NF Reflections
Kristine S. Vogel PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Cell Systems & Anatomy, UT Health San Antonio
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My involvement in the NF research community began as a postdoctoral fellow in Luis Parada’s laboratory, first at NCI-Frederick, and then at UT Southwestern in Dallas, TX. Luis was an exceptional mentor (at least from a postdoc’s perspective), providing the support and freedom to pursue a variety of projects related to mouse models of NF1, and introducing his trainees to the inevitable academic responsibilities of reviewing and writing grant proposals and manuscripts, managing laboratory staff and students, preparing engaging talks that “tell a story,” and maintaining a mouse colony with many different knockout and transgenic strains. It was through Luis that I first began to make connections with other NF researchers, and these interactions – at meetings, in study sections, and through collaborations – have been inspiring and delightful throughout my career. One collaborator in particular, Nancy Ratner, has been instrumental in progress with the research component of my career, allowing me to contribute as co-author on several publications in high impact journals and to share results that would likely otherwise have gone unpublished. If my academic career had not transformed into full-time teaching, I would happily work as a bench researcher in Nancy’s laboratory, which has always seemed to be such a vibrant and productive environment. I feel similarly about my collaborator Patricia Dahia (expert on the genetics of pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas) here at UT Health, and sometimes I do in fact take a break from my teaching duties and help her trainees with experiments on neural crest and adrenal chromaffin cells. Once a lab rat, always a lab rat, I guess.
My MD clinician mentors deserve a special mention: Laura Klesse (UT Southwestern), Diane Solomon (Neurology, UT Health San Antonio), and Vincent Riccardi. All three encouraged me to overcome my innate shyness and engage with the NF patient community, both to conduct a research study on DNA damage repair and tumor burden, and to develop interactive sessions for medical students in the Mind, Brain & Behavior module I co-direct. The guidance and support from these clinicians allowed me to contribute data to a publication with Nancy Ratner’s laboratory, and to initiate an NF patient and physician discussion panel in collaboration with several medical students and their Family Medicine mentor here at UT Health SA. Although not directly related to NF, for the past 10 years Vic Riccardi has shared his expertise and wisdom with our medical students in an interactive Gait and Mobility session that we developed together with Diane Solomon. Both Vic and Laura have helped me understand some of the challenges that individuals living with NF1 must navigate and cope with every day, and I think we’ve been able to communicate this to many of the students here at UT Health SA, such that they’re better prepared to provide compassionate and holistic care.
