Episode 17: Biotech Research at Xavier University of Louisiana with Key Opinion Leader Christopher Williams

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Welcome back to Bio from the Bayou. I'm Kenesha Ikinpolumi, your guest host for today. I serve as the Associate Vice President of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at Xavier University of Louisiana here in New Orleans. Today, our guest is Dr. Christopher Williams. Like many of us, Dr. Williams wears many hats. He's chair of the Division of Basic Pharmaceutical Sciences in Xavier's College of Pharmacy. Professor of Pharmacology, and he also serves as principal investigator on a number of sponsored research projects. Welcome to the show, Dr. Williams. Thanks for agreeing to join me.

Thank you for inviting me.

All right. Ready to jump right in?

Sure.

In working together over the course of the last 4 years, we've had many conversations about research, scholarship, even growing up in New Orleans in the '80s and '90s. Well, I'll leave out the '70s for myself. But one of the most surprising facts that you've shared with me about your academic journey is that you were a pretty average student in high school, surprisingly, and weren't really sure about your post-high school plans. Can you talk about your journey from that point to becoming an esteemed university researcher, professor, administrator, mentor, phenomenal colleague, and so on?

So as you mentioned, transitioning from my junior year to my senior year in high school, I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. My parents had kind of told me over time that I had been underperforming and that going to college and paying for a C student to go to college really wasn't in the plans for me. I had kind of planned on maybe taking the quickest vocation I could to be as independent as I could, as fast as I could.

Yes.

So my idea was to maybe take radiology. There was like a 10 or 12-month program in radiology that I wanted to take. I could earn enough money to get a truck, put some Dayton's on it, have a studio apartment, and still have a few dollars to go out on dates and party or whatnot. So that was my big plan. I didn't have much, I wasn't thinking much further than maybe, you know, the age of 19 at the time.

Mm-hmm.

So in my 12th grade year, I actually had to take the ACT. And when I took the ACT, I did pretty well. Only took it because I would've needed it to get into that, radiology program. So I did pretty well, and people encouraged me to apply for scholarships and to really genuinely consider going to college. At that point, I started going to college fairs. And when I go to the college fairs, I'd get these great looks when they see my ACT scores and we talk about it. And then when I revealed my GPA, it was crickets. They were like, you should not have this kind of a GPA with this kind of an ACT score.

Wow.

So it really did kind of drive home this idea that my parents had been telling me the entire time, you are not performing up to your potential. So fortunately, Southern University at New Orleans was willing to give me a full scholarship. With that, it really kind of changed my disposition in terms of academic performance. And while I was there, I had the opportunity to do internships at Argonne National Laboratories. And from there, I kind of decided research was the route for me, not necessarily direct patient care. It didn't feel like the thing that I wanted to do. I really started to love science and the nitty-gritty of being at the bench. So from there I applied, I ended up going to Tulane, earning my PhD in pharmacology. Still not sure which direction I wanted to go, if I wanted to go into industry or not. A friend of mine, Greg Vidal, who's now an oncologist in Memphis, he was graduating maybe a little bit after me. And he said, why don't you just try this postdoc with Frank Jones, who was in cancer biology over in the— his lab was over in the JBJ building. So I really found my feet at that point. And we were really successful in that laboratory. And as I was kind of developing and really kind of getting my feet wet in breast cancer research and breast cancer signaling and endocrine signaling in the breast tumor, Dr. Agarwal, who was the chair of pharmacology, encouraged me to apply at Xavier. Well, Xavier didn't really have any positions at the time, but I just kind of launched an inquiry. About a year later, I ran into Tom Weiss at a conference and he told me, hey, Chris, we have, we're building out our research infrastructure at Xavier and we have a pharmacology faculty position open. So I was kind of not feeling it. I'd heard that we weren't going to be able to do research at Xavier. It's a small university. We wouldn't have the assets we would need. And I was used to having everything that I would have at an R1 institution.

Right.

He convinced me, just do it for practice. So when I came over, I really was able to see a lot of the infrastructure investments that had been made through LCRC and through other means. And it completely changed my idea about what was at Xavier and what could be done at Xavier. I ended up taking the position, and I guess the rest is pretty much history.

Wow. I didn't realize Tom played an integral part of bringing you to Xavier. So that's interesting. Back to your decision to pursue pharmacology as a career, how were you aware of that field? How did you— were you exposed to people in the field or had a mentor in that area?

So as much as I didn't engage as much as I should have in high school, I really did enjoy chemistry and biology as long as it was somehow related to Human biology. I had a chemistry teacher, I even told her maybe I want to be a pharmacist, but when I found out pharmacists didn't go to the bench and make drugs on a regular basis, that kind of went out the window. When I got into my bachelor's program, I started thinking ahead at that point. I wasn't quite into genetics per se, but I did like the idea in pharmacology that you are altering the course of disease. So I know in many, for For the most part, for biomedical research, our ideas are to eventually alter the course of a disease, to eventually help human health. I thought that pharmacology was a little bit more at the cusp of being able to implement those strategies and implement that science that we'd discovered on the basic side. So it's pretty much, for me, the perfect balance between being very basic, but having that translational potential as an endpoint. Yeah.

You were very forward-thinking at that time because I don't think I even knew about translational research as an undergrad.

Well, it wasn't a word.

So you've been very highly successful in securing substantial research funding. And you've also fostered a number of industry, small business, community, and of course, academic collaborations. Let's spend some time discussing your research and the research coming out of the College of Pharmacy, specifically in the biosciences. Because as you mentioned, the College of Pharmacy at the time you accepted the position was not as heavily engaged in research as the college is now.

Okay. So my core project that kind of really is where everything in my lab is really centered is around breast cancer and potential treatments for breast cancer. More specifically, we look at breast cancer subtypes that are not responsive to traditional hormonal therapy, because one of the most life-disrupting aspects of cancer is actually the cancer chemotherapy that individuals have to undergo. As you may have heard of in the media, triple-negative breast cancer disproportionately affects younger women as well as African American women.

Yes.

And the treatment options are pretty limited. There are just a few therapies available, such as PARP inhibitors, that are not your standard cancer chemotherapy, which again is very difficult to go through. So our lab focuses on the identification of biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets that could kind of prevent individuals from having to undergo cancer chemotherapy. The other group that we target, or other subtype rather, that we target is for individuals who, initially responsive to hormone therapy but are now resistant.

Okay.

And this is going to happen to the majority of women who undergo hormone therapy for the treatment of breast cancer. So with that being said, there are 3 main targets that our lab looks at. We look at the orphan nuclear receptor NER1, which kind of serves as an inducible target in that not only can we target it with individual drugs, but we can actually induce the expression of it in And it seems to be associated with better overall outcomes in breast cancer patients, particularly in those who have failed under the tamoxifen treatment. Another is estrogen receptor alpha-36, which is an isoform of our traditional estrogen receptor. And with that, we see that it has an aberrant response to the anti-estrogens that we typically would use in the treatment of breast cancer. So if you could imagine, every switch that's supposed to turn this breast cancer off is actually hitting an alternative target and turning those same growth pathways on.

Okay.

So that's kind of the general idea for that. And we also have a project involving protein kinase CK2-alpha. Now, many of these are interrelated. I talk about them as if they're in silos, but in reality, we kind of cross a lot of these ideas. And it just really depends on the project. A lot of times we center those around the individual student or technician to kind of build out the project from that standpoint. But that is my research in my lab. Beyond that, we are working with NIMBLE, also known as the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals, to build out the infrastructure at the university for biomanufacturing.

Yes.

So with biomanufacturing, we're really talking about The next stage of evolution, if you will, of drug therapy. We're not talking about the small molecule that we've been talking about the majority of our lives. We know of the aspirins, the Tylenols, the phenytoins, whatever drug you want to name. Most of them are going to be small molecules. More recently, probably at an accelerated pace over the past few years, the drugs that are coming out are what are termed biologics. So they're either protein-based, in some cases even mRNA and DNA-based, such as the COVID vaccine. And really now we're even getting to the point where gene therapy might actually become a reality. So with those things in mind, the future is going to be kind of centered around being able to manufacture these things, because these are very large complex molecules. And because they're complex, we can't make them in a test tube. We can't take— reagent A and reagent B and reagent C and get an outcome from that, right? We can't develop a drug that way. Now we have to grow the drug. We have to utilize cells as miniature factories to grow those drugs out, which takes a different level of purification. Takes a different level of purification. It takes a different level of regulation to get the kind of results that you basically, you know, kind of what you need. So that's the Nimble Project. And the idea around that is actually to build out the biomedical workforce. So So that as entrepreneurs develop these new companies that may be centered around developing these biologics, they'll have a ready workforce to take those jobs and to move those products from inception all the way through actually manufacturing.

Related to that, and specifically the workforce development piece, you've been involved in the creation of new degree programs. Could you talk about those or any others that you are able to speak about that may be on the horizon?

Many of the new projects or the new degree programs that we've started have actually started in collaboration with Ochsner through the Ochsner Xavier Institute for Health Equity and Research. Now, prior to Ochsner, we'd already started one program, and that was the Physician Assistants Program.

Yes.

And it really was based on observation that nationally there was a dearth of African American physician assistants throughout the country. In order to really be able to remedy that situation, we had to look at who has nationally the best record for driving African Americans into healthcare careers, specifically into medical careers. So we felt that Xavier provided an ideal partner for that. So it seems like a win-win situation. You have a need nationally for that workforce, but then you have a proven partner who basically pumps out academic excellence in the biomedical sciences regularly with a diverse group of students. So that's kind of where that had burgeoned from. Now, since then, with that partnership, we've been able to start the master's program in health informatics.

Yes.

And that program is really gonna help us to identify health disparities that exist Some of the factors that contribute to health disparities. Really, that goal of this entire thing is to change the status of healthcare in Louisiana. We continually are rated 49th or 50th in healthcare among all US states.

Yes.

So the only way to do it is to do it. We have to get in, we have to get the practitioners, we have to reduce the number of health disparities, we have to address those types of issues. Those are 2 ways. Now, in addition to that, we recently started a master's program in pharmaceutical sciences.

Yes.

So as we see, there aren't many training programs that are short of a PhD that basically teach you how to get a job in biomedical sciences.

Yeah, so creating new pathways, it sounds like.

And it's not that our students will be limited to taking a job when they finish, but the idea that only a master's degree is only a secondary prize if you're unsuccessful getting your PhD, is kind of archaic, and I think it's actually harmful. I don't think that everyone has to have a PhD necessarily.

Yeah.

But there's also opportunities to find out, do you wanna continue? Do you wanna sit in a PhD program for 3 years and realize this isn't for you? Or do you want to do a project on your own shorter term and really figure out if this is the right pathway for you? And of our— we graduated our first cohort this spring, one of which who continued to a PhD program, another who has taken a job in the academic lab and another who's doing clinical research coordinator work. So again, we're trying to put people in all of the positions that they can be in to be successful, but the ultimate goal is to kind of actually improve health overall.

So I really love the idea of creating these different pathways for pharmacists. Traditionally, of course, people are more familiar with retail pharmacists. But there are so many new different options for pharmacists, including in innovation and research and development. In fact, one of your former students is employed now by Tulane's Innovation Institute, and she is a proud Xavier alum. So I think that's unique, one of the unique things about our College of Pharmacy, and the college is successful for a reason. The other thing you mentioned was about careers in research. That don't necessarily require a PhD. NIH several years ago created a funding mechanism to support research scientists, and that group is exactly the group that you're mentioning. There are only so many positions in academia, in labs, principal investigator roles, so that position of having a research scientist is really a viable career path that I think more universities should consider in terms of their academic training and development.

Right. And I really think it'll help with overall productivity because you have senior scientists sometimes available who can put their hands on this experiment on a regular basis and not always looking for the next position.

Yes.

You have a postdoc, you have them for 3 years, 4 years, 5 years. at their prime productivity, they're going to look to move on to their next adventure. So it would be great if we could actually set that up such that they can stay at whatever lab it is, have long-term career options within the context of that research institution.

Yes. And you actually modeled that, from what I recall. You had a senior researcher working in your lab, doctorate degree, and I think that was a good example of what you just described.

And that's why I can do a lot of the other things.

Right. Yes, true. So Dr. Williams, over the last several years within the city, there have been strong collaborative efforts to position New Orleans as a leader in the bioscience biotech sectors with a focus on innovation, translational research, and economic development. You and I have been involved in some of those efforts. in our various roles at Xavier. How do you think the city can strategically position itself to attract more investments in these sectors and keep homegrown talent here in the state?

Good question. I think part of it is to grow more of your homegrown talent. So I don't think it's good enough to say the students at Xavier or the students at Tulane or the students at SUNO, can get their degrees in biology or chemistry or whatever it might be and get into the biotech industry. I think we need to foster that interest in middle school.

Yes.

Maybe even in elementary. We have to make this be a real possibility for the individuals who will be the next innovators, but also for those who may foster those wraparound services. Everyone is not going to begin their own biotech company. That's obvious. However, a biotech company doesn't work in a silo. There's somebody who has to make packaging. There's someone who has to have a business that's going to have courier services. There's going to be a lot of ancillary business opportunities that come along with that. And I think we need to be thinking about preparing our students not only for one industry, but for all of the industries that can come along with it. But again, the first thing I think it needs to be is actually going through K through 12 and getting students interested in this field and even knowing what this field is. And I think that is a big barrier that needs to be crossed. And they need to see people who look like them in those fields, because otherwise it's not a reality.

You're absolutely right about that, Dr. Williams. We need to start early on in the educational process. to expose young people to different careers and different opportunities. Moving on from the individuals, what do you think it will take to attract industry corporations to New Orleans in the biosciences and biotech sectors?

So based on some of the conversations I've had with colleagues at Nimble, it really does start with the workforce. Companies don't want to go to places that don't have a ready workforce for them. Also, the environment of innovation around that, let's say that hub of industry is also going to be important, I believe. Maybe tax incentives. The state needs to be very intentional about what type of industries we're bringing here.

Yes.

We are in a situation right now where the petrochemical industry may not be a sustainable model for our economic health for the long term. Of course, we don't abandon petrochemical industries because they are the lifeblood of Louisiana right now.

Yes.

But being overly dependent on that one industry is probably not the best situation for us as a state. But I think of things similar to the Hollywood South Initiative. We drive many films to come here just primarily based off the tax credits that they're able to receive. If we utilize a similar model for biotechnology companies, not only what do I think it could bring them in, but they are not mobile companies as are these kind of Hollywood production companies, right? They can come in, they can invest for a period of time, and then they're gone. But if we get a Genentech or a Pfizer or someone to build a manufacturing facility in the city or in the state, They don't get up and leave. And those are typically well-paying jobs. And again, I'm harping on this, but the ancillary wraparound industries, opportunities that come along with that, they're difficult to measure. I'm not an economist, but I'm more than sure that they're going to be significant in bolstering the standard of living in Louisiana.

Absolutely. And diversifying the state's Economy is critical. As you mentioned, there is a shift toward clean energy, the energy transition, and we've been involved in that work with several other academic partners like LSU, Tulane, etc. Even in terms of that industry, as you mentioned, creating opportunities at different levels from the entry-level opportunity on up to entrepreneurship. will be critical in improving the city's economy and creating more opportunities. Xavier recently announced plans to establish a medical school, which is so exciting. Everywhere I go, people are asking about it. The excitement is building. I think we would be the 5th HBCU with a medical school. How do you envision Xavier's medical school contributing to the bioscience sector in the region?

So the key driver of establishing this medical school is the fact that we're going to have a doctor shortage in the nation, and it's going to be worse in Louisiana. Being the 2nd most populous state of African Americans in the country, that's going to increase the level of health disparities that we see as well. So we need the doctors.

Yes.

That's inherently a part of this. In addition, medical schools often serve as a hub of innovation in and of themselves. And then at a school like Xavier, we punch way above our weight class, I think.

Absolutely.

But we do run into some limitations with regard to advancing our research because we don't have access to clinical facilities. The way I envision this is that with our partnership with Ochsner, that'll kind of open the floodgates, if you will, of us being able to make translations from the— I'll even say the test tube to the cell culture to mice to xenografts all the way up through clinical trials. And if everything goes the way I envision it, that's exactly what's going to happen. And I think that kind of in and of itself has a synergistic effect. Because if you see that person from chemistry working with, with the medical school to actually have a compound that can eventually even be tested in, in humans and potentially have some therapeutic benefit, what does that tell the rest of us? It tells everyone we can move this process from the beginning all the way through the end at some level, at least.

I think it's also important to note our standing currently in the medical community in terms of Xavier producing the most African-American medical doctors in the nation, despite our small size, small but mighty. So establishing a medical school in partnership with Ochsner is a great direction for Xavier. And as you mentioned, to address the shortage of medical doctors, particularly African-American medical doctors. In closing, thanks so much, Dr. Williams. It's really always good talking with you, getting your perspective on all things research and innovation. Thanks again for joining.

Thank you for inviting me. And as usual, I look forward to brainstorming with you about the next direction for Xavier and just really our involvement in the biotech industry in the city.

Yes. Thankfully, you have been a key partner during my tenure at Xavier. So I really appreciate that, your support. And knowledge and educating me in all of the different areas of research because we have so much diverse research happening at Xavier and in our region. As always, our contact information and other informational links will be posted in the show notes. Make sure you check those out to learn more.

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