Featuring Drs Fatah Kashanchi and Heather Branscome
Show Notes:
Extracellular vesicles such as exosomes are an emerging area of interest for scientists in both the academic and biopharma communities. In this episode, Drs Heather Branscome and Fatah Kashanchi define extracellular vesicles and touch on how they can play opposing roles in the pathogenesis of infectious diseases and the regeneration of damaged tissues. Listen in, to hear how Dr. Branscome climbed through the ranks at ATCC from an entry-level biologist to a group supervisor, while Dr. Kashanchi discusses the questions that led him from one fruitful scientific project to another.
Guests:
Fatah Kashanchi, PhD
Professor, George Mason University
Dr. Kashanchi received his PhD in 1990 under the supervision of Dr. Charles Wood who also worked with the Nobel Laurite, Dr. Susumu Tonegawa at MIT. He then moved to National Cancer Institute at NIH’s intramural program and continued his work on RNA viral infections with the late John Brady on HIV and HTLV transcription and chromatin complexes. He is currently a Tenured Faculty in the department of Systems Biology at the Prince William Campus of George Mason University. He has obtained independent funding of more than $28.9 M in funding (NIH, DOD, DOE, and Keck) since his departure from NIH in 2000. He has published more than 270 peer-reviewed manuscripts (h index = 76) and served as an editorial board and reviewer for number of journals including Cell, Molecular Cell, Nature, Nature Medicine, Science Translational Medicine, Retrovirology, JBC, J. Virol, Virology, NAR, and 4 PLoS journals. He is a regular NIH study section member and has served on 163 panels and chaired 21 since 2000.
Heather Branscome, PhD
Senior Scientist, ATCC
Dr. Heather Branscome is a Senior Scientist with ATCC. Throughout her 17-year career she has gained broad experience working in both academic and industry settings. She has extensive experience in cell and molecular biology and completed her graduate training in Biosciences from George Mason University. While at ATCC she has held positions in manufacturing, quality control, and technology transfer to support the production and qualification of cell lines and other critical biological reagents to support the scientific community. In her current role she manages a team of biologists to support the CDC’s International Reagent Resources (IRR) program, as well as other government contracts. Since 2018, she has played a key role in establishing and maintaining ATCC’s extracellular vesicle (EV) portfolio. In this role she was responsible for developing and validating large-scale EV manufacturing protocols and performing various EV biochemical and functional assays. Her current research is focused on advanced methods for EV purification, characterization of novel EV subtypes, and mechanistic studies of stem cell-derived EVs in different models of cellular repair. She currently serves as director and instructor for two local Bio-Trac® biotechnology training programs and maintains an active affiliation with George Mason University.
Host:
David Yarmosh, MS
Lead Bioinformatician, ATCC
David Yarmosh is a lead bioinformatician in ATCC’s Sequencing and Bioinformatics Center. He’s a graduate of New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. He has been working in large data aggregation and analysis since 2013 and microbial genomics with a focus on biosurveillance R&D efforts since 2016. David has led international training exercises in Peru and Senegal, sharing metagenomic analytical capabilities. His interests include genomics database construction, metadata collection, drug resistance mechanisms, bioinformatics standards, and machine learning. Since joining ATCC in 2020, David has worked extensively in SARS-CoV-2 classification, epidemiology, and genomics evaluation, including enhanced and uniform variant reporting. He has contributed more broadly to genomics reporting and analytical standardization and he has helped develop the podcast Behind the Biology, which he now hosts.
