From left: Joseph Jardine, Chen Ran and Megan Ken. Credit: Scripps Research
Scripps Research welcomes three visionary scientists
Immunology assistant professor Joseph Jardine and assistant neuroscience professor Chen Ran join the faculty, while RNA-targeting expert Megan Ken becomes the newest fellow.
November 13, 2023
LA JOLLA, CA—Three scientists will be joining the Scripps Research team, bringing diverse expertise across protein engineering, sensory neuroscience and antiviral drug discovery. The new hires are Joseph Jardine, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Immunology; Chen Ran, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience; and Megan Ken, MD, PhD, Scripps Research Fellow.
Joseph Jardine: Peering through the eyes of the adaptive immune system
Joseph Jardine is joining Scripps Research to reveal key insights about the adaptive immune system—the body’s second, more specialized line of defense against foreign invaders. His lab will be working at the intersection of immunology and protein engineering to better understand how the adaptive immune system identifies viral threats. In his new role, Jardine will collaborate with scientists at Calibr to discover high-value therapeutic targets, while also applying his methodologies across Scripps Research to facilitate translational biology.
One project he will be focused on is revealing how T cells, a type of white blood cell in the adaptive immune system, recognizes and responds to HIV. By evaluating the diversity of millions of HIV peptides and how they are presented by cells for immune inspection, Jardine’s cutting-edge research will help elucidate how the deadly virus is able to rapidly evolve and continually abate the immune system.
“The big-picture goal of our research is to better understand how the adaptive immune system sees things at a high level,” Jardine says. “While we are currently working in infectious disease, there is also the potential for this research to be applied even more broadly to cancer and autoimmunity as well.”
Jardine comes to Scripps Research as the former director of product discovery and optimization at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), where he was similarly working on how the adaptive immune system responds to antigens. Previously, he had been the first scientist and head of antibody discovery at the Institute for Protein Innovation, where he helped grow the organization and establish a high-throughput synthetic antibody discovery platform.
He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington and his PhD from the Skaggs Graduate School at Scripps Research, where he received the HHMI/Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellowship. During his postdoctoral studies at Scripps Research in the lab of William Schief, Jardine worked on HIV vaccine design and helped pioneer the early efforts in germline-targeting methods.
Chen Ran: Making sense of the body’s internal sensations
Our brains use external senses to interact with the outside world, but how does it process information from the internal organs? Chen Ran is determined to answer this question in his new role in the Department of Neuroscience. As an example, Ran describes how there are countless different organ sensations—like the stomach stretching versus the bladder expanding—that our brain is somehow able to process and differentiate. Ran’s lab will work to understand how our brain detects and codes this information, and then ultimately translate these findings into clinical medicines.
“Our internal sensory systems are critically important across many different diseases—spanning cancer, obesity, diabetes, pulmonary disorder, hypertension and countless others,” Ran says. “This research would provide a deep understanding into the brain’s master regulator that controls all of these different systems, with the intent to apply these key insights into the therapies that could treat a myriad of diseases and to reveal basic mechanisms used by the brain to encode information.”
To accomplish this, Ran has developed an imaging platform that enables him and his lab to peer into the body’s internal senses—showing at a single-cell level the different neurons involved in sensing signals from distinct visceral organs. This technology can track how the nervous system detects different stimuli in the body, and then how the brain’s neurons respond to these sensations. As a postdoc in Stephen Liberles’ lab at Harvard Medical School, Ran used this platform to understand and visualize the topographic organization of organs in the brainstem—in other words, he put together a map showing where the representations of organs are organized in the brain.
Ran completed his PhD in biology at Stanford University in the labs of Xiaoke Chen and Liquin Luo, where he focused on somatosensory stimuli. He received his BS in biology from Peking University. Ran has been honored with numerous awards for his research, including most recently the NIH K01 Mentored Research Scientist Career Development Award, the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain Transition to Independence Award and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator Award.
Megan Ken: Targeting RNA viruses to impact global health
Many plagues have been linked to RNA viruses—including HIV, Dengue, Zika, SARS-CoV-2 and multiple others—making it critical to understand fundamental RNA dynamics and how this genetic material impacts cellular behavior. This is why Megan Ken is focused on uncovering RNA-protein interactions and predicting how the cell will respond. In her lab, Ken and her colleagues will then use these predictions to target viral RNAs with small molecule drugs.
“I went to medical school in large part because I want to develop treatments that can impact global health,” Ken says. “This RNA-targeting method has the potential to move the needle in how we treat these deadly viruses.”
Ken notes that one of the reasons she’s excited to join Scripps Research is due to the institute’s balance of fundamental basic science and powerful drug development. Her lab will also work closely with the team at Calibr to identify novel compounds capable of binding to RNA and treating different viral diseases.
“RNA represents a vast untapped resource of potential drug targets that has only recently been pursued by drug development efforts. There are a lot of compounds that have been found to bind to RNA, but very few have moved into clinical trials,” she adds. “As pioneers in this space, we’re striving to identify truly novel RNA binding scaffolds, targets and mechanisms for antiviral development.”
Ken completed her MD/PhD dual degree at Duke University School of Medicine, where she studied the structural biophysics and cellular functions of viral RNAs in the Al-Hashimi Lab. While at Duke, Ken received the Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence, which is given to five senior students who have excelled in their basic research endeavors. She was also honored with Duke’s Michelle Wynn Inclusive Award for her work in equity, diversity and inclusion—an area she is incredibly passionate about and intends to continue fostering at Scripps Research. Prior to her time at Duke, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis.
For more information, contact press@scripps.edu