Pathology Professor Returns to Science after a Long Absence

The work of Assistant Professor of Pathology Jane Skok, Ph.D., was recently featured in the People & Ideas section of the Journal for Experimental Medicine, which focused on Dr. Skok's return to science after a lengthy hiatus. This newer section in the journal, published by Rockefeller University Press, offers a portrait of interesting scientists for a wider scientific audience every month. Dr. Skok's research initially focused on the genetics of the first component of the complement cascade, a study which led to a promising article in Nature entitled "Distinct genes for fibroblast and serum C1q." The illness of a child, however, forced her to abandon her scientific work for almost a decade. In the article Dr. Skok reflects on the difficulties she faced when she decided to return to the profession and start again from "square one" by turning her attention to immunology. Now her work has been recognized by the National Institutes of Health, which will support her with a five-year RO1 Research Grant funding her project to study the coordination of recombination and allelic exclusion at IgH and Igk. The Elsa U. Pardee Foundation, a private foundation that supports new cancer research, has also been funding another project of Dr. Skok to determine whether there are stages of B-cell development which are particularly vulnerable to transformation and whether biological pathways can be targeted to reverse or interrupt the leukemic phenotype. As she notes in the interview with JEM, Dr. Skok places great value on collaborations and interdisciplinary science. She is currently collaborating with the labs of Department of Pathology Professors Dan Littman, David Roth, Michael Dustin, and Sherif Ibrahim, as well as Drs. William Carroll, Director of the NYU Cancer Institute, and Elizabeth Raetz from the Department of Pediatrics. In this respect, the Department of Pathology is fortunate to count Dr. Skok as one of its researchers who personifies the integrative and collegial approach outlined in our vision statement.