The Bioinformatics CRO Podcast

Transcript of Episode 29: Carolyn Coyne

Disclaimer: Transcripts may contain errors.

Grace Ratley: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Bioinformatics CRO Podcast. My name is Grace Ratley. I’m the editor and occasional host of The Bioinformatics CRO Podcast. And today I’m joined by Carolyn Coyne. Carolyn just recently joined the faculty of Duke University as Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology in April of this past year. Previously, her lab was located at the University of Pittsburgh and her lab studies cellular barriers to pathogens in the gut and the placenta. Welcome, Carolyn.

Carolyn Coyne: [00:00:27] Thank you for having me Grace.

Grace Ratley: [00:00:28] Yeah. So tell us a little bit about the research that you’re doing in your lab.

Carolyn Coyne: [00:00:33] Sure. I always like to describe our research as barriers, as you mentioned and this dates back to interests I had even as a graduate student. I really always have been fascinated by this idea of how at least initially viruses cross what I refer to as cellular barriers. And so what these are, the cells in our body that are supposed to keep us from being infected or exposed to pollutants and things like that. And so when you think about those things, of course, probably nowadays the first one that comes to mind is the airway, is the respiratory epithelium. And that’s actually how I started a lot of my earlier studies. I was kind of initially trying to understand the airway as a barrier to respiratory pathogens, let’s say. So again, in the midst of a pandemic, of course this is now very timely. At that time, I certainly never thought that we would be living under the current situation. And so my interest in the airway then kind of started to broaden. So I did work in the airway as a graduate student. And at that time, we were actually thinking about things like gene therapy, like how would you deliver actually a virus to the respiratory epithelium as a therapeutic approach.

[00:01:37] But again, the kind of topics or things that we were thinking about were very similar to this concept of why can’t then a therapeutic virus cross the epithelium? How does that barrier work? And then the counter of that is then how do viruses that naturally make us sick through the respiratory epithelium, influenza virus, now coronaviruses that we know very well, how does that happen? And then we really started to broaden our interest from there as I got through a little bit more training. So as a postdoctoral fellow, I actually went to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and I worked on enteric viruses. And so these are viruses that naturally, of course cross the gut, another important barrier that exists to keep things out. And these are again natural viruses that are very common. They’re one of the most common viruses that infect humans. And so what that tells someone like me who is interested in barriers is that these viruses are really smart and they’re really good at bypassing barriers. And so the work we continue to do in the lab is really centered at least on that part of the lab on the gut as a barrier, understanding how the barrier forms, modeling the barrier. And then secondary to that, how do viruses that naturally cross that barrier figure out a way to do that? And so then, maybe it’s not surprising that that the other half of my lab studies the placenta, which is also a really important barrier.

[00:02:54] But just an interesting point, and I’ve probably told this this story too many times now, but it really wasn’t until I was pregnant with my son that this idea of a placental barrier dawned on me. I’d studied barriers a long time. You’d think I would have thought of the placenta. But as most people do, we overlook that as a barrier. And so I became pregnant with my son, who just turned 12. So it was a long time ago now. And that was when I literally had a light bulb moment where I thought, Ah, the placenta is a barrier. And so now my lab also studies the placenta. And from that side of the lab again, the topic is still the same, which is how does the placenta actually protect the fetus from most infections? And we know that it does a very, very good job of that. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to populate the world to the levels that we have. And so we know the placenta is a good barrier.

[00:03:38] And then again, our secondary questions are how do then pathogens and on that side of the lab, we’re not just virus focused. We study parasites, we study bacteria. And what we study is actually a family of viruses that are called TORCH pathogens. And these designate microorganisms that are known to be what’s called teratogenic, so damaging to the fetus if they’re infected in utero. And the TORCH acronym stands for Toxoplasma gondii, which is a parasite other, which is sort of a dumping ground for many things bacteria, viruses and of course, rubella, cytomegalovirus and herpes viruses. And so on that side of the lab, we then try to understand how does this kind of class of very diverse, unrelated microorganisms bypass this placental barrier, which I think the overarching goal then is to then think a little bit more therapeutically, which we don’t really do per se in the lab. But you could imagine that the more we know and understand about that process, the more you can target that process to stop it from happening. And so that really is, I would say, the central kind of themes of the lab. But beyond the gut and the placenta, we’re usually interested in pretty much all barriers we can get our hands on. But those are the two main ones that we study.

Grace Ratley: [00:04:46] That is so fascinating. I am very much interested in the gut barrier, but I know that your lab is focused more on the placenta.

Carolyn Coyne: [00:04:54] Folks sometimes forget that we also work on the gut, which is, you know, actually by a per person basis in the lab, sometimes more skewed on the gut side than the placenta side at any time. So we’re usually pretty evenly split down the middle. I think our placenta work is certainly unique in the sense that it’s a very, I would say, small field overall particularly when you think about like microorganisms and doing the more infectious diseases aspect of the placenta.

Grace Ratley: [00:05:19] So what do you think are some of the biggest unanswered questions in your field?

Carolyn Coyne: [00:05:26] Oh, well, I think on both sides, there are many I would say. The placental kind of side is easier in the sense that it’s a barrier and a tissue and organ that is really difficult to study. And so inherent to that then is a lot of limitations just on what you can do, what kind of questions you can ask, and so certainly from the standpoint of infectious diseases, there are a lot of unanswered questions. Some are very basic. How and why is the placenta such a good barrier? How did it evolve to be such a good barrier? What’s interesting about that tissue and the cells that comprise that tissue is that they’ve almost co-opted the strengths of things like epithelial cells and more immune cells to become the barrier. And so how and why has that happened? Just basic questions. And then certainly I’d say what we focus on more are the questions just related to, we know it’s a great barrier. I mean, I hate to focus on the pandemic too much, but what we’ve learned from this, of course, it’s a very large human biology study.

[00:06:25] What we’ve learned from this is that pregnant women can be infected with Corona SARS-2, and they can develop COVID-19 and they can certainly go on to have complications of pregnancy. But there’s actually all of the data would suggest that that the virus is not transmitted in utero to the fetus. And so, again, what that tells us is that the placenta is acting as a very, very good barrier. And so then I’d say the number one question that drives most of what we do is how then does the placenta form a barrier to something like a coronavirus or influenza virus, but not form a barrier to something like Zika virus. And so I think dissecting that is probably, at least in my own very biased mind, the biggest question we have. Figuring out how and why it’s a barrier to virus or pathogen A and not a pathogen or virus B. So that’s kind of the biggest question I would say on that side.

Grace Ratley: [00:07:14] And do you have any ideas of how that might happen or is it?

Carolyn Coyne: [00:07:18] Well, I think we certainly have experimental data that are based on human things that we can do ex vivo in the lab, taking cells or tissue, obviously animal work that has been done by others. What’s very clear is that as good of a barrier as the placenta is, barriers are not without breaches. And that’s just the nature of what barriers are. And that happens in, of course in the lung and in the gut and all different barriers. And so it could be as simple as there are breaches in the barrier that occur. And unfortunately, at that very time, there’s a circulating viral particle that figures out, makes it seem like the virus is trying when in actuality it’s very passive participant in this process. But nonetheless that a virus would cross. And maybe the difference then is that it’s not so much then the difference between crossing the barrier is that it’s the end point that’s different. So for example, we know that Zika virus, for example really targets the neuronal progenitor cells in the developing fetal brain.

[00:08:18] So these are the cells in a developing, especially first trimester human fetus that is forming our brain. We know that Zika will target those cells. We know that Zika will replicate in those cells and we know that Zika will damage those cells, whereas other viruses then may not have that ability. And so it’s a little bit of, I hate to use this analogy, but it is a little bit of a chicken or an egg type thing. And that we don’t really know that because let’s say coronaviruses are not inducing fetal disease, that they don’t actually reach the fetus, but maybe they just don’t damage the fetus. So it depends on your end points. So I think the questions are, are they targeting different cells that allow them to bypass, which is one I would say hypothesis or is that what’s really different is their end points being that one virus, for example can induce disease and the other one can’t. And if that is your end point, then you would never know that both of them crossed, if that makes sense.

Grace Ratley: [00:09:10] Yeah, that makes sense. So it must be pretty difficult to study the placenta. I know that it’s kind of a hyper politicized kind of field.

Carolyn Coyne: [00:09:21] It is.

Grace Ratley: [00:09:22] Especially with getting samples. And I know that you wrote a really wonderful article in the Washington Post a couple of years ago when the Trump administration instituted a policy that heavily restricted the use of human fetal tissues in research. Can you talk a little bit about how that affected your research?

Carolyn Coyne: [00:09:39] Yeah. I think that whole process, looking back on my career now, certainly that was one of the most I would say stressful points of my career in a way that honestly I think it shows what a either a vacuum or different kind of land we lived in and that I really never again when I started working in this in this field. And I think for most people this is true. You don’t really think about that. And part of it is it just seems so natural that, oh, of course we can do our research. And so when that happened, which I will say once the election had happened and there was a shift in leadership in the White House, I knew that there would be changes. I mean, I think all of us that worked in this realm in terms of using fetal tissue knew that there were going to be policy changes. I mean, that was not at all a surprise to me. The only thing honestly that surprised me is that it didn’t happen earlier. I remember coming into the lab the day after the election and saying, we need to think about other model because this is going to change and it’s going to change soon.

[00:10:40] And so I think the effects of that are much more broad and really devastating than I would say most people recognize, even folks that don’t work in this domain. And so in my view, there are kind of different levels of the ramifications. And I would say ripple effect of these policy changes. One of course was just scientific. One was that we were all somewhat paralyzed in having to pivot and think about ways that we could ask our questions. And again, staying true to the biology. We do this not because we want to model it the best way possible because we think it’s more true to the biology. And so we’re driven, of course by the scientific question. And so if this tissue allows us to ask those questions in the best way, in the most rigorous way, that of course is the driving force for using the tissue. And it really is true. And with the placenta and in pregnancy is that the placenta is a very unique organ compared to anything else probably in the human body in that it really changes very dramatically across gestation. And so a full term post-delivery placenta is quite different than an earlier gestation placenta.

[00:11:48] And so it really does become, especially when thinking in the context of infectious diseases to model throughout pregnancy. And so one of I would say the ramifications and after effects was just on science. So basically all of us being somewhat paralyzed in obtaining tissue, of course, being funded to do tissue. But in some ways as stressful as that was, and let me tell you, it was, we were affected in a number of ways. What I personally think is probably the more upsetting or most upsetting aftereffect of this is the impact it has on an entire generation of scientists. And I mean younger scientists, scientists that haven’t entered this field. The field of maternal fetal medicine, the field of pregnancy in general is already I would say a field that is understudied, certainly underfunded through the the NIH at least. And I think that for me at least the most devastating effect is that I think what’s happened then is you have a whole generation of younger scientists who are in training, maybe haven’t started their training, and they’re looking at entering this field and they’re saying to themselves, and who could blame them? Why would I want to enter in this field when this is such a highly politicized thing, when there have been so many horrible devastating things that have happened even to the scientists that work in this realm? Why would I do that? I don’t want to subject myself to that.

[00:13:06] And so what I’m going to do is work in a different field. And so I think for me, that is the most upsetting aspect of it. There’s of course the personal somewhat more self-centered view of it, which is the impact of my own research. But really that although it was an acute, very stressful situation, what I find the absolutely most upsetting aspect of it is that this is going to then affect an entire generation. I think this will live in the minds of people for a long time. I think we are going to see people not wanting to work in this domain. I mean, certainly in the United States. I’m really focusing much more in the US because they’re nervous. And again, who could blame them. If I were a postdoc picking a lab to go to thinking about I want to go into an academic career that requires me to be funded or mostly requires me to be funded through the NIH, would I want to go to into a field, into a lab that may work in this domain and may make my life very complicated?

[00:14:02] And the answer to that is probably no in many cases. And again, naturally. So I don’t blame those people. I think that was really the most devastating aspect. I think we will feel that for a very long time to come. I think it holds back science in the United States. I think it holds back the field of maternal fetal medicine, I mean which is again already an area that I think is not focused on enough, not funded enough. And so I think at the time this happened, I felt like it didn’t get as much attention as I think it should have. Because I think people were focused a little bit more on the stories of how this was going to impact our science, which again is very important. And I feel like what was left on the cutting room floor so to speak was more of the impact on this on trainees. And then also the impact of this on just the field in general, which just as a human let alone a woman, I find that to be really upsetting.

Grace Ratley: [00:14:56] How can we change the public perspective on this, to let them know that it’s important work?

Carolyn Coyne: [00:15:03] Unfortunately, I think it’s almost impossible. And I hate to say that, usually I like to be an optimist. But the problem is this is that the narrative has been so politicized in that it is become, at least from my view again very biased view, very difficult to disentangle the more political, pro-life, pro-choice movement kind of just differences in opinion. Untangling that from the idea of using fetal tissue for research is something that, at least from my perspective that I’ve seen is very difficult to do. And so, unfortunately while I think the folks that are very much anti use of human fetal tissue in research and I hate to generalize. And so I mean it probably doesn’t apply to everyone, but at least certainly from what I’ve seen, I think that often this goes back to just abortion period. And I think there’s this, I would say incorrect notion that somehow the use of human fetal tissue in research promotes abortion, that a woman going in to get an abortion would somehow, and again I think that does a huge disservice to those women, a huge disservice. And I find it actually rather offensive, but anyway. And so I think it’s really difficult because at least the narrative that I’ve seen is often people saying who are very much opposed to the use of fetal tissue, the narrative that is most commonly I would say, kind of brought up is well, what are the cures that have happened using fetal tissue? And when your bar is curing something that would then relegate all science to being unimportant if you use that as the bar.

[00:16:36] But nonetheless, that’s the bar that’s set. And so if that’s the bar, it’s almost impossible to show. I mean of course, because often within the comeback of the opposing party would say, well back in the day, the polio virus vaccine, they were using human embryonic kidney cells again from a from a fetus, from an elective termination. So clearly, that led to the ability to to make the vaccine, which is fact. That is truth. But again, that’s still not enough. That doesn’t, for them, meet the bar. And so I think that for me is the disappointing thing about this, is that unfortunately, I think the political parties in this country on both sides have certainly then made this into a political issue. And I think until it is not a political issue, it’s going to be impossible to convince people, it’s justified. Unfortunately, I think that’s just the nature of what’s happened.

Grace Ratley: [00:17:25] So what are some of the workarounds to that? Can you use things like stem cells?

Carolyn Coyne: [00:17:32] It’s a great question. I think it’s something that we’ve really as a lab focused on, I would say the most in the last few years, which was brought on. And so maybe trying to look on the bright sides, the silver lining of this was that it did make us decide what are we going to then focus on? And so about, I think just two years ago now, there was a really phenomenal outstanding paper from a group in the UK in Cambridge making organoids from stem cells that they at least isolated from first trimester placentas, where there’s a lot more stem cells. And you can imagine that this is when the placenta is really developing so what we decided to do is, well, we obviously can’t access first trimester tissue for a variety of reasons that what we will then do is really focus on trying to make these organoids from stem cells that we isolate later in gestation from either natural preterm deliveries, which I suppose that’s never natural. But certainly preterm delivery is not elective terminations that occur, let’s say in the second trimester all the way to term. And that’s really what we’ve been able to do. And again, there are pros and cons to any model in science. I think that’s certainly something that I preach often. And so there are pros and cons to that model. But the huge pro in my mind is that we can isolate these organoids and they essentially you can propagate them so they can be expanded, you can split them, you can freeze them.

[00:18:45] And so what we’re really hoping to do in the next few years is to have a very large what I would say, biobank in our freezer essentially of stem cells that we’ve obtained or organoids rather, that we’ve obtained from a bunch of different placentas that we can really then use to model this. And for us, that’s probably the system that we’re going to be focusing on in the nearest term. And really what we’re trying to do now then is to just establish that model because it’s a little different, of course than the previous model using first trimester tissue validated. And then compare it to what we’ve seen from things like the tissue that we used to use from elective terminations. And again if we see things that are very similar, then we know that that’s a model that can recapitulate at least some of that. So that’s really, I think what we’ve focused on. We tend to focus very much on human models, and that’s simply because the placenta is so different amongst different organisms. So that’s really, I’d say the only I hate to say anything positive came from that. But truly for us, at least personally the positive thing was that we really worked very, very hard to focus on that. And so far I’ve been successful.

Grace Ratley: [00:19:48] I’m glad to hear that there are some workarounds because I do think this field is very important. Well, let’s go ahead and transition then into a little bit about you as a scientist. Tell us a little bit about your path to science. I know you weren’t always super interested in science growing up.

Carolyn Coyne: [00:20:06] The thing I always say is, I was never someone that thought I would go into science again. I don’t know how or why I did, but nonetheless, I’m here. And so the journey for me was a really, I would say slow one. And I’m not sure that there was ever a moment where the light bulb switch was flipped, so to speak. So I went to undergraduate. I was an undergraduate at Florida State because I’m a Floridian. And really at that time I was convinced I was going to go to law school. And that’s always what I said. Through high school, we would have debates and things. I just for some reason always was drawn to that. I’m so thankful now I didn’t do it. But at the time, and so my path was not a straight one. So I started majoring in things like psychology and criminology, and I’m going to be a prosecutor. I mean, all of these things that I just had built in my head. And the transition for me started when I was probably a sophomore maybe in college. I was a psychology major at that point. I decided that I was interested in neuropsychology. And so that is basically the real more scientific study of the brain and how that then influences psychological outputs. And so what that required me to do was to start taking some science classes.

[00:21:13] And so this is when I enrolled and I think biology, biochemistry. And to be honest, I was not a fan of the biological sciences at that point. I was a biochemistry then major. So then I switched my major to biochemistry. And it’s crazy, at least for most people. But you know what I really fell in love with was organic chemistry and analytical chemistry. And it was organic that I found. I just loved organic chemistry, the solving and figuring out I mean, I just I remember just loving that and taking that class was really when I said, okay, I’m going to switch to being a chemistry major. And then I was a biochemistry major. But even if you look at my grades from an undergraduate, I did much better in chemistry than I ever did in the biological. And so that was when the transition started. But even then, I don’t know that I had a game plan. I just was knew that I was interested. And then the other I would say life experience that influenced me was that I had a pretty near full time job as an undergraduate. I worked at Target and I started in the checkout lanes of Target. And then I started working as a pharmacy tech. And so for about, I don’t know, 2 or 3 years of my undergraduate, I worked as a pharmacy tech at Target.

[00:22:23] And I would work maybe 30 to 40 hours a week. And I spent a lot of time talking to the pharmacist and what I found myself drawn to. And so by this point, I was a biochemistry major. I started to be a little bit more science leaning or science interested. I again at that time thought I was going to get a PhD in organic chemistry or medicinal chemistry and these kinds of things. And I would talk to the pharmacist and what we would talk about was the drugs and how the drugs worked. And I would want to know if I’m giving this person this drug, what is this? How does it work? What’s the pathway? And that was when I think it was around the time I was probably nearing maybe my senior year. And then I got interested in pharmacology, pharmaceutical sciences. And again, it was more and I knew I didn’t want to go to pharmacy school after that experience, but that was ultimately what led me to look for a PhD in pharmacology was that I liked this idea of at least at the time, what I thought was getting a PhD in how drugs worked. And then in those days, which maybe dates me a little bit, there were less of these umbrella graduate programs where you could go in and then pick a track. Back then, you really applied more specifically.

[00:23:26] And so I went to get a PhD in pharmacology, and that was when my PhD project then was in the airway, more gene therapy. And then that of course led to everything subsequent to that. I think the other thing to note just in this kind of conversation is and I always tell this to trainees that I talk about the other thing about me that I don’t know if it’s unique or maybe just weird is that as a postdoc, I was also never the postdoc that wanted an academic job. Even now I always say that there are many things about science I really enjoy. Some of this is even science communication. Like these sorts of things I actually find really important. And so I’ve always had the kind of mindset that as much as I like academic science and I do, I love bench work. I mean, I still work at the bench. I don’t ever want to leave the bench. I think there are many other fun things that I could do. And so I think when I was a postdoc, the opportunity presented itself and I took it. But I was also never a postdoc or certainly a PhD student that had a clear, I want to be faculty, I want to work in an academic medical center. It really was probably the opposite of that. But there are many things about the job that obviously drew me to it.

Grace Ratley: [00:24:27] It definitely is interesting hearing your path to science going from law to.

Carolyn Coyne: [00:24:32] Great pivot.

Grace Ratley: [00:24:33] Yeah, a great pivot. So did you have any mentors who really influenced your path to where you are now?

Carolyn Coyne: [00:24:41] In various ways, Yes. I don’t think I ever had a faculty mentor that was my guiding light, so to speak. Like I’ll see this on social media and I didn’t have that. It’s not to say I didn’t have great mentors. That’s not at all meant to be disparaging, but I don’t think they were the ones that were guiding my career path. What I found to be 100% the most valuable thing that I’ve done, which again I’ve done not because I had any intention of doing it. Things just kind of wind up working out, it was finding almost more of like peer mentoring. And I have one very, very close friend of mine. Her name is Sarah Cherry. She’s at the University of Pennsylvania. And she’s my closest friend and she’s like a sister. And I met her when I was towards the last year or two of my postdoc. And she had come to Penn as a new faculty member. And she and I just became very close friends. And so if anyone helped me guide towards an academic position, even helped me now. We talk all the time now. It was really probably her as much as anyone. And then of course, there were others who played a role. But for me, developing a network of peer mentors who are usually your friends as well, I think is so valuable. I know people say this, but you know what? At least I’ve found the most valuable is I very much appreciate direct, honest advice even if the advice may not be what I want to hear.

[00:26:02] And so I think I’ve always gravitated to people who are just honest and direct. That’s probably been just even still to this day what influences me most from a mentoring perspective. And then there are other senior people over the years that have influenced me. I will say many of them tend to be women. When I was at the University of Pittsburgh, JoAnne Flynn is there and she’s a bacteriologist and an immunologist and she’s just phenomenal and she’s everything you want to be as a young faculty member. She was also someone I looked to as advice when I was starting. And so for me, I think I’ve had just a couple of people and sometimes they don’t even know that I view them so much as like my mentors. Like so for JoAnne, for example, I’ve known her for a long time. But she may not even have known what an influence she had on me. And that’s also something I try to remember for myself and that I even tell junior faculty is that even if we don’t know it, we’re influencing positive or negative a lot of people. And so you kind of have to always act accordingly, if that makes sense. Yeah, I’ve had various mentors in different ways, but maybe not the classic mentors.

Grace Ratley: [00:27:03] Yeah, In my personal opinion, I’ve found it a lot easier to connect with people who are closer to me and more peer mentors because faculty tend to be very busy.

Carolyn Coyne: [00:27:14] Now, of course. And the challenges are each generation of scientists, I feel especially in academic science, I mean in science in general, but certainly academic has a completely different life experience. And those are based upon things like funding paylines, things like fetal tissue. I mean, all of us have a different perspective and or influence. And so even if I talk to someone who’s more senior or more junior for me, we’re having completely different experiences just based upon the way life works.

Grace Ratley: [00:27:40] Right. Yeah. What brought you from the University of Pittsburgh over to Duke?

Carolyn Coyne: [00:27:46] Yeah. I had been at Pitt very comfortably and quite happily, really for about 14 years. I think it’s natural over the years when you’re at an institution for a long time to think about other options. And there had been other options that had presented themselves. And so it’s one of these things that I think happens commonly where you’re approached or you talk to people, but it’s just not enough to push it over the edge. What I’d always said to my husband is that for me to move which requires of course uprooting not just the lab, not just professional life, but as much if not more importantly so personal life that I would have to be able to look him in the eye very honestly and tell him it was going to be transformative, which is again a very high bar. And I could really never do that before. So even if other opportunities presented themselves, I would come home and I would say, Oh, this is great. It’s certainly a great place. There are great people. But is it going to be transformative? No. And that was always my bar. That’s a really go through this process, which is a very painful process in many different ways. I would have to know that.

[00:28:50] And so the path started somewhat innocently. I was at a conference at the NIH and I was sitting next to someone named Bart Haynes, who’s the head of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, right across the way from me now, having coffee kind of in the morning. And he mentioned he was at Duke. I obviously was a UNCW student and said, Oh, I really love the area. And he mentioned, Oh, why don’t you come and check out Duke? And again, I entered in very innocently, and I remember even after that first visit, coming home and saying to my husband, like, I think this could really be transformative. And so why is that? So what was so special? Part of it is just the infrastructure, things that that when I was a junior faculty, you were looking for a position to be junior faculty. You think about cores, but you don’t really think about the nitty gritty of cores. You don’t think about things like administration administrators, things that really impact you more on an everyday basis. And so for me, I came and recognized that there are really I mean truly outstanding scientists here and that the scientists are right across the walkway. I mean, literally I’m looking over at DHVI right now. One of the best, I would say vaccine centers in the world, certainly in the country if not the world. And so being in such close proximity to really phenomenal scientists and researchers.

[00:30:01] And so I was very fortunate that I’m now in the MGM department here, which is molecular genetics and microbiology, and there are outstanding people here. I think you’ve interviewed Bryan Cullen, Micah Luftig. Stacy Horner is here and Nick Keaton, The list could go on. Really phenomenal people. And I just thought, wow, this is really going to elevate our research. The analogy I use is that I used to play tennis in high school and I wasn’t a great tennis player, but nonetheless I played tennis. I was in Florida. It’s what you did. And when I practiced, you always wanted to practice against people that were as good of you, even better if they’re better than you, because it elevates your game. It makes you better. And so I felt like I was going to have a lot of really solid opponents here. That would really kind of challenge us and elevate us. And again, it’s not to say that the University of Pittsburgh didn’t have that because they certainly did. But when you play with the same opponents for 14 years, you need some new opponents. And so that was really I think the motivation. I was just really feeling like it was going to elevate and transform our science.

Grace Ratley: [00:30:57] Yeah, that’s an excellent analogy. And was it difficult to move during a pandemic?

Carolyn Coyne: [00:31:05] I’ve talked to a lot of people about this. I think it’s always hard to move the disentangling, especially after 14 years, is not an easy one. There were certainly challenges that I do think were pandemic specific. Probably the biggest one we’re struggling with is just equipment. Everything is backordered. It takes a very long time to get things. I think that is probably unique in the pandemic. I think moves are always hard. I think to move, you have to really think it’s transformative because it is a hard process and it’s a very stressful process. Again that is the probably most stressful thing I’ve ever done, different ways than the fetal tissue issues. But that’s probably the biggest thing that’s pandemic specific. So we just moved, what two months ago in the beginning of April. And that is, I will say, when things were starting, nothing is normal of course. But things were starting to get a little bit more normal in terms of vaccination. All of us were vaccinated by then. I think most of the people here at Duke had been vaccinated. So in some ways, at least things I think got a little bit less intense than in the real lockdown with like you couldn’t leave your house. But yeah, I think the biggest challenge has just been stocking the lab with equipment, replacing equipment that we left behind. And just the time it takes to get that. We’re certainly hiring. When you move, the sad thing is leaving behind people that unfortunately can’t move with you. And that happened. And so absolutely, very much looking forward to recruiting new people, postdocs, graduate students. I’ve always liked having trainees in the lab. I’ve always been really fortunate also to have a lot of graduate students in the lab. And so certainly coming into the program here, I’m excited to kind of meet the students, have students come to the lab. So planning and in the process of hiring. So if you’re interested in barriers, check us out.

Grace Ratley: [00:32:40] All right. And I’ll just ask one more question before we wrap up. For trainees or for people interested in science or going into science, what is one piece of advice that you would give to people interested?

Carolyn Coyne: [00:32:52] I really try. I used to have a little and I actually gave it to someone else to help them through a hard time, a little kind of plaque I would put on my desk that said, Just keep swimming, the Dory quote from Finding Nemo. And when I was going through a lot of this fetal tissue stuff, truly it became a focal point for me on days that were really tough. And I would just look over to that and I would remind myself. Just keep going. Just keep going. And so that’s advice in the sense that it’s wrapped in, I’d say really what is my number one advice, which is I think sometimes scientists have a tendency to take this a little too seriously. I think especially in academic science, I think this is a great job. I think there are many pros, there are certainly cons, but there are many pros. But some of it is that I think we have to really realize that we shouldn’t take it that seriously. That this is a great job. I think for trainees this is probably more tailored towards trainees is that there are many things to do in science that are important and fun and make an impact. And whether that’s at the bench or not at the bench is totally fine. And so I think part of it is to the advice I guess is just not to take it too seriously. And what I mean by that is to just not feel like there’s only one path to success in science. There are many. And then when, not if, when you reach the hard times in that path. Because there are always hard times in any path, but is to just keep swimming. I feel like that was my mantra. It’s something even though I gifted my little plaque to a friend of mine who was kind of struggling and I said to her, look at it every day. I did. I think that’s probably my maybe top advice.

Grace Ratley: [00:34:24] Well, thank you so much for coming on, Carolyn. It was so wonderful to hear your perspective and to hear about your science. I really appreciate it.

Carolyn Coyne: [00:34:32] Thank you for having me.