Unusual relationship forged via research commitment
In the nerve-wracking moments before he fired up the PowerPoint to defend his neurology dissertation on Sept. 3, Matt Wagoner could look into the audience at the Biotech Center and take comfort.
His biker friends were there in full regalia. And they thoughtfully brought an extra set of body armor, just in case he needed it.
Matt Wagoner, a postdoctoral student in assistant professor Avtar Roopra’s neurology lab, welcomes Ken Schuck, left, and UW Biotron employee John Newton, center, members of the motorcycle group Dual Sport Riders. They were on campus for Wagoner’s thesis defense at the Genetics-Biotechnology Center Earlier epilepsy research by Wagoner and Roopra identified a controlling gene called REST that is also involved in especially aggressive forms of breast cancer. Wagoner and Roopra became friends with the motorcyclists after the group participated in the annual Wisconsin Dual Sport Ride for Research and made a $5,000 donation to further support the lab’s research.
Photo: Jeff Miller
You wouldn’t normally expect to see bikers at a molecular biology talk titled “Regulating REST function and Splicing in Aggressive Cancers,” but the Wisconsin Dual Sport Riders have developed a unique relationship with the laboratory of Wagoner’s thesis adviser, Avtar Roopra.
Roopra, an assistant professor of neurology, has received several checks from the group’s Ride for Research, and reciprocated by bringing his lab on field trips to Wisconsin’s Northwoods, where the bikers ride through the Nicolet National Forest to raise money for breast and colon cancer research. (They occasionally hit trees and rocks, hence the body armor.)
On a June evening this summer, people driving through the forest town of Wabeno saw a flashing sign in front of the giant lumberjack statue that read “UW Cancer Expert Speaks Tonight.” Inside the Wabeno fire department, Roopra and Wagoner explained their research on the REST gene, which plays a role in especially aggressive breast cancer.
Roopra says he enjoys sharing his work with others.
“The ‘Wisconsin Idea’ is that the boundaries of the campus extend to the boundaries of the state,” says Roopra. “The people of Wisconsin support our laboratory. Sharing our findings with them is the perfect way to show our appreciation.”
The next morning, the riders took off to ride 150 bumpy and muddy miles through the national forest to raise money for cancer research. And the lab members helped serve lunch. Over the years, the group has raised nearly $100,000, and ride organizer John Newton says at least one member owes his life to UW cancer pioneer Paul Carbone. But Newton says it is great to have a direct connection with the scientists doing the research.
“It’s nice to know where it is going,” says ride organizer John Newton, who works on campus as an HVAC expert at the UW Biotron. “We didn’t want it just to go to a shiny building where they’d use it to buy chairs to match the carpet.”
Two years ago, Newton’s wife, Sue, saw a local television report on a discovery made in the lab. Roopra is an expert on a gene called REST that was important in epilepsy. But after his sister, Gurcharan Roopra-Ryatt, was diagnosed with breast cancer, he wondered if REST, a powerful gene that turns on and off nearly 2,000 genes in the human body, also played a role in breast cancer.
A screening panel devised by Wagoner suggested that it did play a role, but there was precious little money to pursue the intriguing finding further.
“All of our other pots of money were dried up, we were surviving on an epilepsy grant and I was getting notes telling me to start laying off people in my lab,” Roopra recalls. Getting grants for cancer research isn’t easy when your lab is known more for its work in epilepsy.
Enter the Dual Sport Riders and their extremely fortuitous first check for about $5,000.
With this funding and a later grant from the National Institutes of Health, the team discovered that REST was indeed important in breast cancer. An altered version of REST, which had some of its code spliced in the wrong spot, showed up in about 20 percent of breast cancer tumors. And these tumors turned out to be the most aggressive ones, recurring in about 50 percent of women in a span of just three years. Their nastiness seems to spring from the fact that a normal REST gene turns off tumor-promoting genes, but a spliced REST allows tumors to grow wild.
The paper, published in the June 10 edition of the open access journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) Genetics, was dedicated to the memory of Roopra’s sister, a university lecturer in his native England. She died in 2008 of breast cancer.
“Her cancer was the inspiration,” Roopra notes. “Your personal life does color the way you do science.”
A few weeks ago, the riders presented the lab with another check, and took a picture of everyone wearing pink lab gloves to support breast cancer research. At the end of his thesis defense, Wagoner thanked the riders, saying, “You’re a big part of this and the reason that we all work so hard.”
And he recalled that two year ago, he was nervous about meeting them.
“I said, “Avtar, there are bikers and they want to meet me,’” Wagoner recounts in a high, squeaky voice. “He told me, ‘You will go and meet with them and wear a coconut bra, if that’s what they want.’”
Fortunately for everyone, that wasn’t at all what they had in mind.