Inaugural BDCI Summit: New collaborations and innovative projects

The inaugural BDCI Summit was held on Monday, March 7^th, 2022 at the Emory Conference Center Silverbell Pavilion. Presented in partnership with the Office of the Senior Vice President for Research (SVPR) as part of their “Constructive Collisions” series, this one-day event was designed to provide BDCI members with an opportunity to present their own work via lightning talks, build new connections with fellow Emory researchers through networking breaks, and ultimately participate in an innovative brainstorming + pitch session centered on the Summit theme: Driving Innovation in Precision Medicine. The event was a great success, with 57 people in attendance, representing 11 individual departments and all major units at Emory.

Cutting-edge Research

A diverse group of 13 faculty members presented lightning talks, giving themselves an opportunity to showcase the work happening within their groups and highlighting potential areas of collaboration with fellow BDCI members:

• Vincent Conticello, Chemistry
  • Conticello Lab:Functional peptide and protein assemblies
• Huw Davis, Chemistry
  • Enabling synthetic technology for drug discovery
• Yuhong Du, Pharmacology & Chemical Biology
  • Connecting biology to chemistry through high-throughput screening
• David Frank, Hematology & Medical Oncology
  • Elucidating how transcriptional pathways become subverted to drive cancer pathogenesis, and developing novel therapeutic approaches to address them
• Aparna Kesarwala, Radiation Oncology
  • The interface between radiation oncology and cancer metabolism
• Minsu Kim, Physics
  • Inactivating endopeptidases as new antibiotic targets
• Frank McDonald, Chemistry
  • Catalytic synthetic methods, natural product synthesis, and applied medicinal chemistry
• Eric Miller, Pharmacology & Chemical Biology
  • Developing new and better ways to treat cancer, viral infections, and neurodegenerative diseases
• Xiulei Mo, Pharmacology & Chemical Biology
  • Discovery of hypomorph mutation-directed small molecule protein-protein interaction inducers
• Monika Raj, Chemistry
  • Chemical tools to study biological systems
• Khalid Salaita, Chemistry
  • The force is within you: Nucleic acid probes for mechanobiology
• Alejandra San Martin, Cardiology
  • Identifying novel small molecules to modulate vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) plasticity
• Rabindra Tirouvanziam, Pediatrics
  • Transformative opportunities in myeloid cell immunotherapy

The energy in the room was palpable as we heard from each group and witnessed the breadth of science happening within our community. These talks also gave way to number of new connections and conversation, which we hope will continue to develop into new collaborations that the BDCI can support in the future!

Innovation through Collaboration

After lunch, attendees had the opportunity to participate in a brainstorming session centered on the Summit theme, “Driving Innovation in Precision Medicine.” Participants had a little over an hour to identify potential collaborators, discuss their ideas, and build out a collaborative 6-month project that demonstrates synergy amongst all team members. Ultimately, each team then had 5 minutes to pitch their project to a panel of judges who evaluated the innovation, feasibility, and impact of each project, among other criteria. Six teams formed, with each of them pitching truly innovative and diverse projects ranging from Cancer to Cystic Fibrosis. Ultimately, 2 projects were selected and provided 6-month seed grants ($5,000/team member) to pilot these exciting projects. This year’s winners were:

• Frank McDonald (Chemistry) & Daqing Wu (Biological Sciences, Clark Atlanta University): Repurposing and modifying known drugs for chemo-resistant prostate cancer
• Aparna Kesarwala (Radiation Oncology), Eric Miller (Pharmacology and Chemical Biology [P&CB]), Anupam Patgiri (P&CB), and Yueming Zhu (P&CB): The effect of radiation therapy on NAD+ redox homeostasis in cancer cells

In discussion with some of the teams not selected for funding, it was clear that the ideas formed out of this accelerated collaboration session will still be pursued and potentially expanded and re-submitted in our Fall 2022 Accelerator Grant cycle! Overall, we found this session to be very successful in both bringing together new groups of people, but also in providing an opportunity to think outside the box and shake up the typical structure of initiating collaborations. We look forward to more “shake ups” at next year’s event! We also want to extend a big thank you to our wonderful panel of judges: Joel Baumgart, Anita Corbett, Huw Davies, Kimberly Eck, and Haian Fu.

Building Community

Arguably, the most important component of the day was the least programmed: networking breaks and meals aimed at allowing our attendees to either meet for the first time or to re-connect after a long period of virtual events. Because building a robust and synergistic network of researchers at the chemistry-biology interface is at the core of the mission of the BDCI, we were thrilled to provide an opportunity for these relationships to establish and grow. We also acknowledge that the personal relationships that grow out of these interactions are incredibly important, too. In following up with Frank McDonald and Daqing Wu, one of our pitch session winning teams, after the Summit, I was delighted to hear of their new connection and how it has already sparked a nice friendship and opportunities to share about other aspects of their lives outside the seed project. In this conversation, Dr. McDonald shared that the talented graduate scholar that was enthusiastically beginning to conduct research on this project, only to be told in mid-April that their immigration application was denied. Unless we can find a mechanism to intervene, this promising young scientist may be compelled to suspend graduate studies and leave the Emory community. Although Dr. McDonald will appoint other graduate scholars to continue conducting this research, the injustice is devastating to the graduate scholar, is also disruptive to our University’s educational and research missions, and harms the reputation and the scientific future of our country. We will continue to stay abreast of this situation and help in any way that we can. This also highlights the opportunity for our community to support one another in a multitude of ways, both personally and professionally.

Looking Forward

We hope that the BDCI community continues to grow and be a valuable part of the Emory ecosystem for years to come! See you at next year’s Summit! (Save the date: Friday, March 3^rd, 2023)