Debra and Jeffrey Laskin say scientific research is their family business
As kids, Jeffrey and Debra Laskin would work on science projects together. Later as graduate students they would talk about their future plans that always revolved around science. And for more than 25 years, the two, both trained in pharmacology and toxicology, have worked side by side on several National Institutes of Health funded research projects and more than 150 scientific articles and reviews.
Not a day goes by, they say, when they don’t see each other or talk on the phone. Earlier this month, the two shared in the announcement that the National Institutes of Health awarded Rutgers and UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center a five-year, $23 million grant to to continue their research developing drugs that could be used against chemical warfare agents from a terrorist attack.
“It’s hard to develop as a scientist and be successful without collaborators,” says Debra Laskin, Professor II and Chair of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy and the Roy A. Bowers Endowed Chair of Pharmacy. “This collaboration has really been productive because we trust each other. There is no jealousy or competition.”
Maybe that’s because scientific research has always been the Laskin’s family business.
Father, Sidney Laskin, who died in 1976 when Debra Laskin was a graduate student, was a toxicological scientist on the faculty of New York University (NYU). He was passionate about his work, she says, and was an inspiration to his family. At the beginning of his career, the elder Laskin worked on the Manhattan Project, the United States led research effort that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. Before he died, he invented systems for inhalation toxicology studies, some of which are still being used today.
While Debra Laskin, at first, thought she wanted to become a psychologist and earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in psychology at NYU and the City University of New York, it wasn’t until after her father’s death, while a graduate student in pharmacology and toxicology at the Medical College of Virginia, that she found her true calling. She would follow in her father’s footsteps and become a toxicological scientist.
Jeffrey Laskin, a professor of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and three years older, earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry and biology at NYU, and a doctorate in Pharmacology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute at SUNY in Buffalo. He was finishing up post-doctorate work at Columbia University in carcinogenesis and getting ready to start his research career in toxicology, pharmacology and cancer research when his sister decided to enter the family business.
And although brother, Steven, did not choose the same exact career path as his siblings, he, too, was drawn to the sciences, earning both a medical degree and a doctorate at NYU and specializing in neurology.
Their mother Laura, an antiques dealer in Somerville, says her husband would have been thrilled that they followed his footsteps into scientific research.
“All three of us had the same biology professor at NYU over the course of six years,” said Debra Laskin, “I tell people that Steven took copious notes, Jeff filled in the notes and I filled in the jokes.”
Both Laskins have been in their academic positions since the 1980s, Jeffrey at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Debra at Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy. Jeffrey started when programs in environmental sciences, toxicology and occupational medicine were being established at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Debra began a few years later when Rutgers was starting a new joint graduate program in toxicology.
It was a time, they say, when the field was exploding with possibilities and they were both involved in a career choice that seemed to be part of their genetic make-up.
Today, as members of the Rutgers/UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI), the two are part of a team racing to develop not only the pharmaceuticals needed to save the lives of people who could become targets in a terrorist attack, but also to devise the best methods for these drugs to be delivered.
The NIH $23.2 million grant awarded to Rutgers/UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, as well as the School of Public Health at New York Medical College, and the Health Sciences Program at Lehigh University -- all part of the CounterACT Center of Excellence -- will be used to develop drugs that could treat deadly, chemical poisons, such as mustard gas, which causes symptoms ranging from skin irritations and conjunctivitis to severe ulcerations, blistering of the skin, blindness and irreversible damage to the respiratory system.
“We understand that just because Osama bin Laden was killed, the threat of a terrorist attack is not over,” said Jeffrey Laskin. “We have made progress and believe that the drugs needed in case of a terrorist attack will be developed.”