Alumni Profiles Series: Fen-Biao Gao

Dr. Fen-Biao Gao began his scientific education at Peking University in 1981 where he received a degree in biochemistry in 1985. He continued his study of biochemistry through his master’s program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, receiving his degree in 1988. Dr. Gao came to Duke University where he studied RNA biology under Dr. Jack Keene. His doctorate work on RNA-binding protein won him the award for best thesis of the department in 1995, the year he earned his Ph.D. He then began a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of College London in the Raff lab through the Hitchings-Elion Fellowship awarded by the Burroughs Welcome Fund. His last year under this fellowship took him to UCSF, where he did his second postdoctoral fellowship in the Jan lab before starting his own lab in 2000 at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and became an associate professor of neurology in 2006. Dr. Gao’s time at Gladstone/UCSF was marked by many prestigious honors such as the Sloan Research Fellow in Neuroscience Award, Klingenstein Fellow in Neuroscience Award, and McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Award. In 2010, he moved to UMass Chan Medical School as a professor of neurology and then in 2017, he was invested as the Governor Paul Cellucci Chair in Neuroscience Research. In 2018, he received a prestigious Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the NIH for his work on neurodegeneration. In 2023, he started to serve as a Professor in the RNA Therapeutics Institute and Director of the Frontotemporal Dementia Research Center at UMass Chan Medical School. Additionally, he is member of the Medical Advisory Council of the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration, the Research Advisory Council of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and King Trust Basic Sciences Review Committee. In recent years, he has co-organized the “RNA Metabolism in Neurological Disease” meeting several times. His research interests have come full circle from his days studying RNA in the Keene lab at Duke. The Gao lab currently works on understanding frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and ALS, as well as identifying underlying pathogenic pathways in order to find therapeutic targets.

Can you tell me about your journey from Duke to where you are now?

A large part of my journey is due to being at Duke. Before I graduated, I heard there was a foundation called the Burroughs Wellcome fund. Wellcome is a British entity and they established this fund to encourage American scientists to go to the U.K. I was lucky to receive this award. It’s a 3-year fellowship, two years in the U.K. and one back in the States. My first postdoc was in the U.K. and then I came back and did my second at UCSF. After I came back, I got another fellowship from California. So, I was very lucky. Of course, being at Duke as a graduate student and being able to get this fellowship helped me a lot.

What led you to your current position at UMass?

Family. I started my lab at UCSF in 2000 and then came to UMass in 2010 because my wife is a physician. She got an offer at Boston Veteran’s Affairs Hospital and we moved here. Family is always first, right? San Francisco was hard to leave! It’s been wonderful since I came here–I’ve been even more productive. Actually, it’s nice to move to a new place – you make new friends, colleagues, and collaborations. This has been a big plus for my career.

What are some challenges you faced as you worked your way up from graduate student to the head of a lab?

It’s always challenging to establish yourself. We aren’t trained to be a PI right away. We have to learn how to write a grant and get an R01, how to train and mentor people. But I got tremendous help from colleagues and I was lucky that at the beginning of my career I got a few junior faculty awards that came with funding. I, therefore, got started quickly.

These days, it has become more challenging to recruit people. Not just in my lab, but everywhere. Many students don’t want to do postdocs anymore; they go to industry. We are trying to improve the funding aspects affecting the postdoc market so that we have more people who want to continue doing the research that is so important to our biological understanding and therapeutic development.

What does your day-to-day look like?

My main job is still research. Our former Governor, Paul Cellucci, passed away about 11 years ago from ALS, and in his honor his family and friends established the Governor Paul Cellucci Chair in Neuroscience Research. I am extremely honored to hold this chair. Most of my time still focuses on research and I work in the medical school; we don’t have undergraduate students here, so teaching is limited. I write grants and manuscripts, supervise people in the lab, go to conferences and study sessions, and so on.

What do you enjoy the most (and the least) about what you do?

There aren’t too many things I don’t enjoy! Thanks to my early education at Duke, I got interested in neuroscience and get to work in that field now. I feel extremely fortunate to have this job and all of the intellectual freedom to pursue knowledge. I think it’s the best job in the world. Our lab is lucky and has been doing well with funding, and I have wonderful postdocs and graduate students to work with. People ask me whether I would pursue the same career if I had a second chance. and I always say, “Yes!” It’s a wonderful job. I love the sense of discovery. It’s not easy, but life wouldn’t be fun if everything were too easy.

What is your central driving force in building your research community?

Collaboration is extremely important. When we started my lab, we published papers with just two or three people on them. Now we have at least 10 authors from different labs. UMass is very good at collaboration; I really enjoy it. That collaboration really started for me at Duke. At Duke, I was in Dr. Jack Keene’s lab and he was the department chair. It was a big lab with many talented postdocs that I got to work with. Looking back I think I benefited tremendously from that experience.

What additional ways did Duke help prepare you?

I learned a lot from the postdocs I worked with. Duke provided an environment where I could learn to be an independent thinker early on. Everyone worked hard and I was able to publish two first-author papers in my time in the Keene lab. That gave me a strong foundation that allowed me to get the postdoc fellowship. It was a great start for me.

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Tell me about what you do at the RNA Therapeutics Institute.

I switched to the department last year to build a center for frontotemporal dementia (FTD) research. I’m one of 20 faculty in the department including Nobel Laureate Dr. Craig Mello. It has many outstanding RNA biologists doing work on basic RNA biology as well as RNA-based therapies, such as RNAi and antisense oligonucleotides. It’s really interesting that I learned RNA biology in Dr. Jack Keene’s lab and I’m now coming back to the field again.

Were you always interested in coming back to RNA or was that a happy coincidence?

During my postdoc trainings, I learned developmental neurobiology. When I started my own lab at Gladstone/UCSF, I started to work on frontotemporal dementia and ALS. It turned out that several of the disease-associated genes in those conditions encode for RNA binding proteins. I, therefore, found myself coming back to my RNA roots. I have co-organized a meeting titled “RNA Metabolism in Neurological Disease” five times since then. Again, many thanks to Duke for giving me that foundation.

What needs do you see in the therapeutics world?

Training at the Ph.D. level is very important. People like investors and policy makers don’t always understand the science that they are making decisions about, and it’s important for those that have that training to provide advice for them. Education is another major area that needs well-trained scientists. We need to make sure we provide the scientific resources necessary for educators to be able to do their jobs well.

What advice would you offer current graduate students?

The most important thing is to find your passion. What do you enjoy doing? Doesn’t matter if it’s being a professor or going into industry. Every morning when you wake up you want to be excited to go into work because you love what you do. I tell my kids the same thing. Find what you love and do it well.

What’s something you’re excited about for the future?

I’m excited about my kids–my oldest son just graduated from Dartmouth and will soon work in a consulting firm in Boston! My second kid is applying for college this year. My youngest is in middle school and he was recently selected as a “Banner Student” by his teachers, so he is doing very well!

There are so many exciting projects in the lab right now which I’m really happy about. The most exciting thing about science is you never know where the next breakthroughs will come from. For example, during the pandemic the mRNA vaccine became so effective. Basic research is very important, and we need to keep that going. It is a joy to be a part of fundamental discoveries!

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AUTHOR

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Erin Fykes
Ph.D. student, Cell and Molecular Biology

Erin Fykes is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in cell and molecular biology. Her work focuses on understanding the role of long non-coding RNAs in regulating gene expression throughout the course of neuronal development. Prior to coming to Duke, she worked as a post-baccalaureate research fellow at the NIH. In her free time, she enjoys baking, taking long walks, spending time with loved ones, and good philosophical discussions.