Staff scientists in core research facilities accelerate and broaden biomedical discovery

Posted by Gary Bridgman | July 14, 2020

Four people walking outside — The new Shared Resource Center at St. Jude will house many institutional shared facilities that accelerate discovery.

The new Shared Resource Center (SRC) will be the first building at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital dedicated entirely to core laboratories and the staff scientists who keep them running. Located east of the future Advanced Research Center, the 30,000 square-foot facility is the new home of 13 of the 21 institutional shared facilities that accelerate and broaden scientific discoveries at St. Jude.

Twelve of these institutional services are moving or partially moving to the SRC from other campus locations. Two other labs are new: the Center for Modeling Pediatric Diseases and the planned Center for High Content Screening. In addition, the SRC will be the new home for the Compound Management and Formulation center from the Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics.

Emily Walker
Associate Scientist
Affymetrix and Illumina microarray analysis laboratory
Hartwell Center for Biotechnology

Walker was recognized at the 2019 St. Jude Research Staff of the Year program for a project in which she processed and analyzed a year’s worth of tests in just four months. She was also recognized for 17 years of contributions toward the identification of molecular subtypes, epigenetic changes and risk stratification within all major childhood cancers.

“I have always loved science,” Walker said. “When I was little, my grandmother gave me a microscope. I would look at bugs with it and anything else I could find.”

A visit to St. Jude during college changed the direction of Walker’s career.

“I was on track to go to medical school, but I just lost my mind on research. I thought I could do this for a couple of years, and now it’s been almost 17 years.”

The core labs have been especially helpful to new St. Jude faculty as they embark on their independent careers, according to Calabrese. “Our first-come, first-served model, along with inexpensive chargebacks, provides opportunities for our junior faculty to perform critical pilot experiments,” Calabrese said. “It helps them with their careers.”

These labs were selected for the move because of their related research themes, similar technologies, and the need for more space. Chris Calabrese, PhD, director of Basic Science Programs, explains how scientists from previously isolated core labs may benefit from a more collaborative environment in the new space.

“Developing this suite of resources in a single location will allow for the seamless exchange of technical expertise, enhancement of operational efficiencies and, importantly, free up laboratory space for the recruitment of research faculty,” Calabrese said. “One lab may be sequencing nucleic acids while another is looking at protein sequences, but they are ultimately using complementary tools to improve our understanding of the biology and help answer the same scientific questions.”

Core labs offer more support, less risk for academic departments

Many universities and research hospitals operate shared resources and core facilities to make available advanced technology to academic and clinical investigators. Such facilities began to appear on research campuses a generation ago, particularly as DNA sequencing and bioinformatics services became more accessible.

Core labs are highly specialized and often named after the equipment or techniques hosted there. Faculty in academic departments request and pay for experiments, assays or computation from resource labs instead of purchasing expensive equipment and running the experiments on their own.

Thanks to the generosity of countless donors, the shared resources and core facilities at St. Jude are remarkable in terms of funding, advanced technology, and world-class talent.

The scientists of specialization

Core labs give faculty researchers access to advanced—and speedy—scientific instruments, but their long-term value lies in the caliber of scientific talent operating the services and designing experiments. Approximately 120 staff researchers and technologists work in the institutional cores, many of whom hold PhDs, while nearly 40 more work in the shared departmental labs.

“While the shared resources have changed over my 20 years at St Jude, these scientists’ commitment to advancing institutional research has been unwavering,” said virologist Richard Webby, PhD, faculty member in the Infectious Diseases department and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals at St. Jude.

While the complexity and cost of first-rate scientific technology continue to expand, core lab scientists serve as experts in their areas and can perform experiments more efficiently than departmental scientists can do in their labs. In this way, principal investigators and their staff run less risk of failed analysis while trying an unfamiliar technique that has already been mastered by a core lab scientist.

“Researchers at other institutions may have the same instrumentation,” said Aaron Pitre, PhD, staff scientist in the Light Microscopy Core Facility, “but they may not have access to a backbone of imaging scientists. We can take that cutting-edge, cool science and make it a little bit cooler and, hopefully, get more data out of it at a faster pace.”

Evadnie Rampersaud, PhD, MSPH
Group Lead, Genetics
Center for Applied Bioinformatics

Evadnie Rampersaud, PhD, is a staff scientist in the Center for Applied Bioinformatics, but she began her career as a genetic epidemiologist. This career crossover is not surprising, given the data-intensive nature of both genetics and epidemiology. Rampersaud is clearly thriving as an academic pursuing a core research career track.

“I don't have to worry about financing my research or paying people. I can focus on the science and on my wonderful team,” Rampersaud said. “In fact, I feel like this is a second chance for having the kind of team that I wanted to have when I was in Miami. For example, I’m thrilled to have been part of the hiring of a Masters level scientist in CAB who is turning out to be a rising star.

“For the service cores, some people think it’s so easy—technicians just running the pipeline. The reason it’s ‘easy’ is that we have spent many years figuring out how to standardize processes, learning from our mistakes in order to make it easier for everyone else.”

“These labs provide cutting edge technologies, but more importantly, they are staffed by an invaluable cadre of expert scientists who lead their fields,” Webby said. “These individuals ensure that we stay current and bring the most relevant technologies to our research.”

Careers driven by expertise and enthusiasm

What are the differences between resource core scientists and the faculty, staff and postdocs working in academic department labs? There are more similarities than differences between the two groups, including education and experience. However, many resource core scientists display particular enthusiasm for new technology, helpfulness with a wide variety of scientific questions, adaptability in working with different personalities and a high capacity for multitasking.

“You may come to a tipping point in your career where you decide if you want to follow the academic faculty route or other opportunities,” said Calabrese, who opted for such an opportunity himself in 2005. “Scientists who gravitate toward the cores appreciate the structure of the job and the opportunity to learn high technology, high acuity work.”

Gang Wu, PhD, originally came to St. Jude in 2010 as a staff scientist on the monumental Pediatric Cancer Genome Project (PCGP). Even after his recent faculty appointment and being named director of the new Center for Applied Bioinformatics (CAB), Wu hasn’t lost his love of learning and bench work.

“The beauty of working in a shared resource is that I will never be out of date on new technology,” Wu said, “and I can still have a first-hand experience with the real data, which is a lot of fun.”

Staff scientists focus on the science

Evadnie Rampersaud, PhD, MSPH, a staff scientist in the Center for Applied Bioinformatics, helps investigators apply data science to their research—from planning experiments to analyzing existing data. Most of the lab’s work involves the application of computational methods in genetics, genomics, transcriptomics and epigenetics. Rampersaud heads the team that provides genetics support.

Since she started at St. Jude in 2015, Rampersaud has helped jumpstart three whole genome sequencing projects focused on sickle cell disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and familial studies of cancer.

“My role in CAB is to help our staff scientists produce quality results that can benefit investigators and help them to secure more grants. My passion is to explore new statistical and bioinformatics methods that can help inspire their research goals. I can accomplish this under the shared resource research umbrella.”

Aaron Pitre, PhD Staff Scientist Light Microscopy Core Facility Cell and Tissue Imaging Center

The image of a microscope is often used as a symbol for biomedical research. Aaron Pitre, PhD, (standing, in photo above from 2017) staff scientist in the Light Microscopy Core Facility, has little time for the symbolism. He is more concerned with the images inside the microscopes and the data behind them.

Many research institutions have shared microscopy labs that provide advanced imaging technology. Fewer can claim the level of microscopy expertise found at St. Jude—PhD-level scientists who can train new users and provide analysis to help accelerate the research. Pitre learned the value of this type of guidance as a graduate student in cell biology.

“In grad school, my mentor’s lab made heavy use of microscopy, so microscopy was basically what I did. He knew a lot, and he taught me a lot. In other places, you might get a one-hour training session for new instrumentation.” Today, Pitre and his colleagues ensure that St. Jude researchers receive support that is as valuable as the technology itself.

Sometimes Pitre’s advice to a researcher is to let him push the technology to its limit. Jason Rosch, PhD, and his staff were wrapping up a study on interactions between influenza virus and respiratory bacteria that cause pneumonia. They came to Light Microscopy on a tight schedule to produce publishable images of viruses clinging to bacteria.

“Of course, that's really small,” Pitre said, “They were pressed for time and prepared to accept standard resolution images, but I took their sample and rendered an image with a newer super-resolution technique that took a little more time. Jason was astounded with the result.”

The editors of Nature Microbiology were impressed as well, enough to place the images on the cover of the August 2019 issue.

Emily Walker, with the Affymetrix and Illumina Microarray Analysis lab, is one of the dozens of staff scientists moving into the SRC. While she is an expert at analyzing genetic changes across millions of cells at a time, Walker also has a knack for slowing down time. An academic research lab at St. Jude had a massive trove of cell samples for Walker’s lab to physically and digitally process as part of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant proposal—a full year’s worth of work.

But the proposal was due in four months.

Walker’s ability to meet such an alarming deadline explains, in part, why she was honored during the 2019 St. Jude Research Staff of the Year program.

“Emily's dedication and her ability to do her job at such a high level, has brought success for principal investigators here because the data she generates is just dead-on reliable,” said Geoff Neale, PhD, director of the Hartwell Center, which houses Walker’s lab and five other high-throughput biotechnology resources.

The staff of life

Pitre, Rampersaud, Walker and scores of other staff scientists at St. Jude are advancing cures for pediatric cancer and other catastrophic childhood diseases. They accomplish this by piloting and interpreting the techniques and technologies that facilitate high-quality data gathering, which ultimately lead to new discoveries.

Shared Resource Center labs and services

Hartwell Center for Biotechnology:

Sanger DNA Sequencing
Genome Sequencing
Genotyping Analysis
Macromolecular Synthesis
Affymetrix and Illumina Microarray Analysis
Functional Genomics

Protein Production Preclinical Pharmacokinetics Proteomics and Metabolomics Transgenic Core/ES Cell Lab St Jude Biorepository’s extraction lab Center for Modeling Human Pediatric Diseases (new) High Content Screening Lab (planned) Laboratory Services SRC annex Compound Management and Formulation (Chemical Biology and Therapeutics)

Learn about individual Shared Resources and Core Facilities at St. Jude.