At a young age, Dr. Jane Buckner formed a hard and fast opinion about biology class– that it was tedious, unrelatable and nothing but memorization. She was more interested in creative pursuits, like playing the clarinet or exploring the outdoors. The curious nature she cultivated in her youth would find its way back into her professional life, and as it turns out, so would biology.
Biology became extremely relatable for Dr. Buckner, who received her MD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and now serves as president of Benaroya Research Institute (BRI). She continues to fuel her curiosity by running a lab dedicated to working with real patients – people experiencing autoimmune diseases who directly benefit from the power of bioscience research.
“Interactions with my patients inspired me to get into the lab and figure out what’s going on with autoimmune diseases,” Dr. Buckner recalled in making her start 30-plus years ago. “I always wanted to conduct research, specifically to learn more about my patients and their unique circumstances – ‘why’ they develop the disease and ‘how’ they respond to various treatments.”
Dr. Buckner’s affinity to investigate all things immunology and her connection to her patients contributed to what has become a world-class biorepository of blood and tissue samples that started 25 years ago and continues to unlock new immunological mysteries.
“The biorepository gives us a window into the human immune system both in healthy and disease states,” states Dr. Buckner with obvious pride. “It holds the answer to questions that I couldn’t have even imagined 25 years ago, or even 5 years ago. With so many technological breakthroughs on the immediate horizon, I believe these samples hold answers to some of our biggest questions, even those still to come.”
Just one example of the abundant success stories shared by Dr. Buckner was her team’s work studying regulatory T cells, trying to understand why they didn’t work in patients with type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that impacts more than 1.6 million Americans. The answer they discovered was regulatory T cells actually do work in type 1 diabetes. Her group’s experiment, using biorepository blood, showed that aggressive immune cells (effector T cells) are no longer listening to immune regulators, which was the opposite of their hypothesis.
“I kind of love being wrong when research tells me what the right answer is,” said Dr. Buckner. “This discovery changed the way we approach type 1 diabetes and how to look at potential treatments.”
And she had another story (or four) to back that up.
