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The Evolution and Refinement of a Chemical Biology Training Program: A Canadian Perspective D. Scott Bohle*
Department of Chemistry, McGill University, 801 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal H3A 2K6, Quebec, Canada
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only ancillary interest. In a parallel manner, the textbooks of organometallic chemistry have evolved over the past 50 yr. We have every reason to believe that a similar fate awaits contemporary attempts to define chemical biology in an overly narrow or restrictive way. Perhaps a more enlightened way to proceed toward devising a graduate curriculum is phenomenological. What do the students of chemical biology study? What is it that the researchers in McGill University this field find important for their students to know? Here again, in our experience, the answers are as varied as the groups engaged in the field. Current graduate students enrolled in our chemical biology program typically take two of the three classes in bioorganic, biophysical, or bioinorganic chemistry. Students have taken classes in advanced spectroscopy, diffrac*Corresponding author, tion, organometallic chemistry,
[email protected]. ogy, materials chemistry, and supramolecular chemistry, in addition to those three classes. These courses naturally reflect those currently being offered, and the challenge is determining what new or combined Published online September 15, 2006 courses best meet the students’ needs. An important component of our chemical 10.1021/cb600316j CCC: $33.50 biology program is a fellowship scheme © 2006 by American Chemical Society Image courtesy of McGill University
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n April 2005, the McGill University chemistry department completely reorganized its graduate education curriculum by throwing out the traditional distinctions of organic, inorganic, physical, and analytical chemistries. They were replaced with the new subdisciplines of chemical biology, materials, synthesis/green/catalysis, and environmental/atmospheric chemistry. McGill is not alone in instituting this type of reorganization, but those familiar with academic inertia will appreciate the magnitude of the change. A year later, we are now well along in our experiment in education, and this article will attempt to synthesize the experience: its successes and outcomes, intended or not. Throughout this process, we have been surprised at how often the issue of what constitutes chemical biology comes up. Of course, many definitions exist about what chemical biology is (and is not), but in terms of establishing a curriculum, we have found these discussions often dead-end in semantic cul-de-sacs. This is by no means a new problem for emerging subdisciplines in chemistry; as a fledgling science, organometallic chemistry was once described as “concerning those compounds with metal– carbon bonds.” However, an examination of a recent issue of the ACS journal Organometallics clearly demonstrates that this restrictive early definition has aged, and many species described in that journal have no metal–carbon bonds or contain those of
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The demand from the students for courses in these new interdisciplinary areas is high.
funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health in 2002 to support, attract, and promote graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in chemical biology. This is a joint interdisciplinary program between the Faculty of Medicine’s departments of biochemistry and pharmacology and the Faculty of Science’s department of chemistry; ⬃20 one-year fellowships are available to students who are working in this area. These fellowships provide 100% support for graduate trainees and 50% support for postdoctoral researchers. A 50% match by the principal investigator is required for the latter. It is interesting trying to marry the divergent cultures found in medical and chemistry departments, and an almost equal split occurs in the numbers of students supported between the schools. To determine whether a project is eligible for these fellowships, we apply the operational, old-fashioned definition of chemical biology (1): “Chemical biology can be defined as the design or identification and the exploitation of novel small molecules as tools to investigate questions in biology” (Chemical Biology Research, McGill University, www. medicine.mcgill.ca/biochem/cihr/index_ big.html). However, we have found that a wide range of excellent students and their projects are accommodated by this definition. In terms of requirements beyond the core chemistry, the course load is minimal, limited to attendance of selected departmental seminars and two or three workshops over the course of the year. Four years after the program was instituted, the results are positive in terms of the number of students, papers, and presentations. However, the students voice lingering concerns: the cascade of acronyms used in many biomedical talks can be bewildering for the uninitiated, whereas the arcane subtleties of chemical mechanisms seem a trivial exercise for many of the biochemists. It remains a challenge to find the right participants for the seminar series. On the other hand, the workshops have been more successful and 486
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well-received and have included highthroughput screening, RNA silencing techniques, computational chemistry, and career choices upon graduation. The students have benefited from these workshops; in addition, the workshops have been well-received by volunteers from academia and industry who have made presentations. Where does this leave undergraduate education? A recent bold suggestion by the authors of one of the chemical biology textbooks is that “today physical chemistry is one of three pillars of teaching and research in chemistry departments worldwide, and it is foreseeable that in the not too distant future a branch focusing on the borderline between chemistry and biology will be the fourth pillar” (2). While chemical biology may very well evolve into the fourth pillar of chemical education, the current consensus here is that students need a strong fundamental background in their chosen science. We have not instituted a similar reform for undergraduate education; less latitude for change exists at this level because the courses are subject to accreditation by external agencies. Once again, though, we can look to what courses the students take outside of chemistry. Here, we find that chemistry students, both medicine- and science-bound, have opted to take rigorous courses in areas such as biochemistry and immunology. In one exceptional case, a student with a double major in chemistry and immunology has gone on to graduate school in chemical biology. Thus, the demand from the students themselves for courses in these new interdisciplinary areas is high: the challenge is to integrate this demand with the established programs. Perhaps this is the real issue: when will the established programs recognize the legitimacy of the students’ perceived educational needs? Another perspective on the construction of a chemical biology program is that of the future employers of our students: the BOHLE
academy and the biotechnical and pharmaceutical industries. Here, the response to the chemical biology subdisciplines has been mixed. The reception by traditional big pharma here in Montreal has been surprising. Some firms welcome our students and provide support for key parts of our lecture series. On the other hand, some firms repeat a mantra: “If we want a chemist to make things, we will hire a synthetic chemist who will make them and a biologist to evaluate them” or “There’s no point in coming out of graduate school knowing nothing more about synthesis than methods to produce amide bonds.” In spite of this dour assessment of chemical biology, we have found that many of our graduates have gone on to careers in the private sector—often to prepare new amides. In the future, we intend to refine our graduate education so that it further reflects the needs of our students in this area. In a dynamic, formative discipline such as ours, this process is by definition active as well as iterative. A chemist is motivated to work in chemical biology because of the simple fact that a sizeable amount of chemistry can be learned from our growing understanding of biology. We are in a remarkable period of discovery in this new subdiscipline, and no doubt many new ways of thinking about traditional chemistry will soon emerge from our collective efforts. Along the way, we may have to make and break a few amide bonds. Acknowledgment: The author gratefully acknowledges support from the CIHR, NSERC, CFI, and the CRC councils and schemes for their support of chemical biology at McGill.
REFERENCES 1. Schreiber, S. L. (1992) Using the principles of organic chemistry to explore cell biology, Chem. Eng. News 1992, 22–32. 2. Waldmann, H., and Janning, P. (2004) Chemical Biology, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, Germany.
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