In conversation with the Chief Editor

Abstract

An interview with Facundo D Batista, The EMBO Journal new Editor‐in‐Chief.

An interview with Facundo D. Batista, The EMBO Journal new Chief Editor. Facundo D. Batista has shaped our understanding of the molecular and cellular biology of B‐cell activation. In 2016, he relocated his lab to Massachusetts General Hospital/M.I.T./Harvard’s Ragon Institute to explore the translational potential of two decades of basic research in B‐cell biology. The interview was conducted by Thiago Carvalho.

Thiago Carvalho (TC): What inspired you to pursue a career in science? Facundo D Batista (FDB): I was very inspired by my undergraduate course on molecular biology at the University of Buenos Aires. The course was given for the first time, and we were taught the basic techniques of handling DNA, producing insulin, and so forth. Two professors in the course, Daniel Goldstein and Alberto Kornblihtt, really primed us to open our horizons and encouraged training in centers of excellence abroad. I did not speak any English at all, and applying to graduate school in the United States and doing the GRE was impossible for me. I would not have passed. Then, an opportunity to go to Italy and get experience in institutes that could provide me with better training came up. If I recall correctly, we were the first generation of Argentinian biology graduates—myself, Pablo Pomposiello, and many others—that left Argentina looking for a PhD. In general, people would try for a postdoc.

I applied to a PhD program in Italy. I went with an open ticket for a year. If I had not passed the ICGEB/SISSA (Trieste) examination, I had three thousand dollars to travel around, and then I would go back to Argentina. I had never been in Europe before. So, for me it was an experience. What happened was that I was very lucky to be admitted in probably the first generation of this new institution, the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Italy. In three years, I finished my PhD, and then, to be honest, as an Argentinian in Europe, I did not have many postdoctoral funding opportunities either.

TC: How did you move from Trieste to Cambridge’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology?

FDB: I found Michael Neuberger’s laboratory to be very appealing, and I wrote to Michael. He replied to me, in a letter that I still keep, that—if I was able to obtain a fellowship—he would take me in his laboratory. A wonderful thing about EMBO was that it would recognize the country where you did your PhD when considering postdoctoral fellowship applications, giving me access to this important funding support. ¹

It was the very early days of diversity—the notion that people could be eligible for support based not only on their nationality, but also on their “scientific nationality”. It gave me a unique opportunity.

TC: It was also an opportunity to meet another source of inspiration for you, César Milstein

FDB: César was not well at the time, he had heart problems. But I met him, and I felt very close because Michael was working with César, and he worked next door. For me, walking in those corridors with César Milstein and several other Nobel Prize winners—you know, Aaron Klug and Max Perutz—it was a dream. I could not believe that you could have lunch with these wonderful people, and they would come and talk to you, not as Dr. Klug or Dr. Milstein, but they would be César, Aaron, and Max. That for me was totally mind‐changing, together with my relationship with Michael, whom I love. They completely changed my perspective on science.

TC: What do you remember most about Michael Neuberger as a mentor?

FDB: What was incredible about Michael was his clarity. You would present any biological problem to him, and he would crystallize in one sentence what the real question behind it was. He was amazing. Michael would enter into a state of thinking where he would stop looking at you and would start looking up at a wall and would start to concentrate for those 10, 20 minutes that you’d explain the problem. Then, he would come up with critical questions and he would be critical to the bones. I think that that is something that science has lost these days. I think that this notion of going deep into critically asking the right scientific questions has been lost as a tradition. It is something that I try to transmit to my postdocs and PhD students: Scientific criticism is not about personal or emotional evaluation. It is really about trying to nail down what the question is and how a project develops. I think that is what I remember most of Michael, his commitment to the people that worked with him and who surrounded him and that deep thinking and constant challenging about what is the next step.

TC: In 2002, you started your laboratory at the London Research Institute

FDB: I was at one stage considering staying at the LMB with my independent lab, and César and Michael were very supportive of that. But then came the opportunity to join the LRI—which at the time was still the ICRF. I was the last employee recruited (to the ICRF), and it was wonderful. The notion of changing environments again, changing colleagues. The LMB was not an immunology institute. It was a general research institute and the ICRF at that time was similar, with very little immunology. I have always valued the whole spectrum of biology from mathematical modeling to quantitative biology to biochemistry to technological inputs, to development, and so forth.

TC: Your LRI laboratory revealed entirely new aspects of the molecular and cellular biology of B lymphocytes—one was the existence of organized membrane structures reminiscent of the immunological synapse first described in T cells that were crucial for activation. What are the implications of the immunological synapse for B‐cell function?

FDB: It was a concept that was resisted by the B‐cell field. The notion at the time was that B cells would get activated by soluble antigens. But if you think about it, that does not make any sense. You will never reach a physiological concentration of a ligand that will allow you to engage a receptor in vivo at a low affinity. So in order to reach that concentration, you need to aggregate antigen on the surface of other cells first. And that makes the whole process much more efficient. It not only localizes the process into lymph nodes or spleens, but it also allows focusing the response into what the arrangement of a membrane is. I was not the first—the notion that antigens are on follicular dendritic cells was well‐established by early experiments. But I think our work transformed the field. A lot of laboratories have incorporated the notion that stimulating cells at the level of membranes changes the way that receptors perceive signals. This does not apply only to the B‐cell receptor, it applies to chemokines too, many of them are also coating the surface of other cells and that helps guide the signals that cells receive.

I think that it is an important concept that is likely to be applicable to vaccines. There are several papers now showing that helping to aggregate antigens on the surface of macrophages or dendritic cells makes antigens more potent by driving them more efficiently into where they are used in follicles and lymph nodes.

TC: What prompted your pivot to translational research?

FDB: I had learned a lot about basic principles of B‐cell biology and antibody responses, but on model antigens. I felt at the time that translating that into humans and trying to understand how vaccines could be improved was an important step. I always like to recognize mentors or people who influenced me and one person who really influenced me in this thinking was Dennis Burton at Scripps. He was very early to incorporate into his HIV vaccine and antibody research people like me or Michelle Nussenzweig that were coming from basic B‐cell immunology to try to help to think about how vaccines can be improved. I decided to take a risk. I left a tenured, core‐funded position at the best institution in Europe to lead the Ragon Institute with Bruce Walker—I am the Associate Director and he is the Director—and brought my years of expertise at the ICGEB, LMB, LRI, and CRICK to a unique environment that is based on translational research. There is the incredible ecosystem of Harvard, MIT, and MGH, and the notion is to incorporate technologies and to incorporate immunology to tackle incredible challenges, like COVID‐19 is today.

TC: Are there any major initiatives that you plan to focus on at The EMBO Journal?

FDB: One of the things that I would really like to do is to involve the younger generations in the journal. I think that we have an opportunity for direct “translation”. I mean, EMBO has EMBO postdoctoral fellowships and EMBO young investigators, involving early career European scientists, but also scientists across the globe. We are discussing initiatives like, for example, inviting postdocs from different laboratories to present at the editorial meetings. The EMBO Journal has an open‐door policy in terms of people wanting to participate in the editorial meetings.

I think that we have amazing scientists around the world that can really bring new views as to where the journal should be going. I feel strongly about that and about keeping a real sense of diversity in the journal, in terms of fields, in terms of gender, in terms of race, in getting people involved from Brazil, getting people involved from China, getting people involved from Japan, from across the globe. EMBO is no longer a European journal. EMBO is a journal whose office faces Europe, but it has a global outlook.

TC: Early in their career, many researchers do not feel comfortable engaging with editors

FDB: I sent one of my first papers as an independent P.I. to EMBO. That paper was editorially rejected. I replied to that rejection, saying that EMBO should stop publishing just biochemistry, and that they needed to appreciate the importance of quantitative cell biology. The paper was ultimately sent to review and accepted. What was also very positive was that a later review of the scope of The EMBO Journal came to a similar conclusion. That resulted in my appointment to the editorial advisory board of The EMBO Journal (I was not an EMBO member at the time). The positive message is that the journal very much welcomed receiving feedback. That was what made me like the journal. I felt that the journal was ready to listen, to change.

This is not my journal. It is the community’s journal. I am just playing a role, putting in some time and effort. There are a lot of things that I do not see and other young people could see, and I am looking for inspiration there, to listen and translate those things into good policies for the journal. I think that this is important and I think that this is at the basis of what I want to be as a chief editor.

The EMBO Journal (2021) 40: e108116.