What Dr. Christopher Glass
... likes most about his job is ...well, let him describe it: "The opportunity to make discoveries, to be the first person to put something together, the opportunity to venture into the unknown - that's what I find exciting."

Some may view science as an isolated endeavor, devoid of feeling or emotion. Not Glass, professor of cellular and molecular medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine, who is also renowned for his studies on how genes are activated and shut down. "I personally find science a very social enterprise in the sense that, at least in my lab, discoveries are made because of efforts of many people working together in a coordinated and synergistic way," said Glass. "Biology today is different. It's difficult for the lone investigator to make a significant impact. What is required today is bringing multiple disciplines to bear on a problem. I've brought my lab in contact with some outstanding laboratories. Those kinds of interactions have been a lot of fun."

Glass, whose wife Renee is a radiologist, was convinced at an early age that he would be a doctor. He was also, in his words, "one of those kids who went around with a microscope and looked at everything under it." But it wasn't until he entered the University of California at Berkeley as a biophysics major that his thoughts turned to research. In 1976, he contacted one of his professors studying lipoproteins and their role in heart disease and asked if he could participate in the research. "It was, for me, an eye-opening experience," Glass recalled. "This idea, that you can enter the laboratory and start asking questions that took you into the unknown - I couldn't get enough of it. By the time I finished a year of research as an undergraduate, I was pretty certain that what I wanted to do with my life was to be a medical scientist." Glass entered UCSD under a combined M.D.-Ph.D. program - "a very powerful combination," he said. "The medical degree gives you the idea, what the questions are; the Ph.D., the tools to study them."

At UCSD, he found himself working with Dr. Ray Pittman and Dr. Daniel Steinberg, a founding faculty member and expert in the mechanisms of arteriosclerosis, and, later, with Dr. Geoff Rosenfeld, a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at UCSD, known for his work on how genes in the pituitary gland turn on and off. In 1983-1984, Glass conducted research on lipoprotein structure with Dr. Donald Small at Boston University. From 1984-1986, Glass performed internship and residency training in internal medicine at Harvard Medical School's Brigham and Women's Hospital. By the time he returned to UCSD on a fellowship in endocrinology, he knew what he wanted - "to put the two areas of training together," he said.

Glass decided to focus his research on the regulation of gene expression in the macrophage, the basic cell that has an important role in the function of the immune system. The cell also affects the development of arteriosclerosis. So, combining his work in genetics from Rosenfeld's lab and his work on arteriosclerosis from Steinberg's enabled him to benefit from the mutual experience.

In 1990, Glass started his own laboratory. Because macrophage is responsible for hormone-like molecules that control inflammation, his studies are important for an understanding of not only arteriosclerosis, but for a host of other inflammatory diseases, such as psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis, triggered by autoimmune responses.

Glass' students in the lab are mostly graduate students or candidates in the combined M.D.-Ph.D. program. His goal in training is to give them the intellectual background they need to identify important biomedical problems and to teach them how to solve them, which involves not only developing the appropriate experiments and interpreting data, but, most importantly, communicating results."Data doesn't mean much if you can't communicate to the scientific community and ultimately to the public at large," Glass said.

Thus, a large part of his mentoring is teaching his students how to excel in all of these areas, especially in how results are presented, whether they are on paper or in a talk. "Training in science is an apprenticeship," he said. "You learn by doing and learn from someone further along than you. It's a process that has evolved over time, and as students develop they are dependent on you. As they develop more, they become more independent and can think for themselves and be very effective scientists." Another aspect of mentoring is career guidance. "Someday they may see themselves in a lab or working in an industrial setting or biotech company or teaching. We have long talks about these subjects," said Glass. "These are questions that come up in the course of graduate school. They are questions students are constantly asking themselves."