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Dr. Kyle Cromer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. He completed his BS in Animal & Poultry Sciences at Virginia Tech and his PhD in Genetics at Yale University. Afterwards, he conducted postdoctoral research in Genetics at Harvard Medical School. Next he worked as a postdoctoral fellow and subsequently an instructor in Pediatrics at Stanford University before joining the faculty at UCSF. He has received various awards and honors over the past several years, including the Stanford Bio-X Star Mentor Award, the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy Career Development Award, the UCSF Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research New Frontier Research Award, the American Society of Hematology Junior Faculty Scholar Award, the Mary Anne Koda-Kimble Seed Award for Innovation from the UCSF School of Pharmacy, and the Catalyst Award from UCSF Innovation Ventures. In this episode, Kyle shares more about his life and science.
People Behind the Science Podcast Show Notes
Life Outside of Science (3:04)
Kyle has always been interested in visual art, and he enjoys visiting art museums and has dabbled in creating his own art as well. He and his wife have been stretching their own canvases and creating abstract paintings, each meticulously planned and sketched out in advance. Most recently, the two of them have been immersed in preparations for the birth of their first child.
The Scientific Side (5:09)
In his lab, Kyle takes gene editing a step further beyond just modifying “the typos” in DNA to correct them back to what the code should be. He uses genome-editing approaches to introduce new functions into cells for different therapeutic purposes.
A Dose of Motivation (6:19)
Fail fast.
What Got You Hooked on Science? (9:38)
Growing up on a cattle farm in rural Virginia, Kyle was inspired by the work that his father and grandfather did as veterinarians. He really liked animals, particularly cows, and he got involved with cattle shows, livestock judging, and other activities through his local 4-H and Future Farmers of America in high school. Kyle envisioned he might become a veterinarian, specializing in cattle and potentially cattle breeding, genetics, and cutting-edge reproduction technology. At the same time, he knew that being a cattle veterinarian was physically demanding, difficult, and sometimes dangerous work. In college at Virginia Tech, Kyle enrolled in a small class that was held in a biochemistry research lab. There, he began to realize that there were other paths that would allow him to do intellectually-stimulating work that was similar in some ways to what his father and grandfather did in their careers. On the practical side, Kyle also wanted a lifestyle with a routine that was sustainable and enjoyable. He liked the people he worked with in the lab, and it seemed like they really liked what they were doing. Kyle also wanted to do work that was important and meaningful to him, so he decided to pursue more clinically relevant research. In graduate school, he worked in a lab doing next generation sequencing to find mutations driving endocrine tumors. After graduating, Kyle took some time to reflect on what he wanted to do next, and this led him to the field of gene editing where he could not only identify the “typos” that caused diseases, but also fix the typos and introduce new properties into cells to treat or prevent diseases.
The Low Points: Failures and Challenges (25:35)
In Kyle’s lab, there was a case where they invested six months of time planning and performing experiments, just to have the experiments fail. It felt like a big waste of time, effort, and cost, but it was a valuable learning experience. Kyle learned that certain types of experiments may not be good candidates for his “fail fast” approach. This in turn informed his decisions on the kinds of projects he would pursue next.
Thinking about his career more broadly, one of the biggest challenges that he personally faced happened around the time he finished his PhD. Getting a PhD takes a long time, and he felt burnt out after grad school. Though there were a lot of contributing factors, a big part of Kyle’s feeling of burnout came from not knowing what he wanted to do. Kyle liked what he had been doing in his PhD, but he could see that the field would soon be changing, and it wasn’t clear what he should do next. So, once he completed his PhD, Kyle spent three months working on his family’s farm and then another three months backpacking through Southeast Asia. This time away was a good opportunity to reflect on his career, and he returned ready to get back to science.
A Shining Success! (31:27)
Starting a lab can be an uphill battle, but Kyle is excited to celebrate two recent papers that his lab published earlier this year. He is the last author on each of these papers, and his trainees are first authors. This represents a major transition from being the person doing the hands-on experiments that are being published to being the person who is leading and overseeing the experiments. It has been rewarding to train people in his lab to become good experimentalists and take that lead author spot. A lot of work went into these papers, and one of the projects began back in 2020, so there was a long road leading to publishing the results. Recently, Kyle and his lab members have been focused on another project where, after a lot of effort, things finally started working. Through small, incremental improvements, they’ve made it to the point where it’s now clear that they have solved the problem. This is one of the best feelings, and it is a meaningful accomplishment.
Book Recommendations (35:22)
A Brief History of the Female Body: An Evolutionary Look at How and Why the Female Form Came to Be by Dr. Deena Emera and My Life as an Indian: The Story of a Red Woman and a White Man in the Lodges of the Blackfeet by J. W. Schultz
Most Treasured Travel (39:44)
Science has given Kyle many opportunities to travel to new places, including international trips to Korea and Italy. However, one of Kyle’s most impactful travel experiences for science was a 2012 trip to San Francisco to attend a conference of the American Society for Human Genetics. The conference was held in the fall, right around the time winter was about to start in the Northeast where he was living at the time. He’d never explored San Francisco before, and Kyle was enchanted by the beautiful weather, the plentiful sunshine, and the charm of the city. Kyle and fellow lab members rented a house and took cable cars to the conference each morning, and he’ll never forget sleeping on the patio couch under the stars with the Golden Gate Bridge alight in the distance. While in town, Kyle went to the Museum of Modern Art, ran across the Golden Gate Bridge, and was immersed in the buzz of the city. He didn’t realize at the time that his career would bring him back to San Francisco to start his own research lab, but this trip may have planted the seed that ultimately drew him back.
Quirky Traditions and Funny Memories (42:22)
In Dr. George Church’s lab where Kyle was a postdoctoral fellow, there is a person named Joe Davis who works as a resident Artist-Scientist in the lab. This is a cool position, and Joe works on some remarkable projects. For example, Joe recruited lab members to visit the nuclear reactor with him at MIT to search for bacteria that could survive ultra-high doses of radiation. The thought was that if they could find microbes that could survive in high-radiation conditions, they could potentially understand how the organisms had evolved to survive those conditions. Then they may be able to use gene editing to engineer human cells that could better survive radiation. This information could be relevant in the future when humans may colonize other planets that may not have an ozone layer to shield the surface from high doses of radiation. Though they didn’t find anything on that visit, it was really fun. Thinking about this futuristic sci-fi scenario was exciting, and going into the nuclear reactor felt like traveling back in time to the 1950s with the walls of old monitors and dated technology.
Advice For Us All (50:34)
Stick with it. You have to invest a lot of time doing biology (or another profession) to really become an expert. It can take time to find your passion, but if you enjoy the routine and your day-to-day activities, you may find that your interest in an area grows over time. Every year Kyle spends working in this space, he enjoys it more and further improves his skills. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Go at your own pace to avoid burnout, and keep it fun for yourself. Some of Kyle’s favorite ideas happen when he’s not grinding away in the lab, but when he’s outside of work and his mind drifts back to his research. Also, be practical. When you’re choosing a career path, think about where that path leads and if you’ll be happy with the career prospects and the everyday activities involved in the kinds of jobs that are available in the field. With things like artificial intelligence changing the landscape of science and other areas, it can be almost impossible to predict what the future will hold. Recognize that there is uncertainty, but try your best to forecast how things may evolve.
Guest Bio
Kyle’s research lies at the intersection of CRISPR-based genome editing and cell engineering, with a special focus on hematopoietic stem cells and red blood cells. In his work, Kyle and his team think about the genome as computer code. In the instance of disease, the code is somehow broken. While it is possible to correct disease-causing typos, Kyle believes there is untapped potential to cure disease by engineering novel properties into cells. Therefore, all of his work in some way attempts to answer the question – if you could introduce new code to any cell in the body, what would you write and where? Outside the lab, Kyle enjoys making art—collages from old magazines and abstract paintings—as well as hiking, snowboarding, and distance running. At home, he loves unwinding with his wife and their chihuahua-terrier.
Support for this episode of People Behind the Science was provided by Innovative Research, Inc.
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