Cytocentric Visionaries: Tim Downing, PhD

This post contains excerpts from an interview that Dr. Alicia Henn, Chief Scientific Officer of BioSpherix, conducted with Dr. Timothy Downing. Our conversation was edited for brevity and clarity.

In the last post, we talked with Dr. Downing about how difficult it is to control for all of the factors that change when cells are removed from the body. Today we discuss Dr. Tim Downing’s cell-focused research career and his path to this point.

We have been impressed by your enthusiasm. One of the things that we want to convey here is the intensity that a researcher feels when you know how important your work is.

TD: Absolutely! I think it’s a great time to be doing science. I think it’s amazing the things we have discovered with fairly basic methods for isolating and culturing cells throughout history. We can grow human embryonic stem cells in a dish- that’s incredible!

But now it’s becoming scalable to use these technologies to isolate variables, to really get down to the mechanisms.

On a personal level, who has influenced you most in your own career path?

TD: My family has always been super supportive. I’ve had professors in college that pointed me out of a classroom full of students and asked if I’d tutor math and I’ve had great mentors in grad school, like Dr. Song Li.

I was very fortunate to work in Dr. Yamanaka’s lab for a summer in Japan. That was a surreal and very encouraging moment, working in the lab of someone whom you presumed would win a Nobel Prize. Alex Meissner is a great mentor as well. He’s trailblazing and I’m just trying to carry the torch.

Here at the Cytocentric Blog, we see your work as visionary. What impact do you want to have on your field?

TD: Thank you so much! That means a lot. There’s a burning curiosity inside of me to fundamentally understand what coaxes the cell to have a certain identity. For me, it comes right back to the patients. I also have worked in spinal cord repair after injury or developmental defect, for example. Doing something that has the potential to greatly improve the lives of people is really what motivates me, and that’s where my heart is behind all of this.

Think about drug discovery. Is it best to screen 10,000 drugs to find 1,000 hits and then screen those with mice to find 50 hits and then choose a few from there for clinical trials?

Or, is there something else we can do to understand the cell in these artificial microenvironments so we can make better guesses at what will actually be a therapeutic drug in an in vivo context?

Is there anything else that you would like to tell readers of our blog?

TD: I find myself always trying to keep my work relevant to the “bigger picture.” In that regard, I would encourage readers, as they design their next experiment, to just consider how their biological question and approach might change in a physiological context, if you’re not already working in vivo?

Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your findings and your views. We wish you all the best as you start this new chapter in your career.

If you would like to be considered for a Cytocentric Visionary feature, please contact us here and tell us how your work fits the Cytocentric Principles.

Tim Downing interview: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3