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Daniel Dunaief

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Dennis Plenker Photo by Bob Giglione, 2020/ CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

If the job is too easy, Dennis Plenker isn’t interested.

He’s found the right place, as the research investigator in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center Director Dave Tuveson’s lab is tackling pancreatic cancer, one of the more intractable forms of cancer.

Plenker joined Tuveson’s lab in 2017 and is the technical manager of a new organoid facility.

Organoids offer hope for a type of cancer that often carries a poor prognosis. Researchers can use them to find better and more effective treatments or to develop molecular signatures that can be used as a biomarker towards a specific treatment.

Scientists can take cells from an organoid, put them in miniature dishes and treat them with a range of drugs to see how they respond.

The drugs that work on the organoids offer potential promise for patients. When some of these treatments don’t work, doctors and researchers can continue to search for other medical solutions without running the risk of making patients ill from potentially unnecessary side effects.

“Challenges are important and there is a sweet spot to step out of my comfort zone,” Plenker explained in an email.

Dennis Plenker Photo by Bob Giglione, 2020/ CSHL

In an email, Tuveson described Plenker as a “pioneer” who “likes seemingly impossible challenges and we are all counting on him to make breakthroughs.”

Specifically, Tuveson would like Plenker to develop a one-week organoid test, where tissue is processed into organoids and tested in this time frame.

Organoids present a cutting edge way to take the modern approach to personalized medicine into the realm of cancer treatments designed to offer specific guidance to doctors and researchers about the likely effectiveness of remedies before patients try them.

Plenker and others in Tuveson’s lab have trained researchers from more than 50 institutions worldwide on how to produce and use organoids.

“It’s complicated compared to conventional tissue culture,” said Plenker, who indicated that considerably more experience, resource and time is involved in organoid work. “We put a lot of effort into training people.”

Tuveson explained that the current focus with organoids is on cancer, but that they may be useful for other conditions including neurological and infectious diseases.

The way organoids are created, scientists such as Plenker receive a biopsy or a surgical specimen. These researchers digest the cells with enzymes into singular cells or clumps of single cells and are embedded. Once inside the matrix, they form organoids.

When they “have enough cells, we can break these down and put them into multi-well plates,” Plenker explained. In these plates, the scientists test different concentrations and types of drugs for the same patient.

It’s a version of trial and error, deploying a range of potential medical solutions against cells to see what weakens or kills cells.

“If you do that exercise 100 times, you can see how many times compound A scores vs. C, E and F. You get a sense of what the options are versus what is not working,” Plenker said.

While scientists like Plenker and Tuveson use targeted drugs to weaken, cripple or kill cancer, they recognize that cancer cells themselves represent something of a molecular moving target.

“There is a very dynamic shift that can happen between these subtypes” of cancer, Plenker said. “That can happen during treatment. If you start with what’s considered a good prognosis, you can end up with a higher fraction of basal cancer cells” which are more problematic and have a worse prognosis. “We and others have shown that you have a mixture of cell types in your tumor all the time.”

Part of what Plenker hopes to discover as the director of the organoid center is the best combination of ingredients to foster the growth of these versatile and useful out-of-body cancer models.

The gel that helps the cells grow is something Plenker can buy that is an extracellular matrix rich matter that is of murine, or rodent, origin. He hopes to develop a better understanding of some of these proprietary products so he can modify protocols to boost the efficiency of the experiments.

Plenker is “trying to innovate the organoids, and so he may need to adjust conditions and that would include inventing his own recipes,” Tuveson explained.

The facility, which received support from the Lustgarten Foundation, will engage in future clinical trials.

The type of treatments for pancreatic cancer patients typically fall into two arenas. In the first, a patient who is doing well would get an aggressive dose of chemotherapy. In the second, a patient who is already sick would get a milder dose. Determining which regimen is based on the current diagnostic techniques.

Plenker and his wife Juliane Dassler-Plenker, who works as a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Mikala Egeblad at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, live in Huntington. The pair met in Germany and moved to the United States together.

Plenker calls himself a “foodie” and appreciates the hard work that goes into creating specific dishes.

In his career, Plenker always “wanted to help people.” He has appreciated the latest technology and has disassembled and put back together devices to understand how they work.

Prior to the pandemic, Plenker had gone on short trips to Germany to visit with friends and relatives. He is grateful for that time, especially now that he is much more limited in where he can go. He appreciates his landlord and a second American family which helps the couple feel welcomed and grateful.

In 2017, Plenker recalls attending a talk Tuveson gave in Washington, D.C. in which he invited anyone in the audience who wanted to improve a test to come and talk to him after the presentation.

“I was the only one in that regard who talked to him” after that lecture, Plenker said.

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

My wife wanted to get out of the house and move beyond the daily walk in our neighborhood for her birthday. We decided to take our teenage children to the zoo.

Back when our son and daughter were younger, a trip to the zoo was a cause for celebration, as they got to see animals from all over the world, watch various shows, spend about four seconds reading an interesting fact about their favorite creature, and continue to hop, skip and jump from one exhibit to the next.

These days, their thumbs do most of the hopping, skipping and jumping. Given the importance of birthdays in our house and the willingness to do whatever the birthday celebrant desires, our teenagers gamely climbed into the car.

As with most zoos this year, we had to preregister for tickets. Indeed, the Bronx Zoo requires visitors to use a date-specific ticket.

The experience of entering the zoo was remarkably quick and smooth, saving us the customary wait.

Zoos require guests to remain socially distanced and to wear masks. All but about eight of the other visitors we saw wore masks.

Most of the time, other guests also maintained social distancing, taking their turns to the glass to look at gorillas and apes, who didn’t seem at all curious about the appearance of people whose lips and noses disappeared behind masks.

While we circumnavigated the walking trail, all four of us reveled in the appearance of numerous animals, including an enormous bison and a swaying elephant.

It seemed slightly unfair to the ostrich, who is over nine feet tall and is the largest bird in the world, to share a pen with the 20-foot giraffe, which dwarfs a bird that also has the largest eye of any bird in the world.

Something about seeing all these animals, including a lemur resting in a tree, an arctic fox and a pair of lions, restored a sense of normalcy in an abnormal year. It was also comforting to hear the excitement from other people who all expressed similar sentiments in several languages when the giraffe started to run.

On our first trip out around the zoo, we stopped at three bear exhibits in which the celebrated occupants were either not there or hidden. Once we had circled the zoo and headed back towards the car, my wife played her birthday privilege, urging us to take one more look at the black bear, the grizzly bear, and the polar bear.

The first two bears remained out of view on our way back to the car. Standing alone along the railing at almost exactly 4 p.m., which was closing time, we saw the polar bear slowly emerge, then retreat, then emerge from a darkened den. We suspected he might have a keen sense of time and know when it as safe to come out and avoid  larger crowds.

He or she (we didn’t read anything about the bear’s gender) played with a toy that looked like the top of a garbage can and then reached up to a ledge to pull down a bone with some meat on it. After giving us an eight-minute private show, the polar bear took his bone and, as if on cue, exited stage right.

While the zoo might not be at the top of your list or top of mind, particularly during the winter, it offers a pleasant chance to get away from our own 2020 pens. The Bronx Zoo has a know before you go page, which you can see by searching Know Before You Go — Bronx Zoo, with details about visiting this year.

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Arkarup Banerjee. Photo from CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

Arkarup Banerjee is coming back home to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. This time, instead of working on the olfactory system, the way he did in Associate Professor Dinu Florin Albeanu’s lab from 2010 to 2016, he is studying vocalizations in the Alston’s singing mouse, a Central American rodent.

Banerjee rejoined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in November after almost four years of post-doctoral work at NYU Langone Medical Center. He hopes to use the study of the way these mice react to songs and the way they formulate them to understand how signals from the brain lead to vocalizations.

Singing Mouse

“The reason I decided to come back to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is not just because I did my PhD here,” said Banerjee, who is an assistant professor. “Neuroscience [at the lab] is amazing. I have fantastic colleagues. I expect to have lots of collaborations.” CSHL is one of his “top choices” in part because of the ability to interact with other researchers and to attend meetings and courses, he said.

To hear Albeanu tell it, CSHL’s colleagues appreciate the skill and determination Banerjee, whom Albeanu described as a “rare catch,” brings to the site.

“There was pretty much unanimous excitement about his vision for his research,” Albeanu said. “Pretty much everyone was in agreement that [hiring Banerjee] is a must.”

Fundamentally, Banerjee is interested in understanding how the brain computes information. In his new lab at CSHL, he wanted to study the natural behaviors that animals produce without having to teach them anything.

“That’s why my fascination arose in singing mice,” he said. “Nobody has to train them to vocalize.” He hopes to understand the neural circuits in the context of a natural behavior.

In the longer term, Banerjee is interested in contributing to the field of human communication. While numerous other creatures, such as birds, interact with each other vocally, singing from trees as they establish territorial dominance and soliciting mates through their songs, mice, which have cerebral cortexes, have brain architecture that is more similar to humans.

The Alston’s singing mice, which is found in the cloud forests of Costa Rica and Panama, is also different from numerous other species of mice. Many rodents produce vocalizations in the ultrasonic range. These animals can hear calls that are outside the range of human capacity to pick up such sounds.

The singing mice Banerjee is studying produces a stereotyped song that is audible to people. “These mice seem to specialize in this behavior,” he said. In neuroscience, scientists seek animals that are specialists with the hope that understanding that species will reveal how they work, he said.

Audible communications are important for male mice in attracting mates and in guarding their locations against other males. These lower-frequency sounds travel across greater distances.

Specifically, Banerjee would like to know the anatomical differences between the brains of typical rodents and the singing mice. He plans to probe “what kind of changes does it require for a new behavior to emerge during evolution.”

The songs have some value to the males who sing them. Females prefer males who sing more notes per unit time in a 10-second period.

In his experiments, Banerjee has demonstrated that the conventional view about one of the differences between humans and other vocalizing animals may not be accurate. Scientists had previously believed that other animals didn’t use their cortex to produce songs. Banerjee, however, showed that the motor cortex was important for vocal behaviors. Specifically, animals with temporarily inactivated cortexes could not participate in vocal interactions.

As a long term goal, Banerjee is also interested in the genetic sequence that makes the development of any anatomical or behavioral feature different in these singing mice. By using the gene editing tool CRISPR, which CSHL scientists employ regularly, Banerjee hopes to find specific genetic regions that lead to these unique behaviors.

Arkarup Banerjee with Honggoo Chae, a post-doctoral fellow at CSHL, from a Society of Neuroscience Meeting in 2018.

An extension of this research could apply to people with various communication challenges. Through studies of mice with different genetic sequences, Banerjee and other researchers can try to find genes that are necessary for more typical vocalizations. By figuring out the genetic differences, the CSHL scientist may one day discover what researchers could do to minimize these differences.

A resident of Mineola, Banerjee lives with his wife Sanchari Ghosh, who works at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory press for the preprint service bioRxiv. The couple, who met in India, spend considerable time discussing their shared interest in neuroscience. Banerjee said his wife is a “much better writer” than he and has helped edit his manuscripts.

Banerjee is passionate about teaching and hopes he has a chance to educate more students once the pandemic recedes. Outside the lab, Banerjee shares an important quality with the mice he studies: he sings. He trained as a vocalist when he was growing up in India, and listens to a range of music.

Albeanu, who was teaching a course in Bangalore, India in 2009 when he met Banerjee, said it is a “pleasure to listen to [Banerjee] singing.”

Albeanu recalls how Banerjee stood out for many reasons when he first met him, including developing a way to modify a microscope.

As for his work, Banerjee hopes to understand behaviors like vocalizations from numerous perspectives. “We can seek explanations for all of these levels,” he said.

A neuroscientist by training, Banerjee would like to determine the connection between neural circuitry and the behavior it produces. “The understanding would be incomplete if I didn’t understand why this behavior is being generated.”

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Photo courtesy of Pixabay

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

My five-year-old neighbor Jack keeps me and his parents on our toes, and for that, I am grateful.

In this strange and challenging year, Jack offers a refreshing, clear-eyed and honest assessment of everything he sees. He speaks directly, asks questions and expects people to treat him the way his kind, caring and supportive parents do.

During the spring, at the start of longer walks around the neighborhood with my dog, I started the pattern of wearing sweatpants and sweatshirts during cooler weather. After all, with nowhere else to go, I didn’t feel compelled to put on a collared shirt, to change my outerwear or to put on my dress shoes. Speaking of which, I don’t think I’ve even looked for my shoes in months. The search for those shoes, and the black socks at the bottom of a drawer somewhere, will be a welcome return to a more normal routine some day.

Anyway, back in the first stages of an endless homebound existence, Jack saw me one morning, greeted my dog , who is 30 pounds heavier than he, and asked me one of the many five-year-old questions that he shares.

“Why are you wearing the same clothes as yesterday?” he asked, as if I were somehow on a walk of shame after an evening that stretched into morning in a college dorm.

“Oh, honey, he’s just wearing the same sweatshirt as yesterday. You do that, too,” his mother gently offered.

Then again, Jack was right. I was wearing the same sweatshirt and sweatpants.

Later, when a nephew who tested negative for the virus came to visit and took a walk with me, Jack listened to his mother chat with us. As we were walking away, Jack watched my nephew and me head to my house.

“Dan,” he shouted, “Don’t forget about six feet.”

Again, Jack was right. Comfortable as I was, even outside with my nephew, Jack learned the rules and was encouraging me to follow them.

Recently, Jack delved into the minefield of politics. Without any hesitation, he asked my wife and daughter about their votes for the presidential election.

His mother, once again, tried to provide a filter, suggesting that such a conversation might not be necessary or comfortable.

Our daughter, who has had extensive experience babysitting children of all ages, had no trouble answering the question in a way that wouldn’t upset Jack, regardless of his or, more likely, his parents’ thoughts on the subject.

Cliche as it seems, it occurred to me, listening to my wife recount this conversation, that Jack, and the need to meet his earnestness and honesty, offered a reminder about public discourse.

Five-year-olds may not know everything, but they know when an adult is being condescending or is belittling them. They need the same kind of honesty they give.

At the same time, they need answers that don’t insult them. Even if they, or their parents, have different views, they need to know that others respect them.

Therein, it occurred to me, lies the lesson. We don’t need to avoid conversations with each other about topics on which we disagree. We are guaranteed the freedom to disagree with everyone, from our siblings, to our parents, to the president.

We also might do well to think of others who are speaking to us as Jack. We don’t need to picture others as five-year-olds. We can, and will, engage in more satisfying discourse if we follow some of the same principles when speaking with anyone. With so many challenges ahead, we will accomplish more together, and respectfully, than if we take each other down.

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Tobias Janowitz. Photo from CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

The body’s savior in its battle against disease, immune cells respond to a collection of signals which tell them to dial up or down their patrolling efforts.

Scientists and doctors are constantly trying to determine what combination of beneficial or detrimental signals can lead to different outcomes.

Recently, Assistant Professor Tobias Janowitz and Professor Douglas Fearon of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, working with Duncan Jodrell at the University of Cambridge Cancer Research Institute, used an inhibitor developed and tested for the treatment of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS, in patients with colorectal and pancreatic cancer for a week.

Douglas Fearon. Photo from CSHL

The study was done on 24 patients and is a phase 0 effort, in which scientists and doctors test the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of the treatment.

In the study, which was published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, the researchers showed that the treatment got into the blood, that the patients tolerated it, and that it enabled immune treatments to reach the tumors.

While this is an encouraging step, Janowitz cautioned that any such studies are far from a potentially viable treatment for either type of cancer. Indeed, the Food and Drug Administration requires a lengthy and rigorous scientific process for any possible therapy, in part because numerous promising efforts haven’t led to viable therapies for a host of reasons.

Still, this study offers a promising beginning for a potential approach to treating various forms of cancer.

Janowitz said patients “tolerated the treatment by and large very well,” and that “no new toxicities were observed compared to the ones that were known.” Some people developed slight disturbances in their sleep, which were immediately resolved after they discontinued using the treatment.

The history of the possible treatment for HIV showed similar side effects years ago. “We anticipated it would have a favorable toxicity profile,” said Janowitz.

The link between this early candidate for HIV treatment and cancer came from an analysis of the receptor that is expressed on immune cells, called CXCR4.

This receptor is targeted by the drug plerixafor. Most of the work linking the inhibited receptor to potential cancer treatment came from Fearon’s lab, Janowitz explained.

Fearon found that blocking the receptor enabled immune cells to migrate to cancer in a mouse study. Along with Janowitz and CSHL Cancer Director David Tuveson, he published a paper on the preclinical study in a mouse model in PNAS in 2013.

This inhibitor also has been used to release stem cells from bone marrow that can be used in a hematological context for treatment and transplantation. During their cancer study, the scientists found these stem cells circulating in the blood. It’s unclear from this first study how the combination of cancer therapy and releasing stem cells from bone marrow affects patients.

“We are not able to say that that has a relevancy to the cancer patient,” Janowitz said.

While some drug treatments work for a period of time until a cancer returns, immunotherapy may have a longer term benefit than chemotherapeutics, as some studies suggest.

“By giving this drug, our hope is that we enable an influx of immune cells into the tumor and have an across the board integrated immune response,” Janowitz said.

Down the road, Janowitz said the group hopes that this treatment will be a part of a combination of treatments that treat cancer.

By enabling immune cells to access cancer where the mutation rate is lower, these treatments could provide a sustained treatment.

The researchers chose pancreatic and colorectal cancer because those cancers don’t respond to current immunotherapy. “It’s really important to uncover why that is,” said Janowitz. The scientists had evidence from pre-clinical models that the pathway and the biochemistry that this drug activates can be effective.

In his lab, Janowitz performed some of the mechanistic work to understand why this drug might function. A medical doctor who is awaiting his license to practice in New York, Janowitz was also involved in the trial management group and in analyzing the multiplicity of data that came together.

The researchers in this study came from fields including bioinformatics, clinical medicine, pharmacology, and immunology. Fearon explained in an email that Jodrell wrote the grant to Stand Up to Cancer, or SU2C, in 2014 to obtain funding for the trial. Jodrell oversaw the clinical trial and Fearon directed the evaluation of the immunology findings.

Janowitz had a “major role in putting together the clinical data for the write-up,” and Daniele Biasci, a computational biologist at Cambridge, developed the analysis of the transcriptional data of the tumor biopsies, said Fearon.

As for the next stages in this work, physicians at Johns Hopkins Medicine International and Dana Farber Cancer Institute will soon start a phase 2 trial that is already registered and that combines this inhibitor with anti-PD-1.

Fearon said his continued pre-clinical research has shown that this immune suppressive pathway may be relevant to multiple human carcinomas, and has identified new potential targets for more effective immunotherapy.

Janowitz, meanwhile, will explore the systemic immune competence of the body as he continues to take a top down, broad-based approach to cancer.

He would like to know the degree to which the body can mount an effective immune response, while also exploring the factors that diminish that ability.

Separately, with three young children at home, Janowitz and his wife Clary, who is a radiation oncologist, have been balancing between their busy careers and the demands of parenting during the pandemic. Their extended families are both in Europe.

“We can’t visit them and they can’t visit us,” he said adding that he appreciated the way CSHL has offered day care to young children on campus.

As for this study, Janowitz said he’s encouraged by the early results.

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Photo courtesy of Pixaby

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Hello and welcome to the first and hopefully last Zoom Thanksgiving. Hey, hold on, I can see that you’ve muted yourself in Box 6 over there, Uncle Mary. Yes, I know I said Uncle Mary because I’m reading the name on your screen. Did you think that was funny? What are you saying that I can’t hear?

OK, so we’re going to forego the usual list of what we’re thankful for because it’s 2020 and we’re not together, and I promised the kids they wouldn’t have to talk to such a large group of faces who are all
looking in the wrong direction.

Seriously, what’s wrong with you people? Can’t you look at the camera? I know that might sound harsh. I just spent the last few hours before this fake happy scene trying to remember something about the Ottoman Empire. No offense to the Ottoman Empire, but I didn’t like history much when I was that old and now I’m trying to learn it again.

Yes, I know, Uncle Mary, it’d be easier for me to teach my kids these subjects if I pretended to be interested, but that ended in early April, when I had to try to remember something about the number of electrons in different orbits around atoms.

Anyway, I’m thankful we’re together. I saw that, cousin Clarence. Look, we don’t see you very often. The least you could do is not roll your eyes the entire time I’m talking. You’re doing it again! Cut it out! Oh, really? You have something in your eye? Let me see. Oh yeah, it does look red.

Okay, so we’re going to make this virtual Thanksgiving all about the senses. You see, we’re going to each search through our house for things that look like something else, put them on the screen and guess what the other person is holding. I read something about being creative this year, so this is it.

No, Alex, you can’t ask a question. Because I said you couldn’t. I’m running this virtual Thanksgiving, and I said you couldn’t. Well, then, your teacher is a better person than I am. I wish he was your father, too. No, no, I didn’t mean that. I just mean that we’re doing something differently this year. Okay, if you stop crying, you can ask a question.

Well, actually that is a good question. It doesn’t really have anything to do with Thanksgiving per se, but guessing what we’re holding is a way for each of us to connect. Okay, so, now, everybody, go get something and bring it back.

Ah, I see Uncle George has come back with something that looks like a baseball. Oh, it is a baseball? That’s not very creative. Oh, Uncle George, you’re not going to tell the story about how you almost caught a foul ball hit by Mickey Mantle, are you? Oh, you were? Well, that is a great story, and I’m sure there’s someone who hasn’t heard that story yet. By a show of hands, who hasn’t heard that story? Okay, well, Uncle George, it’s only because we all listen to you so carefully and we love to hear your stories. Maybe, though, we’ll skip that one this time. Are you crying too, or do you have something in your eye?

Okay, someone else go. Matthew, what are you holding? It looks like an origami bird. Wait, it is an origami bird? I wasn’t supposed to guess it that quickly? Well, it’s because you did such a great job. Now you’re crying?

Okay, it’s Jennifer’s turn. It looks like a huge glass of wine. You’re drinking it to test it? So, it was wine? And now you’re refilling it and drinking it again? One more time? Really? Okay, anyone else want to go?

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Veronica Sanders. Photo from BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

If doctors could somehow stick numerous miniature flashlights in human bodies and see beneficial or harmful reactions, they would be able to diagnose and treat people who came into their offices.

That’s what Vanessa Sanders, Assistant Scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, is working to develop, although instead of using a flashlight, she and her colleagues are using radioisotopes of elements like arsenic. Yes, arsenic, the same element at the center of numerous murder mysteries, has helpful properties and, at low enough concentrations, doesn’t present health threats or problems.

Arsenic 72 is useful in the field of theranostics, which, as the name suggests, is a combination of therapeutics and diagnostics.

Isotopes “allow us to observe visual defects and through using these radioactive agents, we can also observe the functionality of organs,” Sanders explained in an email. These agents can assist in diagnosing people, which can inform the treatment for patients.

What makes arsenic 72 and other radioisotopes helpful is that they have a longer half-life than other isotopes, like fluorine 18, which only lasts for several minutes before it decays. Arsenic-72 has a half life of 26 hours, which matches with the life of an antibody, which circulates through bodies, searching for targets for the immune system. The combination of arsenic-72 and arsenic-77 allows the former to act as a diagnostic agent and the later as a therapeutic partner.

By attaching this radioisotope to antibodies of interest, scientists and doctors can use the decay of the element as a homing device. Using Positron Emission Tomography, agents allow for the reconstruction of images based on the location of detected events.

“When you want to use an antibody as a target for imaging, you want an isotope that will be able to ride with the antibody and accumulate at an area of interest,” Sanders said.

A radiochemist, Sanders is working to develop systems that help researchers and doctors diagnose the extent of problems, while also tracking progress in fighting against diseases. She is working to produce arsenic-72 through the decay of selenium-72.

Using the Brookhaven Linac Isotope Producer, scientists produce selenium-72. They then create a generator system where the selenium 72 is absorbed onto a solid substrate. As it decays, the solid substrate is washed to obtain arsenic-72.

Sanders is hoping to create a device that researchers could ship to clinical institutions where institutions could use arsenic-72 in further applications.

The system BNL is creating is a research and development project. Sanders and her colleagues are working to optimize the process of producing selenium-72 and evaluating how well the selenium, which has a half life of eight days, is retained and how much they can load onto generators.

“We want [arsenic 72] in a form that can easily go into future formulations,” Sanders said. “When we rinse it off that column, we hope to quickly use it and attach it to biomolecules, antibodies or proteins and use it in a biological system.”

With the increasing prevalence of personalized approaches to diseases, Sanders explained that the goal with these diagnostic tools is to differentiate the specific subtype.

A person with pancreatic cancer, for example, might present a specific target in high yield, while another patient might have the same stage cancer without the same high yield target.

“We want to have different varieties or different options of these diagnostic tools to be able to tailor it to the individual patient,” explained Sanders.

Cathy Cutler, Director of the Medical Isotope Program at BNL, said the isotopes Sanders is working on “have a lot of promise” and are “novel.” She described Sanders as “very organized” and “very much a go-getter.”

Cutler said the department feels “very lucky to get her and have her in the program.”

In her group, Sanders explained that she and her colleagues are eager to develop as many radioisotopes as possible to attach them to biomolecules, which will enable them to evaluate disease models under different scenarios. Other researchers are working with arsenic-77, which acts as a therapeutic agent because it emits a different particle.

Scientists are working on a combination of radioisotopes that can incorporate diagnostic and therapeutic particles. When the arsenic 77 destroys the cells by breaking the DNA genetic code, researchers could still observe a reduction in a tumor size. Depending on the disease type and the receptor targeted, scientists could notice a change by observing less signal.

Sanders is working on attaching several radioisotopes to biomolecules and evaluating them to see how well they are produced and separated.

“We make sure [the isotope] attaches to the thing it’s supposed to stick to” such as an antibody, she said.

A resident of Sound Beach, Sanders grew up in Cocoa, which is in central Florida. When she was younger, she wanted to be a trauma surgeon, but she transitioned to radioisotopes when she was in college at Florida Memorial University. “I liked the problem solving aspect of chemistry,” she said. While she works with cancer, she said she would like to investigate neurological diseases as well.

Sanders, who has been living on Long Island since 2017 when she started her post doctoral work at BNL, enjoys the quieter, suburban similarities between the island and her earlier life in Florida.

At six feet, one and a half inches tall, Sanders enjoys playing center on basketball teams and, prior to the pandemic, had been part of several adult leagues in the city and on Long Island, including Ladies Who Hoop and LI Hoops. She is also involved in a sorority, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc, that contributes to community service efforts.

Sanders and her fiancee Joshua Morancie, who works in IT support, had planned to get married in July. They set a new date in the same month next year. If the pandemic continues to derail their party plans next year, the couple plan to wed in a smaller ceremony.

As for radioisotopes, Sanders hopes people become inspired by the opportunities radioisotopes provide for science and medicine.

“There are so many good things that come out of radioisotopes,” Sanders said. “There are so many promising advantages.”

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Are we coming apart together, coming together apart or just coming apart? The first in that list, coming apart together, gives us a chance to feel connected to others. By coming apart together, we are acknowledging the challenging year we’ve had and continue to have.

Without offering specific solutions, it helps to know we’re not alone and that, perhaps, through the together part, we can manage through conditions that are far from optimal, including the separation we feel from so many people we need in our lives.

Now, if we’re coming together apart, we are focusing on the fact that we can be, and are, together first, before we also admit that we may be hundreds or even thousands of miles away from people whose hugs, smiles and laughter fill the rooms we share. Zoom, FaceTime and other modern conveniences make it possible for us to see each other’s faces, even though the image of the other person can feel flat compared to the reality of sharing time and space.

The third of those possibilities, just plain coming apart, enables us to throw up our arms and acknowledge the reality of our world. Many children are home most, or all, the time. Parents are still working through
Zoom, looking at small squares of people on computer screens for way too many hours during the day. The sameness of each day can become tedious and wear on our nerves, especially during this time when we’d typically plan for family visits.

And, of course, without passing any specific judgment, the hot button election continues to drive wedges among families, friends and neighbors, who can’t imagine how the other side fails to see the obvious realities their favorite anchors or faux news and commentary shows echo each day.

It’s agonizing to see how the differences between camps have become a defining feature and have stirred a sense of frustration and antipathy for the other camp.

Where are the adults in the room? For so long, the country brought together people from different backgrounds, uniting us under the umbrella of an American Dream that was available to anyone who worked hard enough for it.

Our sports-crazed culture believed in the winners they cheered for and used their teams as an inspiration to get ahead, to put more into their craft and to try to win the battle for original ideas. Even fans of hated rivals acknowledged the skills and remarkable games they witnessed from their rivals during heated playoff series. I always rooted against Red Sox great Carl Yastrzemski, but I also recognized his incredible talent.

Will a vaccine enable us to come together, together? I hope so. Next year at this time, if we have returned to some level of normalcy that allowed us to visit with our friends, to celebrate weddings, graduations, birthdays, and newborns, we will have the structural opportunities to spend time indoors, even in crowded rooms, and support each other.

Between now and then, ideally we’d plant the seeds that enable us to move forward together. We are not an archipelago nation, separated from each other by the ideological, religious or other labels. We do best when we play to the strengths of a workforce dedicated to getting ahead, to providing for our children and to helping the country even as we help ourselves.

While many of us are physically apart, we can try to reach out to family, friends, and neighbors, even if their ideas temporarily baffle us. We can come together if we are there for each other and if we listen to views outside our own.

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From left, Kamazima Lwiza aboard the hospital ship Jubilee Hope which is owned by a British NGO known as Vine Trust and provides services to several islands on Lake Victoria with Deogratias Kabogo, Chief Engineer of the ship. Photo by Pascal Ferdinand

By Daniel Dunaief

In tropical and subtropical countries, including Brazil and the Ivory Coast, a parasite moves from snails to humans, causing 220 million illnesses a year and as many as 200,000 annual deaths.

People contract the parasite when they enter shallow, warm waters, where the schistosomiasis larvae known as cercariae enters through the skin, moves through the blood stream and settles near the stomach or bladder.

Once it’s near the bladder, the parasite reproduces, sending its eggs out through urine or feces, which, if directed towards warm, shallow water bodies, can enter the snail and begin the process again.

Schistosomiasis causes anemia, malnutrition and learning difficulties, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the parasite robs humans of zinc and vitamins A and D. Prolonged infection can also cause bladder cancer.

Kamazima Lwiza, Associate Professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, is part of a new, five-year study on the effects of climate change on schistosomiasis.

Lwiza’s part of the research, which is lead by Stanford University and involves several institutions, is analyzing the latest Global Climate Models known as Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 results. Lwiza studies the models under four-kilometer resolution to look for patterns and trends.

By creating a model that predicts temperature changes, Lwiza’s part of the efforts hope to help other collaborators apply those temperature expectations to epidemiological models. The ability of the parasite to survive, reproduce and infect humans depends on the viability of the snails, which are temperature sensitive. The temperature range is between 14 and 35 degrees Celsius, with an optimal temperature of between 30 and 32 degrees Celsius.

A warmer climate would likely increase the prevalence of schistosomiasis in the regions of Brazil and the Ivory Coast that this study is exploring, as well as in newer areas.

Kamazima Lwiza prepared instruments before installation aboard the hospital ship Jubilee Hope, which is owned by a British NGO known as Vine Trust and provides services to several islands on Lake Victoria. Photo by Pascal Ferdinand

Depending on the regional topography, human population and amount of rainfall, the area that is conducive to Schistosomiasis could expand. An area that is relatively flat and where rainfall increases and human population is low but increasing could cause the infection rate to climb.

As waterways that were too cold either reach the minimum temperature threshold for snails, or increase the temperature into the optimal range, snail populations are likely to flourish.

Part of the funding for the SoMAS portion of the study is coming from the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. These national funding agencies recognize that increasing temperature and land use has created an environment that fosters the expansion of snails and increased prevalence of parasites into areas in the southern United States.

“Given the climate change,[some parts of Florida and Georgia] will be falling within that temperature range,” Lwiza said. “The worry is that, if this disease is going to spread, how are we going to be prepared to keep it off.”

Lwiza had originally planned to travel to Brazil this past summer to collect baseline data on water temperatures. The pandemic caused him to cancel his travel. Next year, he hopes to build on data around significant water bodies where the disease is prevalent.

While the portion of the study that includes Lwiza focuses on temperature, the Stony Brook scientist is working with other researchers who are exploring a range of other analytical and mitigation measures.

For starters, in some countries that have battled against this parasite, the use of dams has exacerbated the problem. Dams have kept out prawns, who are natural predators for snails.

Scientists are considering reintroducing prawns. These shellfish, which look somewhat like shrimp, could not only reduce the population of snails and the parasites they carry, but could also become an economic boon, as a part of an aquaculture project.

The goal of that part of the study is to “see if [prawns] can be used as biological control agents,” Lwiza said. “If we can find a way of introducing these back to where they used to be, we can cut down the snail population.”

The third aspect of the study involves the use of artificial intelligence. Researchers are putting together a program that will allow people to take pictures of the parasites they find and upload them to a web site to identify them.

“That way, we are doing crowd sourcing” which will allow “people to contribute to our investigation,” Lwiza said. Researchers will be able to map the location of the parasites.

Lwiza said Schistosomiasis can affect anyone who goes in the water. The illness doesn’t get as much attention as malaria. When people go to a rural clinic, if they have malaria, they can get medicines from 20 vendors. A person with Schistosomiasis, however, may need to go to a district or regional hospital for medication.

Originally from Tanzania, Lwiza grew up on the western shores of Lake Victoria, where strong waves don’t favor the development of snails. He currently lives in East Northport with his wife Catherine Kentuha, who works in the United Nations Development Program. The couple has three children — Philip, Johnathan and Mulokozi.

Lwiza has worked at Stony Brook University for 29 years and has lived in Port Jefferson Village and East Setauket.

When he lived in Port Jefferson Village, he was pleased and surprised by how his neighbors brought him candles during a brown out and made sure he and his family were okay.

“It was like, ‘Wow, this is really great. This is like Africa,’” he recalls thinking.

When he’s not working, Lwiza enjoys riding a bike and listening to Indian, Arab, African and Latin music. He is also interested in computer programming.

As this study of Schistosomiasis progresses, Lwiza hopes the incidence of disease decreases and that the science helps protect the population against a widespread illness.

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Stock photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

With a number of extended friends and family pregnant during this turbulent year, I have been thinking about one of the first decisions parents make on behalf of children who can’t yet verbalize their preferences.

What’s in a name, you say? Well, just about everything.

A long, complicated and difficult to spell name could help someone stand out. It could also connect that person to a family legacy or history and enable him to
carry the trappings of a family tree every time he says or writes his name.

At the same time, that person, if she interacts with a large collection of people, may spend an enormous amount of time each day spelling or pronouncing her name and answering questions about its origin.

As an aside, one of my favorite names comes courtesy of a close friend who is a doctor. He was in the operating room many years ago during a complicated delivery by an expectant mother who didn’t speak English. She decided to name her son Nosmo. His middle name was King. She got the name from the No Smoking sign she read in the waiting room.

For some reason, when I meet someone, I struggle with two of the most basic elements of communication. First, they say their name. Something happens in that time shortly after I hear the name. I’m so focused on saying my name, which I’ve known all my life, that I erase her name. It’s as if a devilish part of my brain has blurred her name with a miniature eraser. That also appears to happen to other people, as  several of them have listened to me say my name and then ask, “Did you say your name was Doug” or “Dave?” They tend to remember the first letter.

You would think I wouldn’t have any trouble with such a simple first name, Dan, and yet, you’d be wrong. When I start with “My name is” or “This is,” somehow, the “s” from the “is” elides with my name, making my response sounds like, “This is Stan.”

To compensate, I have tried to wait as long as possible between the “is” and my name, almost as if I’m building suspense. “Hi, this is” … wait for it … have a sandwich … check your email … look at that pretty bird … okay, now, “Dan.”

Sometimes, when I’m outside, I hear my name when no one was talking to me or to anyone else who shares my name. I returned from walking my dog recently and heard “Daaaannn,” “Daaaaaaaann,” “Daaaaaannn” calls. At first, I thought it was my wife, trying to use her special human echolocation to find me, but it turned out to be a crow welcoming my dog and me back.

When people are flustered, injured, or disappointed, they often yell something. Unfortunately for me and, perhaps, other Dans, they shout something that sounds like my name. After stubbing their toe or reading a disappointing email, they scream, “Damn!” Hearing the frustrated and loud call, I match that with, “Yeah, what?” That might be funny to them, if they weren’t already annoyed.

The ubiquitous nature of my name has created confusion on athletic teams or in offices. My last name doesn’t offer an easy alternative.

Indeed, my son, who doesn’t share the same first name as anyone on the baseball team, is, nonetheless, nicknamed “Knife” because, somehow, Duh nay uff, became Doo knife, which was shortened to knife. It makes sense to teenagers.

As one of Jerry Seinfeld’s girlfriends on the eponymous show “Seinfeld” pointed out, it could be worse: her name rhymed with a female body part Jerry couldn’t remember, and it wasn’t “Vulva.”

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