Neurobiologist Mootaz Salman investigates the human brain
and its diseases
Dr. Mootaz Salman is what people would call a model scientist with an unusual career path.
From the UK to the US and Iraq, Mootaz has been all over the globe and one can call a “global citizen”, he tirelessly seeks to broaden and apply his scientific knowledge while pursuing his passion for research and learning.
For him, everything is possible as long as you set your mind to it and the word “impossible “can do nothing but stimulates him to challenge it.
Currently he works as a Group Leader in Cellular Neuroscience and MRC Career Development Fellow at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics (DPAG) and Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery at Oxford University. His international research team is interested in all things “brain”, but particularly the blood-brain barrier and neurodegenerative diseases. Mootaz further investigates aquaporins, water-filled membrane channels. He shares this fascination with one of his idols, Prof. Peter Agre (Nobel Laureate and Science Diplomat).
Outside of the laboratory, Mootaz supports young scientists as a STEM ambassador, but he can also be found on the football field where he enjoys playing a striker (surprise!), at concert or in the club showing off the most impressive dance moves.
We sat down with the ever-busy Mootaz to discuss his career and how he inspires future generations of scientists.
Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up and when did you know you were going to be a scientist?
I took a bit of an unusual career path starting at the University of Mosul, a city in the north of Iraq. I decided to study in Iraq for my clinical pharmacy degree, and because of this, I feel quite privileged to have my hand in both eastern and western culture. I am proudly able to label myself as a “global citizen” doing science with people of different cultures and backgrounds, which I am putting into practice every day.
For a couple of years, I worked as a clinical pharmacist and in hospitals. This is something I was quite passionate about, but I needed to take a break because I was working in a ward with children who had leukemia. This was an emotionally draining experience.
I then took a drastic turn and worked in industry as a pharmaceutical consultant. People normally talk about how hard it is to switch from academia to biotech or industry or jumping back to academia. What I have learned in life is that everything is possible if you set your mind to it, so I turned around and left industry to be at the bench and become a basic researcher.
That was when I went back to Sheffield for my master’s degree in pharmacology and biotechnology at Sheffield. After the completion of my PhD, I moved to the US and did a postdoc in Boston (Massachusetts), working at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.
I should add that my scientific journey started in the hospital ward. I was a patient after a car traffic accident, and I experienced first-hand the lack of therapeutic options for brain injuries. That was one of the major triggers for me to investigate this area in particular. I am quite happy to share that we are currently preparing for phase I/II clinical trials for new treatments in this field.
Did you already have the idea that you wanted to be a scientist when you were young?
I was always a curious boy.
Both my mom and my dad are professors in inorganic chemistry. I felt that science was our only craft and I was a bit rebellious in wanting to do my own thing at first. I was always fascinated by the idea of how someone could leave a massive fingerprint on humanity by discovering something that could improve the lives of so many people. That idea and my accident influenced my decision on which disciplines and what research I should tackle.
Traumatic brain injuries and stroke lead to 75 million patients per year and cause about 3 million deaths, with no real treatment. Then there is neurodegeneration, which my group and I have been working on for the last couple of years.
I basically skipped medical school to go into pharmacy school because I always believed that I could be more productive on the side of developing treatments rather than dealing with patients.
How did your university experience shape you as a scientist?
My undergraduate work at the University of Mosul was very solid in the clinical sciences and I learned first-hand how to deal with patients. This is really hard to achieve elsewhere. What I realized though, at the University of Mosul, is the lack of advanced research labs. If I wanted to discover something, I needed to be on the bench. That was the trigger for me to go for my graduate degree back at Sheffield. There, I saw first-hand how you could train people from various backgrounds to do things like handling cell cultures, for example. As someone who was on the clinical side at that time,
I did not pay much attention to understanding these technologies, let alone doing them myself. It was such an excitement and privilege to become part of that.
Finding these experiences comes from finding mentors who lead by example or inspire you. I primarily stayed with the same team throughout my education because of the people and because of the questions they were tackling at the time.
Sheffield Hallam University is a decent medium size university but nothing near the level of the Ivy League, for example. My education was more about what we were doing. Is it valuable? Is it something that would allow me to wake up on Saturday morning and leave bed to go to the lab willingly? If the answer is yes, then I am doing the right thing. Otherwise, it is just a job.
Did/Do you have a mentor who helped/helps you navigate your career?
I believe that I would never be here without the support from my mentors, in particular the Aquaporin Team consisting of Professor Roslyn Bill, Dr. Matthew Connor, Dr. Alex Connor, and my best co-author Dr. Philip Kitchen. We are really a family and we like and enjoy working together.
I always feel like I could ask them for help and advice about particular milestones and career choices. Scientists face a lot of pressure and it is so important to find people who are always there for you to provide the best of their advice.
That is an essential element of what I can call my successful journey so far.
How easy was the transition from a postdoctoral researcher working at Harvard University to a Principal Investigator at Oxford University who must manage a whole research team? Do you have any advice for people who are about to make this big step?
To be honest, it is not easy at all. Sometimes people think it is about having your papers or having your grants, but it is also personal readiness and understanding what the job takes. I still remember a conversation when I published my Cell paper with one of my colleagues Prof. Florian Winau from Harvard Medical School. He told me that I got this big paper, a couple of other papers and a grant, so I should start leading my own lab. I, however, was not ready because I was always thinking that I will be responsible for the future of other people who put their trust in me for their careers. They are making huge decisions like leaving their families or their hometowns to come and join my lab. If you do not have the necessary skills to support them, then you are being selfish in stepping up when you are not ready. I believe this will always backfire.
For me, stepping up probably took a bit longer than it should have and I might have missed a couple of chances, but if I look back, I would change nothing. I believe I waited long enough to be ready to take a team and be responsible for all the trust that funding bodies, collaborators, team members and department colleagues put in me. This takes a lot of planning, doing and aligning many things we are not necessarily trained to do.
Scientific careers are first based on how good you are with the science and doing the experiments. When you lead a group, you are hired for something else entirely, namely resource management, project leadership and mentorship among others. Fortunately, today, training is provided in each one of these elements and I have personally benefited from it. We believe that we know the right way to hire a team member, for example, until someone else show you a better way to do it.
When I started as a PI, it took about 6 to 8 months before I hired the first postdoc. This was because I was tracking every single essential purchase before they started. You do not want to bring in people and start the clock on their careers when the lab is not ready for them.
Also make sure you are always being transparent with your team about your career aspirations. If you receive a better offer from somewhere else, let them know. When you are writing grants, get them involved and do not be scared of giving them their independence. Bring them into your shared vision instead. If they are good people, they will appreciate your support and they will pay you back by becoming long term collaborators.
You cannot imagine how many nights I lost sleep just because I was thinking of how I could make that transition easier for certain team members. I was always being helped and I feel like this is my way of paying it back to society. It honestly does not take much to be a good mentor, which I am trying my best to be one. You need to be kind, compassionate and understanding, and these are supposed to be basic human instincts. Unfortunately, sometimes in science, because how competitive it is, people forget about these basic human qualities. I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by people who reinforced these things in me and I want to pass them to the future generations of scientists.
Your laboratory studies neurodegenerative diseases and the blood-brain barrier (BBB). What aspects are you and your team particularly interested in?
We are interested in the role of the blood brain barrier in neurodegeneration and dementia. There is always that chicken and the egg debate in the field on whether the neurons start going bad first, affecting the integrity of the blood brain barrier which will then leak, allowing in agents that are not supposed to be in the brain, or if it is actually the other way around. Does the blood brain barrier become leaky first, affecting the neurons? The blood brain barrier involvement in Alzheimer disease has been established and there is more recent evidence about its role in Parkinson disease and other neurodegeneration diseases.
We are using stem cells from patients and differentiate them into blood brain barrier components and neurons. We will mix and match between neurons carrying particular mutations that are known to be implicated in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and rotate that mutation across the cells to try to understand the cell’s autonomous and non-autonomous mechanism involved in the pathophysiology.
We build and develop advanced 3D models of brain-on-a-chip technology and through this we will be able to incorporate mechanical biological factors like blood pressure and shear stress which are nearly impossible to model using in vivo animal models. We are then promoting more humanized research and we aim to cut down the use of animal research. This does not mean that we are ready to replace it but I think we are taking huge advantage of the FDA Modernization Act of 2022 when they began promoting the use of organoids and brain-on-a-chip technologies in order to advance the translational aspect of research.
Do you have career milestones you like to look back upon?
I believe one of my biggest moments is that call at 4:00 AM in the morning from my mentor at the time, Professor Roslyn Bell, telling me that our paper got accepted in Cell. I will never forget that because it was a fight for us and a journey about determination.
I also think about the moment when I was accepted to Harvard Medical School and walked along all those huge marble buildings. I was like a kid in the Disneyland. I also believe coming back to Oxford was a milestone because Oxford for me is a quite a special city, with all the history and heritage that you walk through every day. It is quite inspirational.
Besides being a research group leader, you have been a STEM ambassador for years. What have you learned about the future of science from working with young people?
One of the most rewarding experiences in our job is to connect with young, talented, motivated, driven people and show them something that gives them an “aha” moment. I have also learned that we need to always keep in touch with young people about motivating them to pursue their career in science. This extends to patients as well and that is why my group is always arranging open days and visits from patients to the lab because we want to show them that these postdocs and PhD students and others are sacrificing a lot of their time doing the job and doing the real work.
We also wanted to establish for my team members to always remember that the cells they are dealing with come from patients and these patients are living human beings and they have families and loved ones. You have to give them the drive to understand that what they are doing is valuable. No matter how basic you think your research is, you are pushing the frontiers of the science one experiment at a time.
It is also important to give those patients a real hope. Think about how far we have come as a society in terms of treating cancer and infectious disease like COVID. With the right people and the right resources being pulled together to tackle dementia and neurodegeneration, I think change is inevitable.
Who, what, when, where & why?
Who?
- would you like conduct research with, if you had the chance?
Peter Agre - I would love to do an aquaporin-based story with him. I hosted him at Oxford last year (www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/news/nobel-laureate-peter-agre-delivers-special-lecture).
What?
- do you like to do in your free time?
Football (the one that is actually a ball and you play it mostly with your feet, sorry American fellas!) every time, all day.
When?
- do you find inspiration for your research?
Almost every day. If I realize I do not have passion and drive, then I would quickly do something else.
I am not afraid of changing direction and disciplines. I always tell my friends to move along, you are not a tree.
Where?
- is your favorite travel destination?
I love Paris as a city and Boston is always close to my heart, but one place that I would like to highlight is Capri in Italy. This is where I found peace and tranquility. It is a very special place for me.
Why?
- did you choose your specific research topic(s)?
I experienced everything firsthand by starting my journey as a patient, so I realize what it takes to do the research and the need for it as well.
How?
- do you deal with setbacks?
I am not going to say they are enjoyable for me. Rejections and failures are not pleasant, but I have started to delineate this from taking it personally to taking it more towards the research. Someone did not reject me as Mootaz, they just rejected one of my ideas, which is fine. I sit down I try to digest and now I am seeking more feedback because I have realized I could always communicate my science easier and making it clearer.
…or?
Attend a party or be the host?
Be the host.
Museum or movie theatre?
Museum.
Sneakers or dress shoes?
Dress shoes and they need to be proper ones.
Optimist or pessimist?
A bit of both.
Ambition or comfort?
Absolute ambition.
See the future or change the past?
I do not look back. I learn from the past but I always look to the future.
The interview was conducted by Nicole Kilian and has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Image sources: Mootaz Salman.
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