mentoring Committee Members. If you are interested in this service, please register below to be added to our waitlist.

Questions? Please contact us!