Jacob Elmer earns NSF CAREER award for gene therapy research

It’s been a great year for Jacob Elmer (PhD ‘11), assistant professor of chemical engineering at Villanova University. Not only did he win a highly prestigious $500,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, he received $300,000 from the National Science Foundation to streamline the production of genetically-engineered T cells to treat leukemia patients and $254,000 from the National Institutes of Health to study earthworm hemoglobin as a potential blood substitute.

This is the kind of success any young professor dreams about, and for Dr. Elmer, it can largely be traced back to one thing – a love of research. Becoming an academic was not his initial plan, but while studying biology and chemical engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology in anticipation of a career in agriculture, a NASA internship working on bioregenerative life support systems changed his mind. “I have always enjoyed problem-solving,” he said, “but it was during my internship that I discovered a passion for research. I knew then that a PhD was in my future.”

When choosing a PhD program, one university stood out. “The CBE department at The Ohio State University placed a stronger emphasis on cutting-edge biological research than other ChemE departments I considered,” Dr. Elmer said. “Also, being from the midwest myself, the campus and city of Columbus felt more like home than other larger cities,” he added.

At Ohio State, Elmer studied blood substitutes with Professor Andre Palmer. “Dr. Palmer helped me develop into an independent researcher, but that wasn’t all. At Ohio State, I was trained in all three aspects of a professor’s job: research, teaching, and service.  I had the freedom to develop my own research projects; received training in the grant writing process; and was given the opportunity to develop and eventually teach my own course. I also participated in several outreach projects. Overall, it was an exceptionally well-rounded experience that prepared me for life in academia,” he said.

As a postdoctoral researcher, he initially focused on gene therapy -- specifically, how to best insert genes into cells. The field was already crowded, though, so he decided to focus instead on getting the gene to survive once inside  the cell, where cellular defenses work against it.

That was the motivation for his first NSF grant, “Manipulating Epigenetic Mechanisms to Enhance Transgene Expression” (2014). His CAREER grant, “Manipulating the Innate Immune Response to Improve Gene Therapy,” is the second iteration of that research.

Now, Professor Elmer is looking at the fate of the gene when it’s still in the cytoplasm, before it reaches the nucleus. By identifying which genes get turned on and finding out what they do, he’ll be able to use that knowledge to inhibit or enhance the way those genes react when a new, therapeutic gene is introduced to the cell.

That’s the plan, anyway. Sometimes, however, research doesn’t go as planned.  “On a day when nothing about the research is working, I can always come back to teaching,” he said. “It’s something I can have fun with, and preparing for class by reading current literature often helps me with my own research.”

Read more about special education opportunities Dr. Elmer is offering high school biology or chemistry teachers and underrepresented high school students in Philadelphia.

-Based on a story by Kim Shimer, director of communications at Villanova University.