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BCM faculty member named Pew Scholar

by Ruth SoRelle, MPH

Soo-Kyung Lee, PhD

Studies of the generation of neurons in spinal cord during embryonic development occupy the professional time of Soo-Kyung Lee, PhD, assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology and in the Huffington Center on Aging at Baylor College of Medicine. Lee is one of 15 researchers nationwide to be named a 2005 Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences.

The award carries with it $240,000 to help Lee continue her research over a four-year period. Applicants for the program must be nominated by an invited institution and demonstrate excellence and innovation.

Crucial support

The Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences program was launched in 1985 to provide crucial early support to investigators in the early- to mid-stages of their careers who show outstanding promise in the basic and clinical sciences.

Lee studies the motor neurons that govern body movement and activities such as breathing and locomotion.

"I found out that several proteins are involved in that process," said Lee. "Those are transcription factors (proteins that regulate how genes are translated into proteins by the cell machinery)."

When those proteins are absent, animals die at birth because they lack necessary motor neurons. For example, they do not have the motor neurons that prompt movement involved in breathing.

Implications for the future

Currently, her work revolves around finding out how these particular proteins work together to generate motor neurons. In work with mice and chick embryos, she and her colleagues have found that individually, the proteins do not seriously affect motor neuron development in the spinal cord. However, when the proteins are expressed together, they cause generation of extra motor neurons in the spinal cord.

This could have special implications in the understanding and even treatment of spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). Currently, she is trying to determine how this group of proteins operates in stem cells.

It was the collaborative spirit at Baylor College of Medicine and the work going on in its laboratories that first drew Lee, also a member of faculty of the BCM Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Her doctoral work was in the field of nuclear hormone receptors, and she said she knew then she wanted to come to BCM where seminal work in that kind of research gave the field credibility.

She anticipates working with other researchers within her department and across departmental lines as she continues to develop her understanding of these proteins and other factors involved in nervous system development.

Lee received her PhD at Chonnam National University in Korea with J. W. Lee, PhD in 2001. She did her post-doctoral work at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., where she worked in the laboratory of Samuel L. Pfaff, PhD.

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