Basic Anatomy
A look inside a Dana-Farber lab
By Richard Saltus; photography by Sam Ogden
Kai Wucherpfennig, MD, PhD, principal investigator (seated), is surrounded by members of his laboratory and support staff, including Almaz Abraha, lab support staff; Alison Angel, departmental coordinator; Gelena Doktor, departmental administrator; Beril Kilicaslan, financial coordinator; Ken Del Po, administrative assistant; postdoctoral fellows (all PhDs) Jianwen Feng, Michael Hahn, Haidong Li, Melissa Nicholson, Emilio Parisini, Nilufer Seth, David Schubert, and Chenqi Xu; graduate students Matthew Call, Katherine McLaughlin, and Howell Moffett; and medical student Michael Mallmann. Not pictured: Jason Pyrdol, lead research assistant, and Anne Wilbuer, graduate student.
Like the myriad cells in a buzzing beehive, Dana- Farber's 90 research laboratories are the vital basic units of the Institute's discovery endeavors. Rather than honey, though, the collective product is knowledge aimed at alleviating the burden of disease.
Each lab, aside from its physical space, is akin to a tiny village, with a leader, a defined group of "residents," a budget, purpose, and plan. It must be selfsupporting, through funding obtained by the principal investigator. To function, the laboratory also needs talented scientists, along with students, technicians, specialized equipment and supplies, administrative support, utilities, computers, business experts, and even specially trained cleaning crews.
To illustrate the "anatomy" of a DFCI lab, Paths of Progress focused on Kai Wucherpfennig, MD, PhD, whose laboratory occupies one corner of the 14th floor in the Charles A. Dana Building on the Institute's main campus.
Working within the Department of Cancer Immunology and AIDS, Wucherpfennig studies the molecular mechanisms that enable the body's immune system to distinguish "foreign" invaders from "self " – the body's own tissues. He supervises eight postdoctoral researchers and four graduate students; their quarters comprise three adjoining rooms, each divided into two U-shaped bays of work surface.
"It's a good size. I wouldn't want it to grow much more because it would become unwieldy," Wucherpfennig says. The junior scientists work on several projects at once, and Wucherpfennig monitors their progress and guides their research.
The exports of this lab/village are a steady stream of scientific papers, reports, book chapters, presentations, and collaborations. But one of its most valuable "products" is people: the promising researchers, trained at a leading cancer research center, who carry their knowledge far and wide to ultimately reach people with cancer – to whom this enterprise is dedicated.
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