Meharry Medical College Welcomes You

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Meharry Medical College Welcomes You
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How do we assure Pharmacologys continuing
contributions to the Biomedical Enterprise?
Lee E. Limbird, Ph.D. Vice President for
Research Chair, Department of Biomedical
Sciences Meharry Medical College
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Which brings me to the revised theme of my talk
Lifting the Bell Jar Developing Innovative
Pharmacology Training Programs to assure society
benefits from Pharmacologys unique insights now
and in the future !!
Lee E. Limbird, Ph.D. Vice President for
Research Chair, Department of Biomedical
Sciences Meharry Medical College
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The need for Pharmacology to grow and evolve
articulated in Marlene Cohens Opening Letter as
President of ASPET

• Pharmacology must grow and evolve, leading the
  way as
• national needs and priorities change
• genomics proteomics research expands
• medical therapy embraces stem cell tools
• training demands evolve

Pharmacologist 44 4-5, 2002.
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The landscape that some see as threats to
Pharmacology Training Programs
- decrease in departments with
Pharmacology in the title
- increase in multi-disciplinary entry
programs - reduces direct recruiting
to pharmacology
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How do we change these threats into
opportunities???

What if we just start with the basics?
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What if we created modules of key content that
would be accessible to students in multiple
programs?
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Is that REAL pharmacology?
In safeguarding the discipline, some may be
suffocating it
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What does the postgenomic era offer and why
must pharmacology be there?!
Enjoying a window of time for unbiased data
gathering

• gene expression profiling (microarrays chips)
• during development
• in diseased vs. healthy cells and tissue
• in juxtaposed, differentiated cells (e.g. CNS)

• protein expression profiling
• particularly powerful in the CNS, PNS

But, will all these data turn into usable
knowledge?
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Lifting the Bell Jar!
Helping scientists in ALL disciplines move their
discoveries to therapeutically useful
interventions
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Scientists as Creators

• In biomedical research, creativity is focused on
  different tenses of scientific endeavor

Models of relationships among these research
tenses
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Accelerated Discovery!
This means, in a single career, may participate
in basic, translational, clinical research

• trainees and investigators must establish ways
• to continually learn

• Pharmacology training programs must establish
• ways to teach the fundamentals to scientists
• throughout their careers!!!

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Lifting the
Bell Jar
embracing the intrinsic interdisciplinary nature
of pharmacology
signal transduction
physiology
chemistry
biochemistry
informatics
cell biology
drug disposition
developmental biology
drug action
structural biology
morphology
Y
P
G
H
O
A
L
R
O
M
A
C
pharmacologys trademark since its origin with
John Jacob Abel
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Despite our emphasis on pharmacological
principles, training programs must address the
more fundamental fundamentals, as well
Characteristics of a successful training program

• liberate trainees from the fear of failure

• show trainees how to learn on your own for the
  rest of your life

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What is the reason for research?

• New knowledge,
• the pursuit of truth

This should be the mission of all investigators
!!
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Helping your students focus the mission of new
knowledge the pursuit of truth means that

• Their hypotheses can be wrong but their research
  program can still be a success

• Sharing ideas, reagents, technologies, and
  fostering collaboration accelerates the process

• Publications are essential !!!!

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Other fundamentals of training programs
include our need to
Foster passion Encourage FOCUS Help students
identify an important problem they are impatient
to solve
Mentors, as role models, must share from the
well filled throughout their career
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Some advice for trainees is relevant thoughout
their career
Understanding balance
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Academic Career Development Helping students
recognize that there are seasons in our lives

• Training

• Early - independent

• Mid-careertenure achieved or leadership role
  in industry

• Senior career phase

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While students are training,find ways to
encourage them to learn all they can

• doctoral
• scholarly content
• conceptual frameworks
• experimental strategies

• postdoctoral
• focus on solving a problem
• develop a story

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Help students and young faculty you mentor
understand early career needs

• to be temporarily selfish will allow altruism
  later, with something worthwhile to share
• establish laboratory
• establish lab culture
• journal clubs data clubs
• - focus, focus, focus

• get as much critical input as possible on
• data, papers, proposals

• resist premature service on
• committees, local or national
• journal editorial boards

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Giving Back The Mid-Career Transition

• accept national/local responsibilities
• serve where your insights ? unique contribution

• be bold have fun
• collaborations
• writing books
• lead multi-investigator research programs

• butremember

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How do we help our trainees sustain the JOY of
research?

• eureka moments, even for Nobelists, are too
  infrequent
• identify vicarious points of joy

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To sustain JOY between Eurekas, Encourage
students to

• Read Widely
• fosters use of novel strategies
• breeds excitement about others discoveries to
  bridge JOY gaps between your own eurekas

• Establish a reading discipline
• set goal of papers/week
• set timeinviolate
• engage in journal clubs

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and when the joy of bench research is no longer
there

• Remember Pharmacologists can serve
• society in other ways
• journalists
• teachers
• technology transfer
• development fundraising
• liaisons with policy makers
• research infrastructure leadership
• novelists/movie producers

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Summaryof Sorts

• - Define CORE content
• deliver in short modules usable for training of
  investigators in multiple disciplines at multiple
  career stages

- Focus on developing those traits/habits that
will serve trainees for a lifetime
- Help trainees understand the seasons of a
professional life, and how to enjoy and immerse
themselves in each one
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Words I try to live by
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Acknowledgments
Gratitude for so many opportunities
To learn Ted WilliamsCollege of Wooster Bob
Lefkowitzpostdoctoral mentor at Duke Joel
HardmanChair and mentor at Vanderbilt To teach
(and to learn) My many students and postdoctoral
fellows To serve ASPET To be funded National
Institutes of Health American Heart
Association ASPET NARSAD To be inspired The
ever-expanding scientific literature
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Welcome to the National Meeting of Directors of
Graduate Studies in Pharmacology Reception
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