Hello friends 👋
In this episode of the Incubator: At the Bench, we talk with Dr. Erin Plosa who is a neonatologist and physician scientist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. We learn what inspired Dr. Plosa to pursue neonatology and learn about her background and career as a lung biologist. Dr. Plosa talks about the importance of collaboration in scientific research and highlights her work studying the role of integrins and the extracellular matrix during lung development. She discusses the role of the extracellular matrix in alveologenesis, fusion of the alveolar capillary barrier, and in directing communication between epithelial and endothelial cells. We also discuss Erin's experience with mentorship and career development, including her transition into becoming a mentor and winning mentoring awards. Erin shares her approach to mentoring and the importance of fostering intellectual curiosity. Join us as we learn more about what it takes to build a career as a neonatology physician-scientist and how the extracellular matrix directs lung development and response to injury.
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SOME FEATURED MANUSCRIPTS FROM DR. PLOSA:
Plosa EJ, Young LR, Gulleman PM, Polosukhin VV, Zaynagetdinov R, Benjamin JT, Im AM, van der Meer R, Gleaves LA, Bulus N, Han W, Prince LS, Blackwell TS, Zent R. Epithelial β1 integrin is required for lung branching morphogenesis and alveolarization. Development. 141(24):4751-62, 2014. PMCID: PMC4299273
Plosa EJ, Benjamin JT, Sucre JM, Gulleman PM, Gleaves LA, Han W, Kook S, Polosukhin VV, Haake SM, Guttentag SH, Young LR, Pozzi A, Blackwell TS, Zent R. β1 integrin regulates adult lung alveolar epithelial cell inflammation. JCI Insight. 5(2):e129259, 2020. PMCID: PMC7098727
Negretti NM*, Plosa EJ*, Benjamin JT, Schuler BA, Habermann AC, Jetter CS, Gulleman PM, Bunn C, Hackett AN, Ransom M, Taylor CJ, Nichols D, Matlock BK, Guttentag SH, Blackwell TS, Banovich NE, Kropski JA**, Sucre JM**. A Single Cell Atlas of Mouse Lung Development. Development 2021 Dec 15; 148(24):dev199512. PMCID: PMC8722390
Sucre JMS, Bock F, Negretti NM, Benjamin JT, Gulleman PM, Dong X, Ferguson KT, Jetter CS, Han W, Liu Y, Kook S, Gokey JJ, Guttentag SH, Kropski JA, Blackwell TS, Zent R, Plosa EJ. Alveolar repair following lipopolysaccharide-induced injury requires cell-extracellular matrix interactions. JCI Insight 2023 Jul 24;8(14):e167211. PMCID: PMC10443799
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The transcript of today's episode can be found below 👇
David (00:01.997)
Hello and welcome back to the incubator at the bench podcast where we are incubating discoveries. I'm one of the co -hosts of this program, Dr. David McCully at the university of California and San Diego and Rady children's hospital. And I'm very excited to be continuing this program where we're highlighting neonatal physician scientists who are doing cutting edge research related to newborn diseases of all different kinds. Today I'm excited to be able to continue our show where we're going to be interviewing another great physician scientist in our field, Dr. Erin Plosa. But first, I just want to introduce one of my co -hosts of the program, Dr. Misty Good. Misty, do you want to introduce yourself?
Misty Good (00:42.726)
Hello, I'm Misty Good. I'm the Division Chief of Neonatology at UNC Chapel Hill and a neonatologist scientist. And we're super excited to interview Dr. Erin Plosa today. Dr. Plosa, would you like to introduce yourself?
Erin (00:56.805)
Absolutely. I'm Dr. Erin Plosa. I'm a neonatologist and physician scientist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. And I study primarily lung epithelial cells and how they relate to their surrounding extracellular matrix.
David (01:15.949)
Awesome. Erin, we're super excited to talk with you today. I have gotten to know you for several years now through a few different things that we do collaboratively and by attending meetings that we have been able to attend together that have basically set our neonatology physician scientist career paths on their course. Just before we begin and really dig into your research, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about your background and kind of what got you interested in lung biology, in neonatology, maybe some of the initial mentors that you worked with, and just what stimulated you to do the work you're doing now?
Erin (01:55.173)
Sure. I would describe my career path as a little bit later to science than others. I didn't decide to go to medical school until I was a senior in college. And I majored in mathematics at Vanderbilt as an undergrad. And I did that because I just, I love puzzles. I love to learn to learn. I got around to my senior year and realized that actuarial science was not where I wanted to be with my life. And I needed something more creative. And so I decided to apply to medical school. I took two gap years and in those two years, I worked in a lab, with a basic science lab in rheumatology here at Vanderbilt and I was a research assistant, which was not a glamorous job. I did genotyping, I ran the mouse house, I ordered supplies, and I remember being, I mean over holiday breaks I would be responsible for feeding the diabetic my sugar water, which no one else wanted to do for sure. But it was great because I learned that there's a place in the world for people that are intellectually curious and they want to learn how things work. And that's why I’m where I am today. I have the best job in the world, I think, which is I take care of people's babies and families in one of the most precious moments. And that's in the first few days of life and months of life of their preterm infants. And the other side of my job is I get to figure out how things work. How does lung biology really work and how does the lung actually form?
David (03:53.869)
That's great, Erin. Just digging into that a little bit more, I think it's really interesting just to hear about how you got interested in going to medical school. Because I mean, we work so closely with undergraduate students who are doing those unglamorous things of genotyping, mouse colony management, and stuff like that. And I think that they're just getting an early taste of the kind of work you can do that's in biomedical research generally. And we're trying to stimulate them. But they're kind of doing this unglamorous work, like you said. So it's great to hear how that was interesting to you and how it opened a door to discovery like you were mentioning. Can you just talk a little bit like that helped get you into medical school, but then how did you find neonatology and then build your career in lung biology?
Erin (04:41.221)
Sure. I knew from that first moment on when I first entered medical school, I knew I wanted to make research part of my life, but had already committed to an MD only pathway. And so, you know, going through medical school, I always had my eye on things and places where I could practice medicine that had interesting physiology and had interesting biological questions. I made the decision to go into pediatrics because I felt like it was a vulnerable population that really needed a lot of care and attention and I felt like people could do really good things in that field in terms of research because it's a little bit understudied compared to some of the other fields and just in general. And then neonatology, I did neonatology in August of my intern year.
Misty Good (05:46.502)
That's when I did it actually too. It's great.
Erin (05:49.509)
And I will tell you, driving in on August 2nd, the second day of the rotation, I already knew I wanted to be an neonatologist. And a lot of that had to do with Dr. Bill Walsh, who is one of our senior faculty here at Vanderbilt and at the time he was our chief of nurseries and he was my very first NICU attending and he showed me basically all the wonderful things that you can do as a neonatologist clinically and what an important role you have for families in those pretty vulnerable times. So yeah, the second day I was driving to work I absolutely knew I wanted to be a neonatologist. There was no doubt in my mind from then on. So and it just so happened that neonatology paired very well with being a physician scientists. So that actually worked out really well.
Then moving on, you know, into your first year of fellowship in neonatology at most places is pretty clinically heavy, but I spent my first couple months trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a research project and being kind of like generally structurally oriented thinking, you know, I always want to think about how things are built and made. And so I went to different labs that were studying different organs, right? And I ended up in the lung because of Dr. Lance Prince. He was a neonatologist here at Vanderbilt at the time. He ran a basic science lab that studied the molecular mechanisms of lung development, mostly as it relates to the sacular stage and branching and inflammation. I got involved in his lab and learned a lot of really great techniques from him and from the people that worked in his lab and have been working in the lung field ever since.
Misty Good (07:35.334)
That's really awesome. I love that story. When you first started out as a fellow in the lab, I mean, I know you had an experience before that, but for your experience as a fellow, did you know that you really wanted to be a primary investigator, like an awesome R01 funded rock star? Or did you just say, I really like science. I want to see how this goes. What were you thinking back then?
Erin (08:02.949)
You know, as a fellow, I 100 % knew I wanted to do basic science as my scholarly project during fellowship, 100%. And it some encouragement from Lance for me to really set my sights on being a PI one day and having my own lab and running my own research program. I mean, it didn't take a lot of encouragement, but it took some. And I probably wouldn't have considered it had he not spoken up and said, you know, you can really do this. This is something that you're well suited for. You've got the curiosity. You've got the drive. And that was really all it took.
Misty Good (08:46.214)
Well, mentorship is so important. And so, and we talk a lot about it on the podcast. And so I think just hearing that you had an encouraging mentor and then just gave you a little, maybe the little nudge that you needed to keep going, I think is really important. How did you then, I guess, create your own lab or transition after you were in Lance's lab? Like tell us a little bit more about that transition and maybe some early collaborations that you have and how your science has evolved since you were first starting out, I guess.
Erin (09:21.189)
Sure. You always have to think about your circumstance, I guess. And, and that sometimes you have very little control over them. So, you know, Lance was destined for great things and big leadership roles. And, that is where his path took him next. And that was great for him and also in the end great for me. Because one of the things that people worry about, especially if you're building a lab that's closely related to what you're doing with your mentor that is hard sometimes to define your independence. And that ended up being really easy for me. So after Lance left Vanderbilt, I was a first-year faculty and I had been involved with the adult pulmonary critical care group here for some time during my fellowship. So I had that change in mentorship from Lance Prince to Tim Blackwell who was the division chief for adult pulmonary critical care here at Vanderbilt at the time. And then also Boris Zent, who's a leading endocrine biologist. And switching my mentorship to a co -mentorship position for those two, it really, number one, I learned so much about lung injury models and the adult lung. And it broadened the way I think about things and it got me thinking about and what was possible and the different mechanisms that are possible because a lot of the things that we think about in lung development have some sort of copycat or phenocopy or there's some relation to how it works with repair and is what a lot of people have been discovering over the last decade. And those parallels are very easy for me to see. It's also paired with an adult lung injury model which are not all the same, which is interesting in itself, but there are some similarities that are really important. And then the other thing is that having now with co -mentorship with those two, taking pieces from each field and having something that's all my own and being able to build it from scratch was really amazing.
David (11:53.581)
I think that's a really good story, Erin, and it's really helpful for people to hear because I think a lot of people who are kind of coming up in this role see how challenging it is to balance doing basic science research and also doing training in clinical neonatology or whatever their field they're working in. And it's sort of hard to try to think about, I should actually go looking for mentors who are outside of my immediate sphere.
And I personally feel like I've benefited a lot from finding mentors who are way outside of neonatology. And I think, I hope, dream that I was able to add to their lab by introducing them to a field of clinical medicine that they didn't have any contact with before either. And I'm just wondering, can you talk a little bit more about how you found those mentors and just any advice for people about how you should go about trying to find people outside of your clinical training world or, you know, obvious place that you might go looking for a mentor?
Erin (13:00.581)
Sure. I think the very best space to look for a mentor that's not in your area is the area adjacent, right? And so if you're looking at lung development, the adjacent area is the adult lung.
If you're looking at, at the time for my project with Lance, I was looking at myosin -light chain kinase with intracellular scaffolding. And so what's adjacent to that is the extracellular matrix, which puts you in the realm of integrins, which is where I ended up. And so those kind of taking one step beyond where you are and getting that perspective from the other side of an interaction often helps.
Misty Good (13:44.742)
That's great. I think the whole like, you know, field adjacent, I think is something to really hone in on. And is, you know, is there anything clinically that really like as you're practicing drives your work?
Erin (14:01.797)
Well, you know, clinically I mostly work on our tiny baby team. And one of the biggest features of taking care of patients on that team is managing lung disease, especially right out of the gate for an ELBW. And that piece is really rewarding to see all the progress that we've made and although it's amazing just to see what a 22 or a 23 -week -old can do with immature lungs. And all the strategies to help that,
that baby. So that's one thing that has been really rewarding on a day -to -day basis clinically that applies loosely to what I'm doing in the lab. But more importantly whenever I talk to fellows and I on occasion I'll give our our fellows didactic lectures on lung development or renal development. When I do the lung lecture I like to point them towards it's a figure and . . . It's Fanaroff and Martin, chapter 63, figure five.
Misty Good (15:13.83)
I love that you have that memorized. When you said Fanaroff and Martin, it just took me way back to fellowship when we did. We used to do chapter reviews, like as part of our board review prep.
Erin (15:24.173)
We did too. You should just read it. Just read the textbook. I mean, really. But Chapter 63, long development maturation. The figure five in there is a figure about the surface area of the lung based on gestational age. And the point of the figure is to show that the surface area really expands during gestation.
To me, the point of the figure is that there is so much variation with each gestational age. So not all 28 -weekers are the same. And you can have lots of variation in the amount of surface area you have right at 28 weeks corrected. So that in itself really, really gets me going. It's finding out the risk factors and the things that can mitigate lung hypoplasia given the same gestational age and same birth circumstances.
David (16:17.773)
Yeah, that's great, Erin. I agree it is really exciting to see just continuing to make advances in taking care of preterm babies. And we have so many more babies that survive at those extremely premature gestational ages now. So now it's like, how can we improve their survival? Because we know that they are at risk of long -term lung dysfunction and sort of an earlier decline in lung function. So how can we do things in the very early phase of their life to help promote lung development as best as possible. And I think that studying integrins and the extracellular matrix like you're doing is a great way to be able to think about that. So if we could start to dig in just to your research a little bit more, just details about what you're actually working on, the kind of techniques you're using and stuff like that. I think the audience is excited to learn like how you do what you actually do in the lab and things like that? I have to say, I was trying to think about how to get ready for this show yesterday and I was teaching our new interns NRP. And one of the keys of teaching NRP is demonstrating and teaching good communication. And I think that alveologenesis is such a good model for thinking about cooperative communication during development because you have epithelial cells, you have endothelial cells, you have macrophages, and extracellular matrix. And if any one of those components of the developing alveolus is not doing its job or not communicating with the others, you don't get an alveolus. And then you are not able to do good gas exchange. So I was trying to think, what's a good analogy for you to be able to relate your work to people who are not thinking about integrins so much but just think about alveologenesis a lot, we think about BPD a lot, but what do you think the role is of the extracellular matrix and of integrin specifically?
Erin (18:21.029)
Well, from the recent work I've been doing, I think that one of the most important roles for at least the laminin binding integrins is the development of the alveolar capillary barrier, both in sacculation and alveolarization. So right before sacculation, or right before alveolarization and during sacculation is when I think that endothelial cells and epithelial cells closely approximate. And it's really important for sealing that fused alveolar capillary barrier, which is the central unit for efficient gas exchange. It surrounds that basement membrane and the alveolar basement membrane is incredibly specialized in the sense that there's collagen -4 and laminin isoforms that are really important, not only for fusion of the basement membrane. But also, you know, it turns out that titrating the components of the basement membrane influences the regulatory mechanisms and what basically what the matrix tells the epithelial cell what to do. And that's really important in terms of timing. So you have to have the timing of your composition of your of your matrix done precisely so that the epithelial cells and to I think a lesser extent the endothelial cells are directed towards proliferation or differentiation or whatever it is that they're programmed to do at that moment. And so they have they have some temporal specificity that's driven by the matrix.
Misty Good (19:59.366)
That's really cool. And I know you've done a lot about a lot of studies on looking at like branching and, you know, I think a couple of years ago you published the single cell atlas of mouse lung development. Can you talk a little bit about how you got interested in that and just all the work that it took to actually publish that manuscript?
Erin (20:24.709)
Well, so one thing I've come to learn about science is that working together collaboratively is incredibly important. And everyone has their own skillset and they bring something to the table. And the more you can develop your specialized skillset and get involved in other people's projects, probably the better. And so let's go back to the diabetic mice days. My skillset happens to be making mice and running a mouse colony and time meetings and mouse models. And so, you know, I have a great colleague here at Vanderbilt, Jennifer Sucre, who had a vision, let's call it, to define, you know, by single cell sequencing, the different stages of lung development which was previously not as readily as available as we would like. We've made it available for everyone to use. We did a ton of different time points and we did as early as gosh, E12 and then E15 and then E18 and then a whole bunch during sacculation, alveolarization and then one later adult time point. And we went through and with all these time points, sort of did the same prep, but just got a ton of cells. And we did a CD45-negative and a TR119 -negative sort to do the atlas, which means that we took out the immune cells and took out the red cells. And what that did was it exposed a lot of nuances of the different smaller epithelial and endothelial and fibroblast populations.
that would have been masked otherwise.
And so with all that, my role in that big giant project was all the mouse work. And at each time point, we had a minimum of four different mice. And we split them up, male and female. And it was a lot of work to get all the different time points in all the mice. And then working out with our Vantage Core that does our sequencing about the best way to do the flow sorting for viability to give us the best sample in the most cells. So all of that, you know, I have expertise in obviously mouse models and flow sorting and how to do all that. The single -cell analysis is not, certainly.
Misty Good (23:27.846)
I can't even code, so like, don't worry. I'm safe.
Erin (23:30.053)
Yeah, I get my friends to do that. You know, they want mice, they ask me, if I want a dot plot, I ask them.
David (23:43.597)
I do think that's a really good example though, just because I feel like when we're coming up, we're so focused on and concerned about what we were talking about before, which is like, how am I going to become independent of my mentor and demonstrate that I can do interesting work, running my own lab, like that kind of thing. But in reality, the way to do interesting work is to collaborate. It's one-more fun, two-more productive, and three-way more interesting.
So I think it's just great to be able to highlight that story because that was such a productive paper. Like it's referred to so universally right now. And I think that's just not obvious to people who are in training or especially at early career stages where they really feel like I have to demonstrate independence, I really need to show that I can do it on my own. But in reality, that's just not how this works. And no one benefits from working in a silo. It's so much better to work collaboratively and find your strengths like you said, know what your strengths are know your limitations are work with people who you can do complementary work with.
Erin (24:53.093)
Absolutely. It was a ton of fun to be that project. Absolute blast. And I, you know, part of my future direction and where I'm going with things has to do with when we first made our object for, we collected all the time points, got all 119 ,000 cells or whatever it was. And we got the whole thing put together. And, Jen's office is right next to mine. And so what is the very first thing you do when your friend makes a giant single -cell atlas is that you go out of your office, walk around the corner, knock, knock, knock. Hey, Jen, let's look at my favorite genes. Right? Right? So, you know, I had a list of genes, the very first ones I wanted her to look at for me.
Erin (25:42.213)
And from that, we both are jaws at the floor because we realized how important type I cells were for making matrix proteins, particularly the elements of specific laminin isoforms and collagen IV isoforms that are required for fusion of the basement membrane. And we would have never figured that out had Jen’s office not been next to mine or we not collaborated on this project or anything like that. And that became one of the major findings of the paper.
Misty Good (26:09.446)
That's awesome. It's so much fun to collaborate with your friends. And I think when you're a fellow or you're early career faculty, collaborating, I think, is intimidating. But if you start small or you start with your next-door neighbor, whether it's next door in the lab or adjacent organs or adult tapeds, I think it can be really fun.
Erin (26:33.061)
Absolutely.
David (26:35.661)
Erin, can you talk just a little bit more? Like you kind of hinted at what you're interested in right now or where you think you're going. It seems like you've been focusing on integrins during lung development. You've studied them in injury model with inflammation after LPS and things like that. What are you interested in continuing to build on? Like it seems like you're focused on integrins and their role managing interaction between epithelial cells and the basement membrane. What are you thinking of going next or what is most interesting to you right now?
Erin (27:12.101)
Well, so where I came from is I did a big branching project first and I did some adult injury. And now I'm really interested in matrix biology and how that influences the distal lung development. So that is where most of my ATP goes towards right now. And this is a little embarrassing to admit, but I'm gonna say it anyway.
I actually have dreamed about how the alveolar basement membrane fuses. Like actual like REM sleep in my mind wondering like, I wonder how that happens. And so, and I can see it like happening in my dreams. But let's see if we can put it together in real life. So.
Misty Good (28:02.63)
That's awesome.
David (28:04.045)
What do you think about translation? Just because it seems like basement membrane and integrins are so important for communication, do you think of it as a way of delivering small molecules or things like that? Just trying to think.
Erin (28:17.061)
Yeah, no, I hear what you're saying there. It is challenging, right? Because if you make one modification, what you think is going to happen actually happens on both sides of the interaction. So it's going to take a lot of work. If you're going to purposely modify what the basement membrane looks like, either to influence epithelial cell behavior, you're also going to influence the other side of it, which is endothelial cell. So you have to really consider both sides of that equation.
David (28:52.973)
I'm glad you mentioned endothelial cells because our other co -host Betsy Crouch I'm sure is dying to know what you would say about what's going on with the endothelial cells in this scenario.
Erin (29:02.213)
Yeah, that is one of my future projects, future directions I hope to investigate is how these same integrins regulate the other side of the barrier. So what's happening with the endothelial cells.
Misty Good (29:16.998)
Betsy will be really happy to hear that.
Erin (29:19.525)
And I will tell you that the brain also has a basement membrane. There's only a couple spots in the body and the brain has the blood brain barrier. So there's that. So hopefully it'll apply to what she's working on.
David (29:30.029)
Yeah, future collaboration.
Erin (29:31.781)
Yeah.
Misty Good (29:33.894)
That's awesome. I wanted to shift gears a little bit and ask about, I know you have a lot of experience with mentorship and physician scientist career development. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about your career development path and becoming a mentor and how that transition was for you. And then I know you've won some mentoring awards and things like that, which has been really awesome.
Maybe you could share a little bit about that. I know you're the co -director of Vanderbilt's K12 in pediatrics.
Erin (30:17.253)
I got you. All right. So fellowship ends. I established new mentorship with Tim Blackwell and Marisen and work on expanding my skill set to include adult lung injury and, you know, integrin biology. And I applied for a K08 and that worked out and did my K08 project.
Misty Good (30:44.71)
That worked out. That worked out. I mean, she successfully went from K to R, like, no, like, there's no problem just to making it look easy for everyone around here.
Erin (30:50.469)
Well, speaking of K to R, I did an R03 right after my K08 and the R03 is a great mechanism. A number of different institutes have it, but it gave me a little bit of extra time to get some more mice made, which is what I like to do best. And I use that time really to define and figure out the best question to ask for this R01 application. So whereas my K08 was, I did some branching stuff and a bunch of homeostasis and adult lung injury things with the K08. Because I was going towards a slightly new direction, which is defining the different roles of the laminin and binding integrins in lung development. And number two, figure out exactly what they did. And it turned out that all those, there's three laminin-binding integrins that all do very different things. And so that R03 mechanism was really useful. And I think I probably, if you read the description of what it's for, I probably hit it to a T. So yeah, so that was really great. And then I got my first R01 based on two of the three mouse models I made during my R03.
Misty Good (32:18.31)
That's awesome. And then how about mentorship? Like for you mentoring others.
Erin (32:25.445)
That has really organically evolved over the past couple of years. I would probably say I was a little slower than most to pick up mentees. And I don't know really the reason for it. I probably was just really busy and didn't think I had time and energy to appropriate for that. And I was in the mouse house.
David (33:04.685)
I have to say I was late to mentoring too. And I think I was actually pretty nervous about it because I was nervous, you know, for myself failing. I think we're all always so petrified of failure. But like that's myself. Like if I fail and then ruin somebody else's career, I feel that is so much worse. So I was so anxious about taking on mentees because I was like, I just want to make sure I'm on stable ground before I do that.
I don't know if it was similar for you, Erin, but I started working with undergrads first and just like as you did, as you talked about when you were an undergraduate student working as a research associate, like I started working with people like that and then found that I could train them well and work closely with them. But it's only later that I started working with like clinical fellows or graduate students.
Erin (33:55.429)
That's exactly my same thought. I remember even saying, I just need to practice with someone who doesn't want a career in science first, so that I'm well prepared. If I take a mentee on that wants to be in science long term, then I'm responsible really for giving them a good launching pad. And I think that really has to come from that I had such a good launching pad and I want to give that back to somebody else. And I want to make sure that I have the tools ready to do that before I was going to jump in.
Misty Good (34:30.502)
That's fantastic. But you are being so modest about it, but you won your Department of Pediatrics Outstanding Mentor Award a couple years ago.
Erin (34:39.269)
I did. I have taken... Well, so when I'm on service, I cannot stop myself from teaching residents and fellows physiology. Like, I can't stop it coming out of my mouth, whether they want to hear it or not. But the reception you get on the other end of that is, you know there are varying degrees of interest and every once in a while you get somebody that is like, wait, that is so cool. And when you get one of those, you bring them back to the lab when you're on service with them and you say, hey, let me show you my lab. Let me show you a whole world you probably didn't know existed, right? And that is really, that is one of the most rewarding things you can do is to show somebody how to answer questions, right? And how to think and how, and being able to figure out, plan an experiment to figure out a mechanism that nobody ever knows. And so that is really incredible. And so my earliest mentees were residents and I brought them up from service to the lab. But they're people that were interested and that were wanting to know how things work, had intellectual curiosity. And a lot of them have done research rotations in my lab. And they may or may not do anything with it, but they've all contributed to an abstract or this or the other. One of those residents actually, we have an R38 program here at Vanderbilt, which is fantastic because it's a program designed to give an extra year of residency, support for residency for individuals that want a dedicated year of research. Otherwise they'd just do a three year pediatrics residency. And it's a great mechanism for somebody who's late to science, right?
Erin (36:39.943)
For somebody who didn't have an MD -PhD, didn't know they wanted to do science before they went into residency, just from lack of exposure or whatever. I did have somebody who did a couple of research rotations, her name's Kimi, and she did a really great job on the research rotations, and then she applied for an R38 year and did a whole year in my lab with me. She took a year out of residency and did a year with me in the lab, and she learned a lot. It was fun to see, and she was one of those people that just love to learn to learn. And it was wonderful to see her gain the tool set to really make that happen. And I couldn't be more proud of her because she submitted an abstract. She'd give a talk at PAS as a resident. And in fact, I emailed pictures of those, I think back in 2020 maybe, I emailed pictures of her giving this oral presentation at PAS to somebody the other day. So it was really great.
And then I've also had a NICU fellow more recently in my lab who just finished her fellowship. And her name is Annie and she is, gosh, I guess she's not quite technically finished. This is the end of June. But yeah, so she's going to start this next academic year as a private practice neonatologist. And when I took her into the lab, and this is what I mean by somebody who's intellectually curious and wants to do a good job but wasn't planning to do science, I was like, okay. So this clinical fellow, she was at the end of her first year and she had a couple dead ends with getting a project together for her scholarly project for fellowship and didn't know what she wanted to do. And I had happened to have like, you know, four or five calls in a row with her and late in the school year or like that year. And she was telling me this, I was like, well, if you want, you can come see the lab and I can show you what I do in the lab. And she said, well, I don't want to do science as a career. And I was like, you know, that's okay. And as long as you, my only requirements really are that you have to be interested, right? If you don't want to do this, don't do it. But you have to come and try your best. And so she came and tried it out for a week, and then she came the next week and then it stuck. And she ended up being incredibly successful for somebody that had never touched a pipette before her second year of fellowship. And she did a great job. She ended up winning the Marshall -Klaus her second year. So congrats to her again. And she also presented at PAS and won some departmental research fellowship awards. And then she received the department of pediatrics best research award by a fellow.
She did an incredible job. And, as she told me on the front end, she was going to do private practice back in Minnesota. And we were sad to see her head off. But so thankful that she joined us in the lab and made a wonderful contribution to the project she's working on.
Misty Good (39:53.35)
That's awesome.
David (39:53.805)
Awesome.
Misty Good (40:20.262)
That's a great story because I think a lot of times fellows are intimidated about basic science and especially, I mean, you know, I'm one of those people that basically picked up a pipette as a second year fellow also for the first time in pipetted water. We've talked about it on the podcast before for a couple weeks before they let me actually do anything. But I do think it's important for fellows or even like we have any residents listening that are interested in neonatology to, you know, expand your horizons. consider basic science, even if it's not something you want to do for the rest of your career, but it is something exciting. You do learn to ask really good questions. And if there's a particular disease or organ system that you want to learn more about and study, I think it's great to join a lab. I had no intention of going into basic science. I mean, we all know this. But I'll say it again, when I was a fellow, I mean, I couldn't even picture what a physician scientist's career would look like. And so I think being open to those, like, along the journey is really important.
Erin (41:26.405)
Absolutely, absolutely. Right now, I just had a guest join my lab for the year. And so she started two weeks ago, and we're excited to have her on board. And we're also teaching her the ropes now, too. So we'll see what we can do.
Misty Good (41:44.902)
That's great. Well, it sounds like you're a wonderful mentor. So they're lucky to have you.
David (41:50.221)
Yeah, it is great. I really like the idea that you're breaking down barriers because I do feel like a lot of people are just hesitant to try to go into do any kind of basic research. And I think the main point that you made several times is that you're fostering intellectual question asking, create curiosity, intellectual curiosity. Yeah, exactly. Which I think is just so important to foster in people like you make an observation taking care of a patient, how do you think about that observation in a more critical way and learn from it, have a hypothesis so that when you do it again the next time, you know, or you're thinking a little bit more and learning from each experience. So that's really great that you're thinking about it that way and mentoring people in that way. I think we're close to the end of our time. And one of the things that we've been trying to do in these shows is one, introduce people to physicians and scientists like you who are doing great work but also just trying to demonstrate that we're real people and that we do things that are fun and that it's great to be in a research environment where we're kind of working together with a group of people who come to be really close with us and tend to be oftentimes like a family. I was wondering if there is something that you guys do for fun. I know you have a great group at Vanderbilt. What do you guys like to do outside of research or is there something entertaining you think that the audience would like to learn from?
Erin (43:16.805)
Well, that is a good question. We have a great group at Vanderbilt and we love to come to work because it's, I mean, I can't wait to get here every day. And what we like to do for fun? Well, I think I have a very particular interest and I keep trying to share my interests with everyone else and it's not getting very far.
I love to play tennis outside of work. And so I keep trying to get my lab to like be tennis fans and it's like, and they're stuck on baseball and NCAA basketball, but I can't, I can't, there's no traction there. So I'm going to keep trying. Every Grand Slam, they're going to get updates on who's advancing and who's not. And then I did try and get some of my friends from work to play tennis and that wasn't as successful as I wanted it to be. So I probably need to move on from that.
Misty Good (44:22.726)
Well, how about all of the imaging that you do? You got to do something when you're like hooked to the confocal or the or something like that. What do you like to listen to? Like do you listen to music or podcasts or anything like that?
Erin (44:38.469)
I bring my computer and while I set the ZStack on the comp local and while it takes a minute or whatever, I'll answer an email. So I time how I do the imaging with how many emails I can answer. And then sometimes, you know, I have one chair I sit in, I pull in the other really chair and put my computer on it and then while it's doing this thing I try and answer some emails. Emails not my strong suit, I'll be honest. I'm getting better. New strategy. Yeah, sometimes I do, but it's not, I don't have a set thing to listen to. I get.
Misty Good (45:35.681)
It's all the little life interruptions along the way. I will say we've been listening for, I'm a Swiftie, so we've been listening to T -Swift over here in my office a lot. And so gets the office suite in a good mood. So we're big fans of the new album. I think my division actually finds it funny that they're like, Misty's a Swiftie.
Misty Good (46:10.214)
That's great. Well, that's great. And then one last thing to close. Any advice or pearls of wisdom or anything that you can offer for early stage investigators?
Erin (46:22.725)
sure, don't give up. And I know people say that a lot, but there's, you know, anything that's a setback can actually be a benefit in some regards. So always think about things that, in multiple different ways. And nothing's 100%, right? So what seems like a setback in one moment may actually turn out to be something really beneficial in the end.
And think about the long game and where you want to be. Always think about where you want to be in five years and where you want to be in ten years. And take steps early to kind of make that happen along the way.
Misty Good (47:07.238)
That's great advice. Don't give up. That's good.
David (47:10.893)
Yeah, I think that is a perfect way to close for today. Erin, it's been so great to talk with you today. And I really appreciate how we have a great collaborative relationship, I feel like, because we are both interested in lung biology. And I really enjoy getting to talk with you multiple times, multiple different venues at the Perinatal Research Society meeting at the Lung Gordon Conference. And I'm looking forward when we get to see each other again sometime soon.
So thank you so much for taking time to talk with us today. Thanks, Misty, for co -hosting the program today. We'll be back again soon where we will be interviewing another neonatology physician scientist, and we'll look forward to talking with you again then. Thank you so much.
Erin (47:57.445)
Thanks David. Thanks Misty.
Misty Good (47:57.574)
Thanks, Erin. Take care.