Hello Friends 👋
Welcome to part one of a special two-part conversation featuring distinguished neonatologist and physician-scientist, Dr. Phyllis A. Dennery. In this “At the Bench” episode, hosts Drs. David McCulley and Misty Good, along with guest co-host Ben Courchia, delve into Dr. Dennery’s remarkable journey—spanning from her early fascination with molecular biology to her influential roles as Chair of Pediatrics at Brown University and Pediatrician-in-Chief at Rhode Island Hospital. Throughout the discussion, she reflects on the challenges of investigating bilirubin as a possible antioxidant, pioneering new insights into newborn lung injury, and unraveling the complexities of oxidative stress.
Dr. Dennery also opens up about building vibrant research programs at leading institutions, underscoring the value of mentorship, collaboration, and taking bold risks in pursuit of groundbreaking discoveries. She offers candid perspectives on balancing clinical demands with scientific innovation, and how she has navigated multiple leadership positions to foster deeper community engagement in pediatric health. This episode highlights not only her scientific achievements, but her passion for cultivating new talent and forging interdisciplinary partnerships. Don’t miss this engaging opening segment of our two-part series. Be sure to tune into The Incubator’s Sunday Interview for part two, where Dr. Dennery’s inspiring story continues!
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The transcript of today's episode can be found below 👇
Ben Courchia (00:00.768)
Well, hello, everybody. Welcome back to the incubator podcast at the bench. I don't think people were expecting my voice, but it is such an honor to be here today with the at the bench team. David Misty, thank you for allowing me in your private space.
Misty Good (00:18.702)
you
David McCulley (00:19.807)
Thanks very much, Ben. It's great to be here with you and work together on this program. think we're so excited to be able to talk with neonatology physician scientists and hear about their life stories and what inspired them to do the great work that they're doing. just by way of introduction, my name's David McCully. I'm a neonatologist and physician scientist at the University of California in San Diego and Rady Children's Hospital. I'm very lucky and feel honored to be able to help co-host this program.
Today I'm interviewing Dr. Phyllis Dennery with Misty Good. Misty, do you want to introduce yourself and our guest for today?
Misty Good (00:56.19)
Sure. Thank you, David. Hi, everyone. I'm Misty Good. I'm a neonatologist, scientist, and division chief of neonatology at UNC Chapel Hill. And I'm just honored and delighted to be able to host our special guest today, Dr. Phyllis Dennery, who's a distinguished leader in pediatrics, currently serving as the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor and Chair of Pediatrics at Warren Halpert Medical School at Brown University. She holds the position.
positions of pediatrician in chief at Rhode Island Hospital and medical director of Hasbro Children's Hospital. She has a very distinguished career and we're so fortunate to have her today. She earned her medal degree from Howard University followed by residency in pediatrics at Children's National in D.C. and a fellowship in neonatal perinatal medicine at Kate's Western University. Her research has been consistently funded by the NIH and has been focused on oxidative stress, mediated neonatal lung injury,
repair mechanisms. And throughout her just incredible career, Dr. Dennery received numerous accolades, including election to the National Academy of Medicine back in 2014. So really distinguished career and the Association of American Physicians in 2015, something, know, David and I like are just in awe of all of your prestige. And she's also served as the president for the Society of Pediatric Research.
and the International Pediatric Research Foundation. So she's shown this unwavering commitment to really advancing pediatric health and certainly in the neonatal space and has been pioneering research over her entire career. And she's really a leading figure in neonatal medicine. And we're so fortunate and grateful that you're here with us, Dr. Dennery. So thank you so much. And do you want to introduce yourself and anything to add there?
Phyllis Dennery (02:46.393)
Thank you so much, Misty and David and Ben. I really, I think you did an amazing job of summarizing my career course in terms of where I was, where I trained, et cetera. And I'm just delighted to speak about whatever makes the most sense in terms of how I developed my research focus and onwards. And so as a disclaimer,
you have to realize I've started my research and academic career as a neonatologist in 1990, maybe before you guys were born, I don't know. But yeah, so it's a bit of a long and winding road. So I'm happy to discuss that and to also talk about my research focus currently.
Misty Good (03:25.702)
No! no! no! Not me!
Phyllis Dennery (03:45.653)
and the goals that I have for research.
Misty Good (03:48.536)
Sure, we would love that. We really want to know, and our listeners probably want to know, what really motivated you to pursue a physician scientist's career and then tell us a bit about that journey.
Phyllis Dennery (04:01.519)
Sure. you know, 35 years ago, things were somewhat different. It was a different environment, getting funding from the NIH and so forth. There was a lot more opportunity to dedicate your career to research scholar type of position versus now where there are many, many more clinical demands that change the nature of the contract you might be able to get.
When I left Case Western as a fellow, I knew, I'm not sure where this came from, but I knew I was very interested in doing research and having a position that was mostly research and clinical. So 75, 25, and in a place where there'd be others who are just as excited about research as I was. And I think that the, the night is so.
what I was interested in doing in research was rather straightforward. I decided that I really loved exploring the lung of neonatal patients. That's very broad, right? The lung. And at Case Western, where I did my fellowship, most people were doing physiology. You know, they were looking at sleep and, you know, physiology of lung motion and things like that, which
Misty Good (05:10.818)
it
Phyllis Dennery (05:27.511)
I have absolutely no interest in, hate to say. And I had to find a way to do something that was really inspiring to me. And I liked the concept of molecular biology signaling and the lung. So here we are, that's kind of where things started. And unfortunately, you know, the good places that I was interested in continuing my career beyond fellowship were places like Stanford where
They obviously had a tremendous reputation for research, et cetera. But the one thing that was a little bit missing was they weren't as interested in the lung per se. would have, you know, I'd be the first person in the neonatology group to go there and, you know, work on the lung. But as I was, I decided still that the opportunities in a university like that would be great so that I would take that leap. And as I was leaving,
to go to Stanford, John Enever, who was the division director at GI at Case Western, said to me, have you ever considered Billy Rubin as an antioxidant? And there was a paper in Science that had come out that year talking about how Billy Rubin wasn't all that bad all the time. It served as an antioxidant, and it appeared in Science. You know, it was a big deal.
I said, interesting. I put that in the corner somewhere. And when I went to Stanford, there was a huge number of people who were interested in Billy Rubin, David Stevenson and others. And therefore, I brought my little idea about Billy Rubin as an antioxidant in the model of lung disease. And David, who was a fabulous and still is a fabulous mentor to me said, there's this guy at UCSF.
Tony McDonough who has these mice that are jaundiced when, know, they're congenitally jaundiced because of a defect in enzymatic function and there's heterozygotes, there's homozygotes and there's, you know, wild type groups that you could breathe and see the differences in oxidative stress between those mice as a means of understanding the role of bilirubin in an in vivo model. So I thought that was a
Phyllis Dennery (07:54.863)
cool idea. And David always had the connections and the good direction to send you in. So Tony is a was unfortunately he passed away was an exceptional man, funny as could be, but who really knew science and helped me sort of formulate the idea for the project. And I wanted to, you know, once I got the data that I thought I was going to need, which were things that I
learned in the fellowship, I then put that together for a paper and the paper was promptly rejected. Why? Because I didn't have enough measurements of antioxidant function, blah, blah, blah. So I had run into this quirky guy at a meeting who said to me, you know, I could help you do those assays. And he was very well published. He's a great guy.
and we put our heads together, Tony, Doug, and myself, and we came up with the right measurements and we sent the paper in and it got accepted in a great journal and it discussed how bilirubin could provide antioxidant defenses to neonatal mice exposed to hyperoxia by several markers. So that was the first kind of thought process. As I went along, I started thinking, well,
The bilirubin is okay, but what makes bilirubin? And that's when the whole hemoxygenase stuff came up. I started getting interested in how the regulating enzyme hemoxygenase was able to do its role as an antioxidant molecule, cetera. And there was a great paper also that came out that talked about hemoxygenase as a stress response protein. So that launched that whole signaling, hemoxygenase, how does it respond? And
started doing some projects relating to that. And one of the funny things was that I started doing that in animal models, trying to look at levels of hemoxygenase. And lo and behold, whatever they said was going on in adults, that hemoxygenase was protective and this and that, was not really panning out in the neonates. Exactly. So unfortunately, when you bring things out like this,
Misty Good (10:13.934)
That's great because neonates are not little adults, as we know.
David McCulley (10:14.24)
Yeah.
Phyllis Dennery (10:22.189)
which are not the dogma. You create people who don't like you and who think you're full of it or whatever. And it became kind of difficult because there were some folks who were saying, that's nonsense. So getting this published in a really good journal was difficult because there were barriers along the way, I must say. So that was an experience. And I was even more
a little bit loose-lipped then, so I wasn't afraid to say, you know, you're wrong, this and that. And that doesn't work well because then you create folks who try to block you along the way. So after a while, you know, I kept going along with the Heme Oxygenase story and finding different roles it played and highlighting some of the functions it played. And one thing came up is that Heme Oxygenase was
there was something that was happening when we did these blots that there were several bands of hemoxygenase. And I noticed that in other papers, they just cut out those bands. just would cut them out, right? And we started to say, well, maybe these bands mean something and what can we understand about it? And we discovered that hemoxygenase could migrate to the nucleus. This is a protein that's anchored to the smooth endoplasmic reticulum. And so it had to be cleaved to be able to migrate to the...
to the nucleus. And when I first presented that data, one guy came to me and he said, you're always coming up with weird stuff. that was very sad, actually, you have to understand that in some fields, there's a lot of dogma and people are just not willing to budge on that. So as we went along, others started
Misty Good (11:58.318)
Yeah.
Misty Good (12:03.658)
Innovative, not weird, innovative.
Phyllis Dennery (12:16.203)
saying the same things and finding the same things and expanding on this. So obviously we weren't just making it up. And another caveat of research is when someone replicates your data and shows the same thing, that's the best feeling in the universe because you know you weren't making that up or imagining things. So I always love when that happens. But on it went and at one point I started thinking, gosh, know, do it.
David McCulley (12:33.045)
Yeah.
Phyllis Dennery (12:45.763)
How much do I really want to focus on a single molecule versus looking broadly at the developmental differences in antioxidant responses in neonates versus adults? Because there's that developmental thing that happens and it goes beyond one protein, hemoxonase. It goes to many proteins, many antioxidants, many molecules.
So we worked when I got to chop a lot on NF-kappa-B and how it plays a role in neonatal hypoxic lung injury. And once again, it showed an inverse response to the adult. used knockout mice and we saw they did better or worse, can't quite remember, I'm sorry, with the...
when they knocked out the inhibitor of NF-kappa B. So that was actually published in JCI, great story there. And that went a lot more smoothly. And I realized, yeah, that's what I care about is the bigger picture of what is different in newborns than adults in terms of their response to lung injury. And how can you mitigate that lung injury most importantly?
because we want to go back to the bedside and say, you know what, how do we help kids prevent their lungs from getting damaged, you know, and having BPD and the like. So I was at Stanford and then I went to Penn. At UPenn, I was the division director of neonatology and I reestablished my lab there and started working on more that generalized signaling.
in hypoxic lung injury and what are some of the things we're learning from that. So with the ultimate goal of what would that do in terms of leading to therapeutic interventions? Yes.
David McCulley (14:46.219)
Phyllis, can I follow up on just some things you've highlighted and made some fantastic points that I think are just really worth like drawing attention to? One is the initial inspiration that you had to get involved in research and to think about it in a different way. You didn't just fall in line with the people who were doing physiology, you wanted to do molecular biology and try to understand signaling to try to understand newborn lung injury. And I think
Misty Good (15:13.582)
you
David McCulley (15:13.769)
A lot of people who come into neonatology can see that there's a lot of questions that we still have about newborn lung injury, lung development, lung function, so many things to answer. But the idea is to be inspired by something that's in front of you and then to be able to develop the tools to be able to ask questions about that. The second point you made that I thought was also really great was just to the value of cutting across disciplines.
You know, people may be doing something that's slightly different than what you're mainly interested in, but they can teach you and allow you to be able to develop tools that will be able to allow you to answer the questions you're really trying to pursue. So that kind of cross-disciplinary research and being able to just go out and ask people outside of the world that's right in front of you for help and input about how you could go about answering your questions.
And then the other major one I thought that was great was the resilience, just being, you know, following the data as we're told and sticking with that and realizing that that is really the way to be able to, you know, build your story over time iteratively and really make an impact on the field. And I just think those three points are so critical for people who are really early in their career development to really kind of consider and not feel like they have to do the things that are right in front of them, but to feel like,
this is the question I really want to be able to answer. And then how can you go out and find people who can help you answer that question?
Phyllis Dennery (16:49.549)
Well, thank you for pointing that out. And I always tell my students in the lab, say, just because someone else published that this happens or that happens doesn't mean it happens in your model or anything. You can always avoid getting ostracized by saying, well, know, models are different. You can justify why you found something different, but stick to your data. So if it's in front of you and you see it, you
What are you going to do? You're going to cut it out? No, you're going to explore it, understand it. And I was fortunate to have people in my lab such as Clyde Wright, who is now at the University of Colorado. He's my little baby. So he was someone who I worked with a lot. And he came in naive. He had never held a pipette. He got one of those PS3P grants.
David McCulley (17:29.141)
Yes.
Misty Good (17:33.154)
Peace.
Misty Good (17:42.958)
Another one of us.
Phyllis Dennery (17:44.693)
Yes. And then he started getting really into it. And he was doing this NF-kappa-B story. And he started noticing again that something was different. And there were these different types of proteins that were showing up on the membrane or whatever. And he explored it. And that's been his career path since. He's multi-R1 funded investigator who's done really well. So that was really nice to see some people who are totally able to
go take, you know, figure it out, take something, have initiative, not just say, no, there's nothing there, there's nothing there, you know. In contrast, I've had people in the lab who just don't have that creativity. Creativity doesn't mean making up stuff. It means observing things, right? And so the people who say, there's nothing there, you say, wait a minute, don't you see it, it's right there in front of you.
So when you have the ones who are really excited and energetic and so forth, those are the people who you can work best with and mentor. And that's such a feeling to mentor people like
Misty Good (18:56.598)
It's true, it's really like how curious they are and do they want to find out the why and dig deeper? And sometimes it's a rabbit hole, but sometimes it's a brilliant story that's innovative.
Phyllis Dennery (18:59.417)
Yeah.
Phyllis Dennery (19:08.983)
Yeah, and, Missy, you bring up the rabbit hole situation. And that's another thing that was visible to me, like sometimes just like companies, know, stuff isn't going a certain way. You kind of move on, you find another angle to it, or you really look at the data and say, okay, what can I, what story am I able to make from these data? And I mean, story in a good way, not making up stuff, but seeing something in front of you and saying,
here's maybe the explanation, how can I explore that further? And that's happened several times. And I always tell the students again, I say, you're a photographer, you're there to take a picture of what's happening in front of you, not to force it into a box, change it so it looks like the way you want it to look, et cetera. You want to show a picture and say, I think my interpretation is this, and then digging in further to better understand what the...
what the real story is. And so that's what we were teaching people to do and had a really nice bunch of people who learned and who stayed with it and who are still reaching out to talk about these things. So one, you know, as I moved from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, so I'd been at Stanford for 14 years almost, then I moved to Penn and
One person who was in the lab with me actually agreed to move to Pennsylvania from California. Very hard move to make. And she came and she stayed with me at CHOP the whole time I was at CHOP. So by the time she and I had worked together and then I was offered the position at Brown, we had been together 18 years. So was like a marriage, know, and to...
Misty Good (20:44.327)
Ooh, that's hard.
Phyllis Dennery (21:03.669)
And she couldn't come to Brown because her family and all this other stuff. And it was like grieving, you know, the end of an amazing relationship. But you rebuild. I came to Brown. I was much busier as a chair to not have as much time to go in the lab, but working on figuring out how we can work with others to make a story that makes sense and that it work on things that
are available to us in that environment. And that was one of the key things. At Brown, the folks who were surrounding me in this department of molecular biology, cell biology, and biochemistry were very interested in aging. And I had hired a person to be my lab manager who had worked in that environment, understanding aging and some of those things. And she said,
Misty Good (21:45.931)
Hmm.
Phyllis Dennery (21:58.595)
Would it be interesting to see if the injured neonatal lung shows signs of aging? So I thought, cool, because I'm a little too happy to do different stuff. I said, yeah, that's an interesting concept. Would that be part of the injury model? So she had the techniques. We looked at it at different points in a hypoxic exposure after recovery, blah, blah, blah. And we found
Misty Good (22:06.508)
That's awesome.
Phyllis Dennery (22:29.067)
an actual peak of senescence in cells during hypoxic, after hypoxic exposure. So in this model, we exposed for three days in hypoxia, then we allow them to recover in room air for up to 60 days. But in this case, we took the samples at seven, 14, et cetera. And lo and behold, there was this peak of senescence activity around at seven days, which
waned by the time it was 10 days. And that was kind of interesting. How can we better understand that? So we started doing some, you can imagine the tedious nature of doing a bunch of staining for looking at different cells. Which cells expressed this, you know, showed signs of senescence, etc. The lung has 60 plus types of cells. So that was not the easiest thought process.
We partnered with some folks in the bioinformatics type of side of things and said, you know, maybe we can do a single cell RNA-seq. Another really smart kid came in the lab and said, yeah, let's talk to these people. We got them interested enough and that's when we were able to then focus on understanding which cell types were senescing. What were their characteristics?
know, bunch of informatics from single cell data. And in our model, again, maybe not others, but in our model, after three days hypoxic exposure and recovery at seven days, what we observed is that the bulk of the cells that were senescing were macrophages. And that's where we are at this point in trying to better understand what are these macrophages
David McCulley (24:15.755)
Hmm.
Phyllis Dennery (24:24.559)
doing when they senesce? Do they become less able to phagocytize? What's different about them? And how would that contribute to lung injury? Or is it really the cell that matters or what the cell excretes? So as we know with stem cell or whatever we do, there's so few cells that are doing the thing we think they're doing. What's really changing the profile is what the cell is secreting.
David McCulley (24:39.179)
Exactly.
Phyllis Dennery (24:53.621)
And in senescence, it's well known that this senescence associated secretory phenotype is really what makes stuff happen in the rest of the tissue. So you have a very small percentage of cells that are senescent, but they spread the wealth. They go and do stuff to other cells. the SASP is something that's very important to understand and to see whether we can replicate the...
David McCulley (24:59.275)
Yes.
Phyllis Dennery (25:22.159)
transfer of those factors in, let's say, the media from cells to other cells and see if they can become themselves, either senescence or change something. And so that's been kind of where we are, what we're doing. And it's very exciting, except again, when you're doing something a little, you know, on the edge, it's a lot harder to get the stuff accepted for grants, for publications, and it can be painful.
One thing I am is, one thing I am is I'm an eternal optimist and I keep pushing ahead. If it's logical and it's well documented, it will find a home.
Misty Good (26:02.264)
I love that. That's really good, inspiring, really something to keep in mind and very inspiring for our audience. think it's hard when you get something either not funded or you are trying to submit a paper and it gets rejected and we'll find a home. That's what I always tell people in my lab, it'll definitely find a home. But yeah, just reflecting on your career journey and you mentioned moving institutions.
Phyllis Dennery (26:21.134)
Yes.
Misty Good (26:30.444)
certainly for various leadership roles and such. And as basic scientists, we talk about how hard it is to move a lab. certainly it's hard, any type of move in academia is hard and moving your family, et cetera. But maybe you could reflect on those times in transition and moving a lab.
Phyllis Dennery (26:51.833)
Yeah, so when I was at Stanford, you know, it's ideal, right? It's beautiful sunshine every day, cost of living is too high, whatever, but you're doing things, you're having a good time. I love science and some days I would say, they pay me to do this? You know, I've never said that after that, that's what I was saying. They pay me to do this, right? But as you get to do more, you then say, I deserve to be paid.
Misty Good (27:02.188)
You
Misty Good (27:11.416)
classic pediatrician, something we would all say.
David McCulley (27:12.905)
Yeah.
Phyllis Dennery (27:20.943)
But so I then I was sitting there at Stanford and quietly minding my business with not, you know, a lot of people were starting to ask me, oh, do you want to be a division director? And I looked at a few things, but I wasn't interesting in going to some, you know, some of these places. And then I got a weird email from my predecessor at CHOP in as the division director. And she wrote that she was
stepping down and she was changing her direction, et cetera. And I knew her well. And so I wrote her and said, congratulations, that's great that this is happening to you. And she sent back a one word email and she said, interested?
David McCulley (28:08.608)
Wow.
Phyllis Dennery (28:09.743)
When I was, oh my God, said, me? Who am I? Oh gosh. know, typical imposter syndrome response. And then I said, well, okay, I'll apply. And so I applied, I got the job, of course. And I stayed there like 12 years. And in those 12 years, the place changed dramatically because, you know, I will admit that I had a lot to do with that.
was able to work with collaborations with others to help build the neonatal program, which used to have about two other hospitals linked to it. And by the time I left, there were 10. And we were a multi, multi-million dollar operation that fed the Department of Pediatrics quite well. So that was great. That was nice. But I kind of thought, wow.
Misty Good (28:52.994)
amazing.
Phyllis Dennery (29:07.695)
after 12 years of being division director, you'll see. It's, it's, it's, it's, but sometimes you say, you know what? I kind of think I'm ready to do something else. And at that time there was a, I, I worked on a national academy of medicine committee talking about, community engagement in science. And it was,
David McCulley (29:14.195)
Hehehehehe
Misty Good (29:15.662)
I'm on year three, but also had that imposter syndrome you spoke about.
Phyllis Dennery (29:37.783)
remarkable to see how angry families were with the fact that half of these studies were never completed. They had given their blood, blood, sweat and tears for these studies. And at the end of the day, no one told them what happened. No one explained to them how thankful they were, you know, all that. And the families were very angry. And that really impressed me. And I said, you know, we have to be better at community.
relationships, community engagement, showing people that we care and that we're grateful for what they're giving us. that, you know, that wasn't exactly the flavor there because it's a lot about how big can we get, how much money can we make, and yes, you know, somehow patients are in there somewhere. Not to be judgmental, but it's the...
It's the nature of all hospitals now, is how much can we make? However, in a big place like that, you can start not having as much say on the direction because you become, you know, someone who can open more beds or do whatever, but not necessarily say, hey, how about we do this or that or the other thing? And so I felt like I wanted to do more and reach a point where I was able to,
influence beyond that and you know into the field of pediatrics have a bigger voice at the medical school etc. So that's when I was approached. I looked at a fair number of chair positions to be quite honest and it was tough because some of them they didn't want me which is fine and some of them I didn't want them which was fine and at the end of the day Brown came along and I said
really, because it seemed like it was small and there wasn't much going on. But there's nothing more satisfying sometimes than building something from scratch. And I never thought that would be my bag, but it actually was really impressively good to do that. So now, you know, again, I go to the lab, I do my lab stuff, I'm at meetings, I get asked to speak, I do whatever. However,
Misty Good (31:42.158)
Thank
Phyllis Dennery (32:00.367)
I know that I'm a lot less able to spend as much time doing it than I used to in my previous roles. So after 12 years at CHOP, I've been here, believe it or not, I've already been here 10 years at Brown, which is mind boggling to me. And more mind boggling is that I'm signing on for another five years, but that's about the extent of it. By then, I'll be a super senior citizen, so it's enough, you know?
Misty Good (32:13.111)
Wow.
David McCulley (32:22.667)
That's great. Congratulations.
Misty Good (32:23.768)
Congrats.
Phyllis Dennery (32:30.147)
But I think that that was kind of the path. And so when do you decide you're moving, you're doing whatever, are there good points in doing that? That's the question that was kind of raised. You can't move or you can't change before you've accomplished something. Okay? So when I moved to CHOP, I had to meet the rules in order to be to...
Misty Good (32:49.646)
you
Phyllis Dennery (32:58.575)
get the promotion, et cetera, and whatnot. And at the time, you had to have two R01s with one in competing renewal. So I scraped by, got that, and was able to be promoted at this place, which was absolutely difficult to get promoted, and then international reputation, to be a professor, and hundreds of papers. OK, so all of that had to be done.
Misty Good (33:09.368)
You
Phyllis Dennery (33:24.429)
But you couldn't do that. You couldn't get those types of positions if you're not doing something, like, you know, showing that you have an expertise. Oddly enough, they link leadership to what you do in the lab or what you do here and there in a society. And that's not really an exact connection because there folks who are brilliant scientists who are terrible leaders, right? So, you know, it's a it's one of those things that happens to fall like that.
But I really like being in the leadership roles because I can have a voice, do things, help people, mentor people, which is the most fun thing you can do. And yeah, so that's kind of the idea. Don't go before you have done something and that you've shown. And if you go too quickly, then the concept of whether you're loyal or not comes up.
Even after 12 years at CHOP in the same role, the fact that I chose to go elsewhere, I was not the loyal person. you've moved a lot. What? I was 14 years in one place, 12 years in another place, 10 years now in one place. I'm not sure that constitutes moving a lot. But as you say, Misty, it's difficult to start a lab from scratch, find the people, find the collaborations, do all that stuff.
Misty Good (34:49.516)
Mm-hmm.
Phyllis Dennery (34:52.427)
And I was fortunate to have people who were really good at moving those things around for me. And also saying yes. Okay, that's the last thing I'm going to say because others are there. But if you say no to everything as they tell you to, that's not going to work. You have to say yes to the important stuff. And that gets you opportunities to serve on a committee, to do X, Y, and Z.
You know, right now I have the great pleasure of being asked by the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine to lead with Fred Rivara the discussion around funding of pediatric research by the NIH, which right now is a scary thought as we know, but it's very timely and important and we are...
David McCulley (35:35.339)
Hmm.
Misty Good (35:37.4)
Wow.
Yes, very timely.
David McCulley (35:40.437)
Very important.
Phyllis Dennery (35:46.371)
going next week to have an in-person conversation here, gather data from the NIH and be able to really analyze the situation. if I had, what if I had said, gosh, no, I don't have time for that. No, you have to say yes when it's something that important or that big or that significant and balance the yes and the no's.
Misty Good (36:09.644)
I think Ben and Daphna could do a whole podcast on saying yes or saying no. He's taking notes. There you go.
Phyllis Dennery (36:14.339)
Absolutely.
Ben Courchia (36:20.842)
I wrote it down. I wrote it down. Say yes, big exclamation point. So this is in the notes for sure.
David McCulley (36:21.003)
Tell us.
Phyllis Dennery (36:25.295)
You
Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (36:26.188)
down balance the yes and no's.
Phyllis Dennery (36:28.885)
Absolutely. And if you don't know, ask your mentor, is this worth my time?
David McCulley (36:33.248)
Yes.
David McCulley (36:38.015)
I just wanted to point out a couple of other, I think, critical characteristics that you demonstrated in your answer there. One is the adaptability to different environments, because just like the data, you can't make the environment change dramatically. You have to be able to be flexible and adapt to that environment. And you'll find new collaborations that are allowing you to answer new questions. I think the other point that you made was just gradually sort of
answering new questions by using new technology. Like you were talking about using single cell sequencing and things like that. It's a newer approach that a lot of us are using now and you can adapt your questions just based on new technology. that flexibility and adaptability, I think, you know, is what helps a lot of us make progress and be able to answer the questions we want to be able to address. One thing that I was hoping to come back to that you got into a little bit, you were talking about Clyde Wright is one of my
best friends and I'm so glad that I get to know him. But I just wanted to hear your thoughts on reaching people like Clyde who don't have a background in science but are really inquisitive, really curious people and are super dedicated. I don't think I know anybody more dedicated than Clyde to the scientific questions he's trying to address. So how do you think about engaging with people who at early stages of their careers who may not have really detailed scientific training?
but are clearly inspired and want to pursue this. Like what's the right stage to engage them? And if you have any tricks on attracting them, what do you think those would be?
Phyllis Dennery (38:14.457)
Well, you know, unfortunately there's no magic bullet for this, but it's having an antenna and having talent management skills. That's the bottom line. Anybody you see and go, man, that person, I think there's something behind that. I find that I do pretty good with that. I'm able to say, this one, I think we'll invest in this person because of the way they respond, the way they're excited, the fire in the belly, you know.
David McCulley (38:17.642)
No.
Phyllis Dennery (38:42.723)
Do they look like they really want it or are they just saying, how are you going to, spoon feed me? Don't have time for that. Don't have time for that. Just have to show me your energy, right? And the other thing to remember is a guy like Clyde or a guy like, I had a wonderful man who came from Taiwan and he came to my lab and I swear we had to communicate with written word because he didn't speak English more than.
this. But I said, there's something in this guy. He's really dedicated. His hands were like gold. He managed to do stuff that others couldn't do. And the thing was beautiful. And I said, that was a good choice. And he was a good choice for that. There's several people like that. I met some people from Japan who came, spent a couple of years in the lab. they were fantastic. Now they're big deals in Japan, which makes me happy. A guy like Fumihiko Namba, he's now a
big on this micro nano-preemie thing from Japan. I mean, they're not always going to stay in science, but they're going to be good people who, you know, Denise Sutner, you know, she was in my lab. She didn't want to really do lab stuff for the rest of her life, but she liked to ask questions and she did a couple of very important papers. So you can read it in the person. You don't...
David McCulley (39:49.322)
Mm-hmm.
David McCulley (39:54.499)
yeah.
Phyllis Dennery (40:10.873)
How do we say, we don't ascribe attributes to someone just because we want it to be that way. We really have to pay attention. And you can tell pretty quickly when somebody is not going to cut it or somebody is going to impress you. And sometimes you can be wrong. And once you're wrong and let's say they impress you when you didn't think they would, then you're like, that's great. And you take it and embrace it and...
not worry about whether you were right or wrong about that. May I go back to one thing? And that is, you know, trying different techniques and doing all that stuff. What I tell people is you don't have time to do it all in your lab. Creating models takes years. Learning a very complex technology takes years. You got to find people to help you with that. You know, we here work with mathematical modelers.
Misty Good (40:53.795)
It's true.
Phyllis Dennery (41:07.759)
for protein docking and weird things. And then we work with those guys who do all the bio stuff for the informatics stuff for the single cell RNA-seq and other things. We work with folks, have papers, believe it or not, with psychiatrists because they were interested in understanding the impact of stress or disparities on your telomeres and your...
David McCulley (41:26.755)
wow.
David McCulley (41:36.757)
Yes.
Phyllis Dennery (41:36.835)
metabolic function. I'm like, okay. So I'm on some of those papers. And it's just, have to, you know, seize the opportunity, let them do a fair amount of what they need to do. You do your part, and then you can work together to make a product. So don't waste two, three years trying to get this model thing to work all the time. We don't have time as physician scientists to spend time doing that all the time. We might have to do it for one or two things, but
for the bulk of it. Somebody knows how to do that. Just find them, work with them, collaborate with them, and they can help you. And you produce a lot more in a shorter period of time with that approach.
Misty Good (42:18.958)
These are such amazing pearls of wisdom that you're providing for all of us today. I mean, it's really just phenomenal. I think we all know we can't do it all in the lab. And as a chair, I think it's really important how you touched on talent management and being able to pick the right people. Because certainly as a chief, when you're hiring faculty in your division, it is stressful, right? And you want to make sure that...
David McCulley (42:20.159)
Yeah, pearls.
Phyllis Dennery (42:30.752)
Yes.
Phyllis Dennery (42:46.723)
Yeah.
Misty Good (42:48.686)
It's the right fit and the right people and really investing in those folks that do have the fire in their belly for this career path and making sure we can support them in every way possible. But it is not without risk and I'm an MD only and my division director, you know, previously took a risk on me and luckily, I hope it paid off for him. But it is...
Phyllis Dennery (42:49.273)
that you're hiring the right people.
Phyllis Dennery (43:12.471)
Exactly.
David McCulley (43:13.247)
working well.
Misty Good (43:17.046)
stressful, will say, in the seat.
Phyllis Dennery (43:19.531)
Absolutely. sometimes you uncover things that you never thought were going on. And I came to CHOP, I asked the fellows, which one of you are doing clinical research? They looked at me like I was from Mars. I was not allowed to do clinical research, not one person. So we said, well, we're going to change that. And who are going to be the mentors? I knew of two people in Canada, and everybody knows who these people are, who were the top clinical trialists.
David McCulley (43:32.331)
Damn it.
Phyllis Dennery (43:48.909)
had done work in, you know, all sorts of caffeine and okay, you know, and I said, I've got to get these people and they weren't too happy where they were. And so I literally spent two years of my life getting them to chop and it involved creating an endowed chair and la la la and this and that, but
Why did they transform the place in terms of the research focus and what people were doing there? So sometimes you have to say, okay, this is an important investment. I'm going to go all out. And sometimes you have to say, okay, that's enough. can't keep flogging this dead horse. So, whoops. One second. Yeah. So, so that's, you know, those are things that you learn along the way and you figure out
Don't waste your time with things that don't lead to anything and understand when people are serious and willing to work with you and have that fire in the belly.
Misty Good (44:58.328)
Great advice. Great advice.
David McCulley (45:03.099)
How should we wrap up? So Ben has time. I guess we should finish our segment maybe.
Misty Good (45:08.13)
Yes.
Ben Courchia (45:08.17)
Yeah, I'll let you guys wrap up your segment and then we'll pause the recording and restart the next one.
Misty Good (45:13.303)
Okay.
David McCulley (45:14.581)
Phyllis, we often end our segment just trying to focus on something that makes us human or makes it obvious that we do things outside of the work that we do in our lab or in our department. Is there something that you like to do that could be outside or with your lab group or just something just to demonstrate your humanity and the things you like to do outside of research?
Phyllis Dennery (45:42.777)
Well, the first and foremost thing I like to do is being a grandma. And I have a wonderful two-year-old granddaughter and I'm soon to have another granddaughter. And that's so much fun. The next thing that I really think is fun is that I have an adventurous spirit. So I do the electric guitar and sometimes I...
Misty Good (45:46.445)
So.
David McCulley (45:52.384)
well.
Misty Good (46:07.374)
Yeah.
Phyllis Dennery (46:08.367)
I play with these people. I'm terribly scared. I'm good at it, but I'm scared and OCD. So it's not as fun as somebody who's loose and relaxed, but I do it and I'm going to perform at our Hasbro Ball with our Chief of Pediatric Surgery who plays the sax and some other people. We're just part of this band, but we're not the lead.
David McCulley (46:24.896)
Wow.
Misty Good (46:25.613)
Wow.
David McCulley (46:29.301)
that's great.
Phyllis Dennery (46:34.863)
people in the band were just doing that. And it's something I've done a couple of years in a row. It's kind of fun. The other thing I love is, you know, I was inspired by this silly Dancing with the Stars. And so I did a thing, Dancing with the Doctors, where I did my Argentine tango. And then now this year I'm doing one thing at Brown called Dancing with the Profs. It's a different thing. And I'm doing a samba. And so it's, you know, just have fun.
Misty Good (46:39.96)
Thanks.
Phyllis Dennery (47:04.431)
you know, what are you going to do at that and the beach? You know, we just like to have fun and do different things. So.
Misty Good (47:10.036)
That's amazing. That's great. That is, that's really awesome. Well, we're so grateful that you allowed us to interview today and we're just really honored that you are our host and, or to host you. Sorry, I'll say that again. We're really honored, we're really honored to host you today and hear all about your exciting journey and just.
David McCulley (47:14.965)
That is really great.
Phyllis Dennery (47:16.835)
Yeah. Yeah.
Phyllis Dennery (47:28.697)
Yeah, one of those.
Misty Good (47:36.202)
So inspiring and resilient and we really appreciated you being on the At the Bench podcast today, inspiring us all.
Phyllis Dennery (47:43.887)
Thanks for having me.
David McCulley (47:45.739)
Yeah, it was so fantastic to talk with you. I just want to say as a lung biologist myself, I've been really inspired by your work and just their rigorous scientific approach is so great and also just you're fantastic person. So it's really awesome to be able to talk with you. I can't say again, just how thankful I am.
Phyllis Dennery (48:03.023)
That's one thing I tolerate very little is hearing that stuff. So I'm sorry if I look like I'm cringing, but thank you for saying that. I'm trying to be grateful for your comments. Thank you.
David McCulley (48:07.947)
That's okay.
Misty Good (48:14.286)
Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And now we'll hand it over to...
David McCulley (48:14.635)
Thank you.
Phyllis Dennery (48:16.623)
Thank you.