There are about 4,000 miles between the Lieber Institute for Brain Development in Baltimore and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. The distance doesn’t daunt Louise Huuki-Myers, Staff Scientist I at the Lieber Institute, who began her PhD studies at Cambridge this year.
The arrangement between Cambridge and the Lieber Institute is, as far as Huuki-Myers knows, a one-of-a-kind opportunity for a scientist from Baltimore to retain her American research position while earning a higher degree (part-time) at the legendary U.K. university.
“I did not think I’d ever go to the University of Cambridge,” says Huuki-Myers. “It feels unbelievable. It’s a really happy circumstance.”
Huuki-Myers works in the lab of Lieber Institute Investigator Leonardo Collado-Torres, PhD, a data science specialist whose work uses leading-edge measurement technologies to pinpoint gene expression in hopes of expanding science’s understanding of brain function and mental illness.
Computer science is crucial to the growing field of personalized medicine, in which treatments are tailored to each individual’s needs. Computer-based tools allow scientists to quickly examine enormous amounts of genomic and other types of data to learn more about brain function and disease. Pinpointing where disease begins and how it develops could lead to new diagnostic and preventive tools and more effective medicines.
A Sweet Spot
Huuki-Myers started her career in a bioinformatics lab during her undergraduate studies at Temple University. “I liked the computer science aspect of it,” she said.
She continued working with computers while completing her master’s in bioinformatics at Temple. When she moved to the Lieber Institute in 2020, she found a sweet spot.
“We’re at the intersection of interesting and hard questions to ask in the brain and in bioinformatics,” she said.
Collado-Torres, Huuki-Myers’ mentor, has long collaborated with Mina Ryten, MBBS, PhD, a University College London physician-scientist who treats patients with genetic diseases. She works in the lab to better understand the molecular basis of rare neurological disorders such as Lewy body diseases—one of which affected the late actor Robin Williams.
Earlier this year, Ryten moved her lab to Cambridge, where she began mentoring Huuki-Myers in her PhD studies. In pursuing her doctorate, Huuki-Myers sought a research focus to combine the strengths of the Lieber Institute and the Ryten lab at Cambridge.
“We thought about some projects that are of interest to Lieber’s mission but also dovetail nicely with the work Mina does,” Huuki-Myers said. They settled on spatial transcriptomics in Alzheimer’s disease.
Prediction and Prevention
Spatial transcriptomics is a relatively new field of medical computer science that allows scientists to examine gene function in a piece of tissue and pinpoint precisely where activity occurs. For example, maybe a gene acts differently in one area of the brain than in another. Targeting the gene in the specific area of activity could enable targeted, personalized drugs with fewer side effects.
At the Lieber Institute, Huuki-Myers has access to the Institute’s brain repository, a collection of almost 5,000 human postmortem brains—the largest brain repository for the study of mental illness in the world. Many of the brains belonged to patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
“This research could help us understand what might be happening in the brains of people who are at risk of developing Alzheimer’s but are not yet affected,” Huuki-Myers said. “We want to understand if there is a pre-Alzheimer’s state—if there are differences in the brain already and, if so, what they are.”
The work could help scientists predict and even prevent Alzheimer’s, a neurodegenerative disorder that scientists believe begins 20 years or more before a patient shows symptoms. Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia, causing between 60% -80% of cases, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Almost 7 million Americans suffer from the disease.
Huuki-Myers is grateful her mentors were willing to work together to make this next step possible for her. Many Lieber Institute scientists in her position go on to earn PhDs or MDs after their time at the Institute, but her part-time, international program is unique.
“Having had a few years since my master’s, I was looking forward to the rest of my career,” she said. “In the U.S., I was looking at stepping back to being a full-time PhD student. That would have been a big lifestyle change, a big sacrifice for me and my family.”
Her Own Initiative
Huuki-Myers has distinguished herself with her work since she began at the Institute, explained her mentor, Collado-Torres.
“She goes beyond someone who is good at implementing tasks you ask them to do,” he said. “She takes her own initiative and makes her own suggestions. She thinks about solutions and implements them. Finding people who have great communication skills and are motivated to learn and ask questions is very important. In those ways, Louise stood out from others.”
Her PhD work will enhance the Institute’s understanding of Alzheimer’s—and hopefully help advance its other research programs, too, said Collado-Torres. “We hope we can use Alzheimer’s as a model for other disorders,” he said. “If we find technologies that work in Alzheimer’s, we can transfer those to other diseases like schizophrenia. That’s what we’re aiming for.”
Huuki-Myers’ unique arrangement with Cambridge allows her to keep growing at the Lieber Institute as she takes the next step in her career. When she graduates in four or five years, she will join the ranks of Cambridge science alumni, including Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA.
“This is one of those things where it’s the right moment for this really cool opportunity,” she said. “It’s a fortunate set of circumstances.”