GETTING THE WORD OUT

Collaboration
Sara Cherry first met
Carolyn Coyne when she was
interviewing for her position at
the University of Pennsylvania,
where Coyne was a postdoc.
What began as a casual
collaboration quickly grew
into something more. When
Coyne moved to take a job
at the University of Pittsburgh
and found her laboratory
wasn’t ready, Cherry offered
her space in her lab and in her
home. They worked together to
identify host genes that can help
viruses like those that cause
meningitis cross the blood-brain
barrier. The collaboration was
hugely successful, resulting in a
publication in a top tier journal and
a strong friendship that lasts to this
day.
The two infectious disease
researchers have talked regularly
over the last ten years, as much
about their husbands and kids as
about their science. But then the
Zika virus began to spread across the
Americas, leaving devastating birth
defects in its wake, and the phone
calls became a daily occurrence.
3 Tips on
How to Have a
Successful Collaboration
1. Be open and honest. There is no
such thing as a perfect collaboration
(or relationship), says Coyne, but
open and direct communication is
absolutely necessary to establish
the mutual trust needed for a
successful partnership.
2. Take the long view. When you are
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to focus on authorship or other
accolades. Recognize that if you
behave respectably and share credit
appropriately, then everyone will
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3. Have fun. It is important to like
and want to spend time with
your collaborators, Cherry says,
otherwise the work is no fun. The
same characteristics that make a
good friend can also make a good
collaborator.
specialized cells that reside in the
blood-brain barrier and the placenta
that can protect from infection. Cherry
has expertise in screening strategies
to identify new genes and pathways
in viral replication. Together, they are
searching for FDA-approved compounds
that can block Zika infection in placental
cells. The duo already found a handful
of promising candidates, which will
need to survive several more rounds of
rigorous testing before they could ever
be used in the clinic. Cherry says that
such collaborations can only succeed
when people share mutual trust and
respect for each other, and each play
their part.
“We can’t all be an expert at
everything,” said Cherry. “There are
very few labs and few people who
can do everything well and want to
do all these different things well. We
all have our own personal interests
and excitement. As the world gets
more and more sophisticated,
the assays, the technology, the
biology, I think it benefits us to
take advantage of expertise more
broadly.”
“It was pretty clear that we should work
together to understand and combat this
virus,” said Cherry. “We keep each other
informed about all the experiments we
have going on in the lab, and that way
we can share any assays or tricks that
we find. It is helpful to have that kind of
relationship. We are friends, and we know
that we wouldn’t do anything to compete
with each other. We know exactly what
each we can contribute, because we have
overlapping but different skill sets.”
Coyne has expertise in barrier cells, the
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