Last April, we introduced three of Perlara’s newest team members. We will continue to do so as our team grows. In the meantime, we would like to take the time to introduce two of our not-so-new Perlara team members, whom we didn’t have a chance to introduce on the blog when they were hired. Better late than never, right? As with our previous post, these are not an academic or professional bios (those are available on our team page). Instead, we asked them to tell us how they came to work at Perlara, what they are currently working on, and what Perlara’s vision and mission mean to them. Find out what motivated these Ph.D.s to move on from the world of academia, and take the startup plunge.
Meet two members of the Perlara team
Jessica Lao
What led you to Perlara?
I had been familiar with Ethan and Perlstein Lab from reading about the state of the postdoctoral training, the postdocalypse, during the early days of my postdoc at UCSF. Toward the end of my postdoc, I attended a Women in Life Sciences seminar where Nina was invited to speak and I learned about the name change to Perlara. I had been using budding yeast to study fundamental cellular pathways for more than ten years, so I was particularly excited about Perlara’s approach to use the strength of simple genetic systems to accelerate drug discovery. The application of this approach in rare diseases also struck me as a much-needed area where model organisms can be really powerful. As luck would have it, one day my postdoc advisor forwarded me an email from Ethan looking for a yeast geneticist, and I jumped at the opportunity.
What are you working on?
My main projects at the moment are the yeast pipelines for PMM2 and GNAO1. I’m also working on a few side projects that I’ll blog about in the future. Yeast is a fantastic system for quickly testing out hypotheses when possible. At Perlara, we’re using all the features that this single cell organism offers us.
Why do you like going to work?
The top three reasons are the science, the mission, and the people. Most of our PerlQuests are across multiple organisms so we’re often working on the same genes. As a biologist, it’s really exciting to compare and contrast side-by-side the effects of different variants of the same gene in different organisms. This highlights to me the conservation in life, and speaks to what we all share. It’s a powerful tool in treating diseases, because if we find a drug that works in yeast and fly, or yeast and worm, or all three, it makes us more confident that it may work in humans. It’s also rewarding to be part of an engaging and supportive team. They make it fun to come to work!
What do Perlara’s vision, mission and core values mean to you?
Perlara’s efforts to be open about our science, and to foster collaborations to develop therapy for rare diseases, resonates with me. It’s a practical and efficient way to increase our knowledge in fundamental biology, and to improve our efforts in drug discovery. The more people we have working together to address these challenging problems, the more opportunities we’ll create to identify solutions.
Read Jessica’s other blog posts to find out more about her work.
Joshua Mast
What led you to Perlara?
I’ve definitely taken a winding path during my research career, mostly because I’ve followed big questions that I was intensely curious about wherever they took me. That’s really given me a broad view of biology, as I’ve explored problems at multiple levels – from molecular genetics to cellular biology and development, to neural circuit function and behavior. I think this background is the perfect fit for tackling a diversity of rare diseases at Perlara.
One thing that I found really attractive about Perlara, particularly because of my training as a geneticist, is the forward and unbiased approach toward drug discovery taken here. Geneticists have historically taken a very open-minded and humble approach toward understanding biological systems – that is, the classical method is to let the organism tell them what genes are important for a biological process. I think Perlara takes a comparable philosophy toward drug discovery – there may be therapeutic mechanisms or targets that we as biologist haven’t considered or know nothing about. In a similar way, we are asking the whole organism “what works?” to relieve a disease state. It’s a powerful approach.
What are you working on?
As the fly team lead I’m involved in almost all the PerlQuests, which is really fun! One exciting project that I’m working on now is to develop a high-throughput automated fly eye imager with a laboratory automation company called FlySorter. The fly eye is an important model system for understanding the role that genes play in patterning, and also for exploring the mechanisms of degenerative disease. With this eye imager, and one of FlySorter’s automated fly handling robots we’ll be able to use eye morphology as another high-throughput readout for our small molecule screens.
Why do you like going to work?
I love that I constantly have new challenges to tackle and new puzzles to solve. It’s stimulating to be working on so many broadly diverse projects at different stages! This means I might be working to design new fly strains to make a new disease model, or troubleshooting new assays, or thinking about how a candidate hit from a screen might impact a disease state. But one of my biggest motivations is working with such a smart, inspired, and dedicated group of people.
What do Perlara’s vision, mission and core values mean to you?
My son was diagnosed with a rare disease called mastocytosis when he was less than a year old. It’s an immune cell hyperplasia that is most often caused by mutations in a gene called KIT. The disorder comes in two forms; systemic, which can lead to leukemia and other cancers – and is often fatal – or cutaneous, which children can grow out of during adolescence. Happily for us, my son has the cutaneous form, but we spent many anxious months from his initial diagnosis to knowing that he’s OK. While I don’t pretend to understand the enormous day-to-day struggles that parents of children with more severe disorders face, I definitely understand what it’s like to be a parent crushingly uncertain about the health and future of your child. I’m really grateful for the opportunity to focus my skills and training toward discovering therapeutics that can make a difference in the lives of these families.
Read Josh’s other blog posts to find out more about his work.
We’ll be introducing more Perlara team members in the coming months. In the meantime, keep your eyes open for their new work discovering cures for rare diseases.
