John V. Fahy, M.D., M.Sc. Professor of Medicine, UCSF Director, Airway Clinical Research Center

1. KL2 Scholars, November 2013 Building Collaborations between Bench and Clinical Scientists John V. Fahy, M.D., M.Sc. Professor of Medicine, UCSF Director, Airway Clinical Research Center http://www.cvri.ucsf.edu/~fahy/

2. Mechanism Oriented Clinical Research In Airway Disease UCSF Resources Moffitt Hospital 13th Floor 13th floor UCSF/CVRI Airway Clinical Research Center Health Sciences East 13th Floor Pulmonary Division Bench Research

3. Outline • Become a disease biologist. • Learn the language of basic science. • Tips for success. • Industry collaborations.

4. Become a disease biologist Old Concept: To understand disease mechanism, best to subcontract the work to bench scientists. New Concept: Human diseases are heterogeneous at the clinical ad molecular levels. Clinical scientists need to get involved. Requires: - collaborative science - “jumping fences”

5. Issue: Learning the language of basic science Basic scientific principles or concepts are usually elegant and simple, but the language used to describe them can be opaque.

6. Tips for Success • Do some bench science yourself: • - the best way to learn basic science is to do it. • - many assays on human biospecimens can be done with relatively limited bench resources. • - start small: if mechanism becomes a major part of your program, then build a dual infrastructure (clinical and bench). • Successful collaborations are more likely to be productive if the bench scientist sees that the clinical scientist has some expertise in biology and basic science (and if the bench scientist has some clinical expertise.

7. Tips for Success • 2. Avoid putting yourself in a position to be simply a provider of biospecimens to a bench lab. • 3. Leverage your skills in organizing and analyzing large datasets. See if you can apply your expertise to “-Omic” datasets. • 4. Build sustainable collaborations: Use collaborations to build lasting scientific relationships; educate basic science colleagues about your disease of interest and get them invested. • 5. Collaborate outside UCSF. • Don’t assume that bench scientist know how best to process or analyze a human biospecimen. Learn the details and build a tissue bank.

8. Industry collaborations A lot of mechanism-oriented clinical research is done in biotech and pharma. Engage: - learn valuable systems and approaches. - help improve drug development. Pre clinical studies Pre clinical studies Pre clinical studies Experimental model systems Clinical trials

9. Industry collaborations A lot of mechanism-oriented clinical research is done in biotech and pharma. Engage: - learn valuable systems and approaches. - help improve drug development. Pre clinical studies Pre clinical studies Pre clinical studies 1. De risk & evaluate premise of intervention. 2. Explore biologic redundancy in human mechanism-oriented studies Pre clinical studies Experimental model systems Clinical trials