Q&A with CBI fellow Dayanne Carvalho
Dayanne Carvalho is a chemistry PhD student at Stanford and part of the Chemistry/Biology Interface (CBI) Training Program at Sarafan ChEM-H. CBI is an interdisciplinary training program that supplements traditional degree-granting PhD programs at Stanford. The program aims to help scientists speak multiple scientific languages spanning chemistry, biology, engineering, and medicine, and enable them to tackle the most challenging and important problems facing human health. Carvalho sat down to talk with us about her journey as a chemist studying the molecules of neuroinflammation.
How did you become involved in your current research?
My background is in chemistry, more specifically, the chemical biology of sugars. Both human and bacterial cells decorate their surfaces with chains of sugar molecules that they use to identify other cell types that they might encounter. Bacteria use a much larger repertoire of sugars than humans do, and the immune system has learned to use these differences to identify invading pathogens and decide whether our bodies should mount a protective immune response.
That’s what I studied during my undergrad, and that’s how I fell in love with the immune system and how it plays a role in solving basically everything that goes wrong with our bodies. I thought that was very powerful. When I came to Stanford, I joined Dr. Lingyin Li’s lab because I wanted to expand our understanding of the molecules that build the immune response, particularly in neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases.
Can you give a few examples of these diseases and how you are trying to understand them?
I research multiple sclerosis and age-related neurodegeneration, and how to find new targets to treat them. I didn’t have a background in neuroscience when I came to Stanford, but I was always fascinated by how our immune and nervous systems interact and orchestrate nearly everything that goes on in our bodies. They are what makes us who we are. And what keeps us who we are, by maintaining homeostasis.
I was especially interested in neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases because none of the various treatments available for them work well. The failure rate for new Alzheimer’s Disease therapies, for example, is higher than 99%. We need to come up with new strategies to help these patients. I thought that combining my molecular expertise with neuroscience to manipulate the immune system to fight neurodegeneration would be the most exciting avenue to explore during my PhD.
What sorts of molecules are involved in neuroinflammation?
Previously, our lab found that a molecule called cGAMP has a very powerful role in promoting anti-cancer immunity. Cells release cGAMP when their DNA is damaged, which happens when they become cancerous. Because cGAMP drives an inflammatory process in the tumor microenvironment, it is beneficial for recruiting immune cells to fight tumors. But in the context of the nervous system, causing more inflammation is actually bad. Neurodegenerative disorders are often accompanied by inflammation, but we don’t yet understand what starts the inflammatory process and why it makes these diseases worse. The question I am trying to answer is whether cGAMP plays a role in driving neurodegeneration by unleashing brain inflammation. We’re trying to understand whether cGAMP is present in these diseases, what leads to its production, and how we might manipulate its signaling to treat paralysis and cognitive deficits.
Why were you attracted to the CBI program at ChEM-H?
Being part of a community that combines expertise in diverse areas like chemistry, biology, and engineering to solve problems in human health is something that spoke a lot to me. Being with people who have similar goals but who are approaching interdisciplinary research in slightly different ways is very inspiring to me—we’re all trying to use our unique backgrounds to make a difference in these fields. Meeting with my CBI peers to exchange ideas and discuss research openly and informally has been very helpful to my scientific journey.
What do you like to do for fun outside of the lab?
I really enjoy playing board games and tennis. Recently, I’ve been really into playing online chess!
What advice do you have for new CBI students?
Just dive in! When I got to Stanford and was able to start trying different flavors of science, I was so excited because I could finally do exactly what I envisioned doing. When you’re a researcher before grad school, you do not always have the skills and independence to answer the questions you want to answer. Now’s the time! So, just dive in and reach out to your peers if you ever need help or want advice.
Coming into neuroscience or immunology from a traditional chemistry background was a bit scary in the beginning. But I feel that if you take advantage of that unique molecular expertise, you can have very unusual insights that could reveal things that no one has ever thought about before. Going beyond what’s conventional for the field can lead you to make unexpected discoveries that could be very interesting and impactful.
Lingyin Li is a professor of biochemistry in the School of Medicine and Institute Scholar at Sarafan ChEM-H. She is also a core investigator at the Arc Institute, a member of Bio-X, and a member of the Stanford Cancer Institute.
