A passport to science

Ai Kotani Yoshida
Japan

f she had to choose between research and clinical work on blood diseases, Ai Kotani Yoshida might ditch the science. “I cannot give up clinical work,” she says. “My motivation is curing disease. If possible, I want to do both.”

In Japan, the cancer physician was frustrated by the poor prognoses of too many of her patients with leukemia, lymphoma or other blood cancers. Her subsequent doctoral studies in immunotherapy convinced her that the fast-moving field of small RNA would more quickly yield major advances in cancer treatment.

Japanese research organizations would not allow her to test her ideas for some time, so she looked to the lab of Whitehead Member Harvey Lodish. In 2006, she packed up her two-year-old son and moved to Cambridge. Her husband, a research physicist, remained in Japan.

“Here, a newcomer can easily set up a project,” Kotani Yoshida says. She seeks to use microRNAs to overcome drug resistance to chemotherapy agents by making tumors more sensitive to the agents. She marvels that it took only one month to set up a direct collaboration with Joel Neilson in the lab of MIT’s Phillip Sharp to use knockout mice for her project.

Kotani Yoshida enjoys the status of women scientists in the U.S. In Japan, her pursuit of a doctorate was derided by a male colleague as an unladylike activity. After she was attacked on her way home from the hospital, where she was one of three women among 100 clinicians, she was advised to see fewer patients and leave earlier. “Here, no one cares that I am female, just that I am doing research,” she says. Her postdoctoral funding does testify to changing times: It’s from a Japanese government grant dedicated to women researchers who have children.

As a single mother in a foreign country, Kotani Yoshida faces other challenges. To attend a recent symposium, for example, she flew with her son, now four, back to Japan, where he could be cared for by her parents and at her husband's institution’s day care. Then she flew to the meeting in Canada. Her parents will accompany her son back to Boston and stay for three months to help out. “My husband misses his son, and my boy needs his father,“ she says. “I'll have to go back to Japan eventually.”

Cristina Nogueira
Portugal

Seven years ago, the Portuguese government paid Cristina Nogueira to leave the country. “Our government funds people to go abroad to learn and bring back knowledge,” she says. With that incentive, she moved to Boston and conducted her doctorate bench work at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She dutifully returned every year to report her progress to her thesis committee.

The Cambridge/Boston area was ideal, not only for her science, but for the equally good opportunities for her boyfriend (now husband) who also is a scientist-in-training. Last year, Nogueira joined the lab of Whitehead Member Terry Orr-Weaver. There, she is studying a protein that keeps replicated chromosomes together until it is the right time to separate, and she is interested in understanding how disregulation of this process can have implications in cancer.

Nogueira relishes the multicultural nature of life in Boston. “We don’t get that in Portugal,” she says. “Even in the lab, people work in different ways that correlate with culture. They have different ways of optimizing time. It is a very interesting social experience.”

In general, U.S. scientists are more confident and aggressive about publishing quickly in high-profile journals, Nogueira says. They embark on more risky problems, which is probably a reflection of the striking difference in research support between the countries. When Portuguese friends talk about year-long grants for projects, “I think to myself about how they are able to do science with so little,” she says.

But funding for international postdocs can be an obstacle in the U.S.

Whitehead postdoctoral fellows such as Nogueira usually win their own fellowship money in grant competitions, says Orr-Weaver. “Many of the postdoctoral fellowship agencies in the U.S. accept applications only from U.S. citizens or permanent residents,” she notes.

The fundraising potential figures into the calculus of evaluating potential postdocs in every Whitehead lab. “If postdocs can get a fellowship, it helps their own career so much,” Orr-Weaver says. “If not, it hinders them.” International postdocs now make up about half of her lab.

Looking ahead, Nogueira wants to return to Portugal or a nearby country, to an institution where she can run her own lab and where her daughter, born two years ago, can have grandparents and other family nearby. Nogueira will miss a lot of aspects of life here, but not the price of day care.

Alexandre Esteban
Spain

"In many European countries, if you want a very good position after your PhD, it’s almost mandatory you spend a few years abroad,” says Alexandre Esteban, a postdoctoral fellow in Whitehead Member Gerald Fink’s lab. “I wanted to come to the U.S. to learn and collaborate with top-level scientists.”

Fink’s lab at Whitehead fulfills Esteban’s criteria in spades, reinforced by the proximity of MIT across the street, Harvard not far away and the Boston area’s general bastion of scientific talent. “I really like the talks,” he says, referring to the daily bounty of scientific talks in the area. “I learn from other people working on many projects.”

Esteban aims to develop a transgenic mouse to study different immune cell types that recognize and fight fungal infections. He plans to return to Spain, where he has kept his Barcelona apartment, for an academic or industry job.

After one year of work as a veterinarian in an animal hospital in Spain, Esteban realized that the best part of his training had been the laboratory science. He returned to school for his PhD in food microbiology, studying the physiology of mycotoxin-producing molds isolated from coffee, cereals, nuts, fruit and other foods. The mycotoxins such molds produce can cause cancer or immunological problems in people. A half-year stint in Australia studying the taxonomy of molds enamored him of molecular biology.

Compared to scientists in Spain, U.S. researchers seem more independent within labs. But they also are generous in sharing ideas and advice among labs. “What is unusual about the Whitehead is the number of collaborations between labs,” remarks Gerald Fink. “Alex is collaborating the [Rudolf] Jaenisch and [Hidde] Ploegh labs. It’s a valuable experience that can happen in a small institute.”

Esteban is impressed with the resources available to carry out research here. Even his two-year fellowship, a Fulbright, originated in this country, he notes.

Here, his lab mates have eased the transition to a new field with advice, Esteban says. On the cultural front, a network of fellow Spaniards shared tips on opening a bank account, filing tax forms, managing visa issues and handling other aspects of living and working overseas.

One adjustment remains difficult, even after living here a year. “I was not expecting that the winter weather would last so long,” he says.

Ifat Rubin-Bejerano
Israel

In high school, Ifat Rubin-Bejerano was really good at math. But it was a glow-in-the-dark genetically modified plant at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology that illuminated her future.

She had just served her mandatory duty as an officer in the Israeli army and was contemplating a career in medicine or computer science. But the glowing plant “was just amazing,” says Rubin-Bejerano. “It changed my life. I was fascinated by genetic engineering and the power it holds.”

Throughout her PhD studies in the molecular genetics of baker’s yeast, Rubin-Bejerano envisioned herself as a professor. Her career track took an unexpected turn during her postdoctoral training in Gerald Fink’s laboratory. She has launched a company based on her finding that neutrophils, the “bodyguards” that protect us from microbes, are attracted and stimulated by a unique sugar.

“My husband is an entrepreneur,” says Rubin-Bejerano. “After conducting market research, looking at many different indications, he thought it was worth a company. If we link our neutrophil-attracting sugar to antibodies that target specific cancer cells, then the neutrophils might attack and kill the cancer cells.” The notion of harnessing the immune system to fight cancer is not new, but most efforts have focused on other members of the immune system.

Rubin-Bejerano moved to Cambridge from Israel with her son and husband. She left her three sisters, her parents (her mother runs a daycare center) and many more family and friends. “It was so different,” she says. “People in Israel are so direct. Everything is in your face, for good and bad.”

Last year was a whirlwind. She published her findings in Cell Host & Microbe, won a commercialization grant from the Massachusetts technology transfer center, came in second (out of 118) in the MIT $100K business plan competition, and gathered support from MIT’s Deshpande Center. And yes, she also founded her company, immuneXcite.
Her parents are not getting any younger, but her son and daughter are happy here. “I don’t know if this is destiny,” she says. “It seems like a great idea to pursue, and Cambridge is the best place to do it.”