Russ Middaugh
Sharing
His Love of Science
Charles Russell
(Russ) Middaugh, Iroquois, Arapahoe, PhD, is the Higuchi
Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the
University of Kansas. He is a biochemist with a passion for
science and a strong desire to bring more Indian people
into the sciences, particularly the biomedical sciences.
“Science is an addiction,” he says. “Once you get hooked,
you can’t get away from it. Scientists don’t do the rote
experiments, like you have in classrooms, where you usually
know beforehand what’s going to happen. On the contrary,
scientists have no idea what’s going to happen. About
two-thirds of the time, the results are mysterious, so we
do another experiment and then another. We ask questions.
We try to put everything together and make sense of it.
“Science isn’t the right career for everyone. But for some
people, once they see it and touch it and get involved in
it, they know it’s their life work.”
Drawn
to Science
As a young boy, Middaugh became addicted to science. “The
way I got interested in research was by reading mysteries.
I read a lot of Sherlock Holmes stories. But then I
realized that the real mysteries of life can’t be found in
mystery books. They have to do with such questions as: How
does life actually work? Where does disease come from? What
can we do to actually treat disease? These mysteries can be
attacked, if not solved, by science.
“I was influenced in a positive way by my father who isn’t
a scientist. He worked in personnel departments that
employed scientists. He told me, ‘Scientists have nothing
but fun. If I had my life to live over again, I’d be a
scientist.’
“My father took me for long walks. We’d look at things and
ask, ‘What is this? How does it work? How does it fit into
the world?’ We had a great time, and doing this created a
drive in me.
“My mother died very young of melanoma. It was a horrible
thing to see. That had a strong influence on me wanting to
do something biomedical. Now, the older I get, the more
convinced I am that a good portion of research needs to be
more strongly focused on specific biomedical problems.
Basic science is important, but we need more funds for
immediate problems. Many academic scientists wouldn’t agree
with me.
“Many young Native people and Native scientists live in an
environment where certain diseases, such as alcoholism and
diabetes, have a major impact. This leads to their walking
in the door to meet with me. I like when they do that.
“When students come to me saying they are interested in
research, we get them doing research right away. They work
with a post-doctoral student, a technician, or someone
else. Within weeks or months, they are functioning as
researchers. It’s not hard to do. They have to break
through the barrier of specialized language. Scientific
language isn’t as difficult as a foreign language. Within
weeks, they’ll say, ‘This isn’t so hard. It’s really
interesting and fun.’”
Charting
his course
After
completing high school in Hayword, California (the Bay
area) and then spending a couple of years in the army in
the late 1960s in the Viet Nam era, Middaugh attended the
University of California at Santa Cruz where he earned a
joint bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology. Next he
earned his PhD in biochemistry at Cornell University
Graduate School of Medical Sciences. This included some
work at Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. “The
Kettering Institute helped stimulate my interest in making
my work relevant to human disease,” he acknowledges.
“When I took my first faculty position at the University of
Wyoming in the Department of Molecular Biology, my work was
very human disease oriented. I worked on diseases that are
involved with protein solubility, like sickle cell disease,
cataract formation, and various kinds of immunological
diseases. As much as I loved living and working in Wyoming,
the lack of a medical center in Wyoming limited to some
extent what I could do.
Working in industry
“That ultimately resulted in my working for Merck and
Company [a pharmaceutical company]. They were working on a
number of proteins that I was interested in. That was my
first real introduction to the pharmaceutical world in any
serious way. I spent about 9 years there. I was a senior
scientist and was responsible for directing the departments
of formulation and delivery for proteins, vaccines, and
gene therapy.
“In industry people are very focused on developing drugs.
Most of the research is highly focused on individual
projects that have the potential to produce a product.
Companies don’t survive if they don’t do that.
Working in Academia
“I liked my time in industry, but I knew there was no time
to work on the many problems that interested me. In
contrast, in academia the individual has a great deal of
freedom to choose what he or she wants to work on. So I
made the decision to return to academia.
“One of the reasons I chose the University of Kansas was
because of the university’s linkages with Haskell Indian
Nations University. I wanted to be more directly involved
with my Indian heritage.
“Here at the University of Kansas, I have remained very
focused on areas that are of interest to industry. Many of
us in the department are interested in drugs and vaccines.
That distinguishes us from many other academic departments.
Even today I have extensive collaborations with the
pharmaceutical industry.
“It takes about 2 million dollars a year to run my lab. Of
that amount, close to half comes from industry. The other
half is from government funds. Most other academic labs
receive almost all of their funding from the government.
“Industry supplies many of the ultra expensive materials we
work on. If I had to buy them it would cost me hundreds of
millions of dollars. I get them for free. So that has been
a huge stimulus to our current research.”
Combating
Human Diseases
At the
University of Kansas, Middaugh runs a large lab with about
30 people who are engaging in a variety of projects many of
which focus on human diseases. “Our biggest effort right
now is directed toward stabilizing vaccines for the
developing world,” says Middaugh. “Most effective vaccines
aren’t readily available in the developing world because
they aren’t very stable. There’s no way to get them to the
patient. If you have to get vaccines to a doctor’s office
in a small town in Iowa, you can use trucks with
refrigerators and freezers. Even our airplanes are equipped
that way. We call that the “cold chain” – maintaining drugs
in a cold state so they don’t become inactivated. But if
you want to get a drug to a small village in Africa or
South Africa or Asia, it’s another story. Sometimes even
though we get them there, the drugs are inactivated by the
time they arrive.
“This is a huge problem, so we’re devoting about one-third
of our effort to trying to take existing vaccines and
vaccines that are in development and create much more
stable vaccines that can survive essentially anything.
We’re also trying to get vaccines into forms where they are
easy to deliver, for example, without having to use
needles.
Shigellosis is a highly infectious form of dysentery caused
by the shigella bacterium. We’re developing an
understanding of how the organism invades cells in humans.
Ultimately we’re trying to develop a vaccine. We’re also
part of a consortium trying to develop a vaccine directed
toward Valley Fever, a disorder that’s endemic to the
Southwest, primarily California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
It’s a fungus, not the usual virus or bacteria.
“We also are concerned with biomaterials, particularly
spider silk. We’re trying to understand the molecular basis
for its unusual properties. It’s actually stronger than
steel, yet very elastic, so potentially it’s a great
biomaterial. For example, you could use it to make sutures
for surgery. Years ago when I was at the University of
Wyoming, I worked with Randy Lewis on spider silk. When I
went into industry, he kept going with the project and went
much further. Now we’ve joined forces again. He has cloned
all the genes for the spider silk. We already know how to
make synthetic spider silk. Our goal is to make a spider
silk that might even be better than the natural spider
silk.
Fostering
Students’ Interest in Science
Middaugh
teaches in the pharmacy program at KU. He is passionate
about wanting to draw students, particularly
underrepresented minorities, into the sciences. He knows
that entry-level courses in chemistry, physics, biology and
math can be dry, so he makes science fun. “I teach a course
called ‘The Scientist in Film and Literature’ where we
present science and scientists in the context of novels,
poetry, drama and film. It’s a fun class to teach. I change
the books every time I teach. Some of the films we’ve seen
are The Double
Helix,
Glory
Enough for All, which is
about the discovery of insulin, and The Band
Play On, which is
about HIV. A personal favorite is Never Cry
Wolf. It’s about a
biologist, and it has a very strong Native American context
to it. [A governmental researcher is sent to study the
“menace” of wolves in the North and learns about the true
nature of the species.]
“I also teach courses about controversies in science, such
as global warming, the origin of life, and the origin of
language. One course deals with 18 controversies.
“I confess my favorite is a class on the working Border
Collie. One of my hobbies is raising and training Working
Border Collies. I’ve become very interested in all aspects
of these dogs. The Dog Genome Project is partly focused on
Border Collies because of their unusual behavior patterns.
The scientists are trying to understand the genetic basis
of the collie’s behavior. The course includes students
visiting my sheep farm where they directly interact with
dogs - from little puppies to highly trained adults. We get
to see Babe
and
other films, including training films about Border Collies.
We read a very famous book called Nop’s
Trials by Donald
McCaig. It’s a fun book. Many students are freshman or
sophomore, but some are seniors. Most of the classes are
oversubscribed. There’s lots of student participation.”
Haskell-KU Partnership
Middaugh worked
with Marigold
Linton, Director
of American Indian Outreach at KU, in writing the
National Institutes of Health grants that are
strengthening and increasing the biomedical science
programs available to Native American students. In fact,
he is principle investigator of the Institutional
Research and Academic Career Development Award that
supports 9 minority postdoctoral fellows who work in
KU’s research laboratories and also teach at Haskell.
“Having the postdocs teach at Haskell helps us to
dramatically expand Haskell’s science program,” he says.
“One of our goals is to make Haskell the center of
American Indian science. We’re not there yet but we’re
pushing it along.
“We hope all of our graduates will help American Indian
students, who are interested in the sciences, find a way
into the sciences.” Some graduates can do this by teaching
in tribal colleges and other institutions that serve Native
Americans. Others might even set up small, college-based
research programs in which they can involve undergraduates.
Middaugh’s well-loved sciences classes and his mentoring
are linked to the other grant projects. Linton says that
Middaugh is eager to interest Haskell students in the
biosciences. “He likes to have students in his lab, so when
the Haskell Bridges students are in the process of
selecting a KU mentor, he is often one of the first
scientists to make a presentation to them about the work in
his lab.”
Advice
“Any student
interested in biomedical research should study as much
basic mathematics, chemistry, physics, and biology as
possible,” recommends Middaugh. “The stronger your
background in physical chemistry and physics, the better
equipped you are to enter modern science. .
“Also, read, read, read all the time. Read about many
different things, both within and outside of science. For
most scientists, creativity arises from seeing
relationships that other people haven’t seen. By reading
outside your own area and bringing new ways of looking at
the world to science, you can sometimes make creative
breakthroughs.
“Many people have trouble being creative because they come
at the subject the same way that they’ve been trained. It’s
hard to be innovative when you’ve been trained only in a
specific way.
“Most students today don’t have good communication skills.
That really hurts them. When you read, I think it’s also
important to pay attention to the way people express
themselves. Both written and spoken communication skills
are of extreme value in science.”
Challenges
and Rewards
“For some
Native American students, entering the biomedical sciences
is a little like walking into a room filled with people
that you don’t know who are doing things you don’t
understand. After bumbling around for a few minutes, it’s
easy to just walk out. But I think the best thing you can
do is find someone who’s sympathetic and interested in you.
Grab on to that person a little bit. People want to help
you. Give them a chance to help you. Let them slowly bring
you in. It’s not an easy thing. But it’s absolutely worth
it.
“When I get up in the morning, I look forward to coming in
to work. I never say, ‘Ah, I wish I didn’t have to go to
work today.’ I know that something interesting happens
every day. Sure, there are some problems. But the awards
far exceed the problems!”
This
article was originally published in the Summer 2005 issue
of
Winds of Change.
(The cover
artist is the late Roy Thomas, Ojibwa
(1949-2004).