Journal Highlights

Science never fails to amaze me. The more we advance in our knowledge the more we realize that we still have a lot more to discover. The discovery of new genes in addition to their functional roles in pathophysiology is increasing exponentially. That is certainly due to the advances in science and technology’s high throughput screening, microarrays, genetic cloning, transgenic animals and the genomic sequence projects, just to name a few. For those not familiar with the technique, immunohistochemistry is simply a technique where tissue samples, e.g. brains, are fixed with 10% neutral buffered formalin, then paraffin-embedded for histological staining. The tissue is referred to as formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue (FFPE). Technically, the paraffin-embedding process preserves the tissue content (e.g. proteins) and maintains the structural morphology so that it can be used at any time in the future. 

More recently, I discovered that there are ways in which we can re-use such paraffin-embedded tissue by extracting proteins from such tissue and quantitatively analyzing proteins with methods like western blots. In other words, this means that after discovering a new gene or biomarker of a disease, we can then go back in time to ancient samples and test for these genes and proteins. Recent studies in the literature show that it can be done on samples that are more than 10 years old. The extraction process is very harsh and done at very high temperatures, however, results seem to be promising. This kind of research is currently happening. More details and references can be found via pubmed search using the key words “FFPE protein extraction”.  Just the idea that we can use all these archived samples to help us understand biomarkers of diseases that will in return allow us to diagnose and treat those same diseases in future patients. Isn’t that a fascinating method of research?!

Hibah O. Awwad, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
College of Pharmacy
The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center  hawwad@ouhsc.edu
October 30,2010

        During his speech at the annual meeting of National Academy of Sciences, President Barak Obama has pledged to invest 3% of the US gross domestic product (GDP) on research and development (R&D), raising the current figure an increment of 0.4%. To most scientists, particularly academic, relying mostly on government collected tax-payers money, that’s terrific news.  Nevertheless, 13 years ago, Terence Kealey-professor of biochemistry and author of “The Economic Laws of Scientific Research”, stated that “The funding of science is not a political decision; it is economically determined”^(1). For example, investing money into education and science for more than 50 years ago by US governments paid off when Apollo 11 space flight landed the first humans on the moon.  

       Today, the US encounters a new challenge that "Our students are outperformed in math and science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Korea, among others” said Obama. Currently, the US is leading the world R&D with 36 percent of projected world R&D performance in 2007. However, the Asian-nations R&D performance has dramatically increased over the last decade powered mainly by “industrial science”. This was exemplified by Kealey when he mentioned in his article Hiroyuki Odagiri and Naoki Murakimi study on some Japanese pharmaceutical companies that collected $13 billion sales in 1981, with an annual return of 19 percent on investment in R&D. What are our expectations 10 years from today? If boosting science and mathematics education by extra government funding of a $5 billion program called “Race to the Top”, did not fulfill its goal. Our students are still lagging behind and if the US-industrial science is outweighed by high-tech Asian nations. To help figuring it out: China, Japan, and South Korea combined R&D investment, three years ago, accounted for 27 percent of world R&D, more than the 27 nations of the European Union according to Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development Index in 2007 ⁽²⁾. 

Badr M. Ibrahim 

Pharmacology and Toxicology Ph.D. Candidate,  

East Carolina University 

References:  

1. End Government Science Funding, by Terence Kealey. Cato Institute, www.cato.com  
2. Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development Index. 

This week marks the second annual “National Postdoc Appreciation Week”, with September 24, 2010 being the National Postdoc Appreciation Day. Thanks to the efforts of the National Postdoc Association and many research institutions, this event is becoming recognized in more places every year. I just learnt about this event recently and was very pleased to see the list of activities taking place all over the globe (listed on the NPA website).

We shall be celebrating this event at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC) with an ice-cream social for postdocs and their mentors on Friday. This event made me feel special as a postdoc and I feel appreciated already even before the event takes place. It also made me think about my postdoctoral experience so far and how rewarding it has been. The whole postdoctoral experience and every aspect involved makes me feel appreciated; my mentor, my department, my colleagues, my college, my university and the scientific community as a whole.

The appreciation from my mentor, Dr. Kelly M. Standifer, comes from her guidance in research and allowing me to mentor graduate students and to venture into new experiments and ideas, in addition to the grant writing experience. Our OU College of Pharmacy operates a seed grant process and has recently allowed postdoctoral fellows to participate in this experience. I was very fortunate and grateful to be awarded one of those grants. I think it is great that we are being recognized at the research intellectual aspect. Furthermore, our Graduate College at OUHSC has a dedicated postdoctoral office and offers many opportunities for postdoctoral fellows to develop their careers further. I have been very fortunate to graduate from the Preparing Future Faculty program that the Graduate College offers for graduate students and postdocs. In the Experimental Biology meeting 2010, I was touched by the social and scientific events for postdoctoral fellows. Thanks to our own ASPET Neuropharmacology division, I felt very appreciated that we were given our own postdoctoral scientific session to present our research and to get to know fellow postdoctoral fellows.

If you are a faculty member, please show your postdocs that you appreciate them this week, even if it is just a small “Thank you” note. If you are a graduate student, please show your postdocs in your lab that you appreciate them, even if it is just by refilling their pipet tip box for them. If you are a postdoctoral fellow, please recognize that your hard work is being appreciated and recognized at the National level. Postdoctoral fellows are the future research scientists, faculty and mentors of many generations to come, we should all be very proud of what we are accomplishing. We should all work hard to make our postdoctoral fellows recognized at our academic and research institutions by involving postdocs everywhere possible on all levels of our institutions: teaching, research and service.

Please share with us your postdoctoral experiences, do you feel appreciated? what do you appreciate in your program so far? What changes would you like to see? Are you having a postdoc appreciation day?

Hibah O. Awwad, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
College of Pharmacy
The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
hawwad@ouhsc.edu
September 20,2010

We do research for people, don’t we?

In the broad prospective, we, as researchers, are committed to promoting research designed to explore causes and consequences of health-related issues, and design potential therapeutics. Thus, our main target is maintaining and improving public health. However, how often does each one of us, including myself, reach out to those people whom we are obviously working for and discuss our experiments? The unfortunate answer I believe is “Not as often as we should”, at least from what I have encountered in the last eight years working in the research business.I believe it is critical to engage the public in our research stories, and this could be done in different disciplines; probably by reaching out to our neighbors, friends, family members, or even school-classmates, who might know that you are a scientist and probably know that you do experiments on animals, but don’t know exactly what you do. I was very pleased when I came across the new prize from American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that recognizes one of the most important things a scientist can do “AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science” here is a link for the announcement, I thought you or someone you know might be interested:

http://www.aaas.org/aboutaaas/awards/public_engagement/

Personally, I feel it is self-satisfactory to educate others about my “research story”, and the excitement I see in their eyes is, definitely, rewarding. Please try to take advantage of it, and help teach others as well.

Badr Mostafa Ibrahim,

Graduate Student

East Carolina University

August 30, 2010

The biggest question for a graduate student and a post-doctoral fellow that have just started, or are close to finishing, the biggest question is always there: “What and where do I go next?”. Some people are fortunate to have decisions made early on, however, the majority of us fall in the category of “still trying to decide”. There are many career options available for us as neuropharmacologists/scientists, which we shall address in a future article on our blog. For this first blog, I thought we could reach out to each other and share our views of postdoctoral programs in general. As graduate students, we are fortunate to have very structured programs in the form of classes/courses and activities that help us reach our goal and help us promote and develop ourselves as researchers. Although postdoctoral fellowships are very rewarding and are the bridge to the next step in our careers, the majority of our institutes do not have a structured program, and it is up to the postdoctoral fellow to look for available chances for career and self-development. Of course, the main goal from the postdoctoral experience is to join a lab that is successful with a good record of publications and successful graduates. In addition to that, ideally, we should be moving towards becoming well-rounded scientists from all perspectives, not only bench work. From a postdoc’s perspective, I strongly believe that off-the-bench activities/workshops are very constructive and make a postdoc feel more confident and pleasant about being a scientist on the long run.

Do you feel postdoctoral programs need more structure? I wanted to share this idea with you to start an interactive discussion with all our members. I have recently heard of a proposal from some professors, which is implemented in some universities on a voluntary basis. The idea is to have a committee of mentors for postdoctoral fellows, for advise on their research progress as well as guidance and support for the postdoctoral fellow. Another approach has been initiated by FASEB’s training and careers committee, which advises following an Individual Development Plan (IDP) in combination with Annual Reviews as a way of having more structure into the postdoctoral program.  

How has your experience been? Would you like to see more structure in postdoctoral programs or less structure is better? Please share with us your ideas, opinions and suggestions.

Dear ASPET Neuropharmacology (NP) members,

We are very excited to announce the launch of our NP division blog/discussion forum. Our executive committee has assigned the first place awardees for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to this mission. Badr M. Ibrahim and Dr. Hibah O. Awwad will be updating us on a regular basis by posting articles on topics that will allow for interactive professional and scientific discussions between our respected members. Keep visiting our blog site and forums to engage in topics that will cover the latest in neuropharmacology, career development, mentor/mentee-related issues, balancing your life and research and many more diverse topics. We look forward to your participation and feedback through your comments on our posts.

Welcome to the ASPET Neuropharmacology Division group!