November 13-15, 2015, UAB Microbiology Department faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and special guests gathered in Chattanooga at the Chattanoogan Hotel for our annual research retreat. This year’s retreat—number 24—was once more a wonderful opportunity for members of the department to focus on science and to establish new collaborations away from the distractions of everyday life.

It has been a long time since the retreat was last held in a metropolitan area. According to David Briles, Ph.D., this change in atmosphere worked well. “The excellent meeting facilities and the careful planning of both the micro administrative staff and the staff at the Chattanoogan gave us what we needed to have a very successful meeting,” says Briles. Even the staff at the Chattanoogan thought the meeting went well as they complimented our students saying that they were the best behaved group they had ever had.

Additionally, this was the first retreat to include non-trainee researchers. Lab assistants, technicians and visiting scientists were able to participate in all of the retreat activities. Several non-trainees presented posters with great success. Others like Stacy Hall (Novak lab) took advantage of discussing processes and procedures with researchers from other labs. “It was like breaking a hole in a brick wall,” says Hall. “I was able to connect with people I had never met and discuss some of the more technical aspects of procedures common to a wide variety of lab disciplines. It was really a great experience for me personally and professionally.”

The retreat began on Friday afternoon with talks by students and postdocs. The talks were varied and interesting and were followed by lively question and answer sessions. A poster session was next on the agenda, with 31 trainees and 4 non-trainee researchers presenting their research, a record number! Participants then went to one of two nearby restaurants, Public House and Meeting Place, for an offsite casual dinner. Student and postdoc presentations continued on Saturday morning. Faculty judges of these presentations uniformly agreed that they had a very difficult assignment due to the overall high quality of both talks and posters.

Before breaking for lunch on Saturday, Dr. Lund set up the retreat group photo, no small feat given the number of participants. After a buffet lunch, there was free time to explore the many sites of Chattanooga including the Tennessee Aquarium, rated as the best aquarium in America, and the Riverwalk.

A highlight of the retreat was the Saturday evening talk by keynote speaker Dr. Flavius Martin, a former postdoctoral fellow with John Kearney (1993-1998).

After leaving John’s lab, Flavius went into the biotechnology area, starting at Genentech, and is now Vice President and Head of Discovery Research Oncology and Inflammation at Amgen, Inc. in Thousand Oaks, California.  Amgen is the world’s largest independent biotech firm, and its two major biologics are currently Neulasta/Neupogen, analogs of granulocyte-colony stimulating factor used to stimulate production of infection-fighting granulocytes in patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy, and Enbrel, a soluble Tumor Necrosis Factor Receptor used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.

Flavius discussed ongoing efforts to harness the immune system to fight cancer by developing bifunctional antibodies that can target tumor cells and simultaneously recruit immune effectors. He also talked about  Amgen’s recent acquisition of deCode Genetics, an Icelandic biotech company that has sequenced the genomes of 1 out of every 100 people in that country and has corresponding clinical data. Given such extensive coverage and the relative genetic homogeneity of the Icelandic population, Amgen hopes to use this approach to identify new target genes for common disease such as Alzheimer’s. Dr. Martin’s talk was witty, informative, and very well received and provoked a lot of questions.

The retreat concluded on Sunday morning with three interesting talks by departmental faculty members, Drs. Ming Du, Michael Niederweis and Mark Walter, followed by the awards ceremony with closing remarks by department chair Dr. Fran Lund. The site and the science, along with tremendous help from the microbiology office, made for a great retreat.