Inside Duke Medicine
Living our values: Teamwork
posted September 13th, 2011
Arthur Moseley, Josh Andersen, Sally Kornbluth and Will Thompson in the Proteomics Core Lab.
Researchers’ teamwork brought about a breakthrough
Duke Medicine researchers Sally Kornbluth and Josh Andersen from Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and the Department of Medicine were sure they had discovered something new and significant about the way cancer cells die, but didn’t have a way to prove it.
On the other side of the Levine Science Research Center, Proteomics Core Lab Director Arthur Moseley and Senior Laboratory administrator Will Thompson were working on new ways to do experiments that could help Kornbluth and Andersen validate their work.
Through countless conversations, and many experiments, the four worked together toward their mutual goal. In the end, they came up with a new method to identify substrates of deacetylases, like Sirtuin 1, implicated in aging, neurodegenerative disorders, heart disease and cancer. Their work was featured on the Sept. 2 cover of Molecular Cell.
To design and execute the screen and validate the Sirt 1 targets, it took more than mere collaboration. It took teamwork, they all said.
“Projects like this require a lot of communication, and the constant conversation between Josh and Will was a great example of exceptional teamwork,” said Kornbluth, who is also vice dean for research at Duke University School of Medicine. “It shows what is possible when people work together, maximizing each other’s strengths, to achieve what we could never have done individually.”
View the complete pdf of the Sept. 2011 Inside Duke Medicine or click through the articles online.