00;00;06;10 – 00;00;55;17
VO Victoria
Welcome to Beyond Lab Walls, a podcast from the Salk Institute. Join hosts Isabella Davis and Nicole Mlynaryk on a journey behind the scenes of the renowned research institute in San Diego, California. We’re taking you inside the lab to hear the latest discoveries in cutting edge neuroscience, plant biology, cancer, aging, and more. Explore the fascinating world of science while listening to the stories of the brilliant minds behind it. Here at Salk, we’re unlocking the secrets of life itself and sharing them beyond lab walls.

00;00;55;19 – 00;01;21;10
Isabella
Hi everyone. I’m Isabella, one of your co-hosts for Beyond Lab Walls. Today I have the pleasure of chatting with Irene Lopéz Gutiérrez, a postdoctoral researcher here at Salk in the lab of Professor Susan Kaech. As she grew up, a mix of major and minor life events radically altered her plans for the future and career aspirations, eventually leading her down the path of neuroscience research.

00;01;21;13 – 00;01;53;11
Isabella
Irene’s current lab focuses on immunology, that is, the study of different patrolling cells in our body that keep us healthy. Like many of her colleagues in Sue’s lab, Irene brings her own unique perspective on immunology to the table. For her, its training in neuroscience and previous Alzheimer’s disease research. Her understanding of the brain makes the question she asks and the answers she seeks really one of a kind, and I’m so excited to be speaking with her today.

00;01;53;14 – 00;02;03;29
Isabella
Hi, Irene, it’s great to have you on. Can you start by sharing with me where you’re from, what it was like growing up there? Were you interested in science at an early age?

00;02;04;01 – 00;02;25;22
Irene
Yeah. So I grew up in a very, very small seaside village in the north of Spain, in a region called Galicia. Growing up there was, I will say, like pretty relaxed and chill and very familiar. Since these are very small villages, you can move, walking around every, every part. And you spend a lot of time with your family and friends.

00;02;25;29 – 00;02;47;11
Irene
So in summer it’s like funny because you have more things to do. Yes. Going up to the beach to spend the whole day there. Yes. Hanging out with your friend, your family. Playing cards. The winter is the harder time of the year because it’s very, very rainy. That’s, that region in Spain rains a lot, is very cold. So you don’t have a lot of things to do.

00;02;47;11 – 00;03;11;16
Irene
Really. Since winter is more boring, I was become like, very, very interesting in science and just starting learning, seeing science related like there was a TV show in Spain about science interviews. So I started watching that, reading some science magazines, and I don’t know, I just become like very interesting in yeah, just consuming science that I really enjoyed.

00;03;11;18 – 00;03;13;03
Isabella
I’m curious, what was the show?

00;03;13;05 – 00;03;36;04
Irene
The name was Redes in Spanish. So kind of these type of interviews on the on the middle they also like do like more videos explaining some concepts and things and I really enjoy that. It was a very broad program. So like more some physics, maths, biology. So I was really interested in scientists as a whole, not only in biology.

00;03;36;05 – 00;03;40;25
Irene
Also, I was very, very interesting about in maths and physics, all that stuff.

00;03;40;27 – 00;03;52;16
Isabella
That’s definitely a perk of the rain, then. It forces you to develop some mental hobbies. Did you have any scientists in the family or was this show and science as a career like a totally new concept for you?

00;03;52;18 – 00;04;27;29
Irene
No, really, I’m the only scientist in my in my whole family. Actually, I’m the only one that went to to college, to university. My dad, he was a fisherman. And so my my village, where I grew up, almost everyone is a fisherman there. And then my mom she opened a small shop in my village selling shoes, and then she closed it and now she sells shoes in the street market of my village. So none of them study anything. So I was the first one in moving abroad from my village, going to college, trying to start thinking about being a scientist.

00;04;28;01 – 00;04;41;06
Isabella
So back in high school, when you are first having these thoughts about moving abroad and college and being a scientist, how were your classes and school during that time? Did you consider teaching at all? Were you already set on being a research scientist?

00;04;41;08 – 00;05;01;03
Irene
No, I was in high school, I didn’t like that much the way that we learned things there, it was just memorizing things. On the other side, when I was outside watching just these divulgative (educational) shows or reading other [educational] books, I felt like, oh, this is very interesting, but we don’t learn these in the school.

00;05;01;06 – 00;05;23;00
Irene
And the teachers don’t show us how interesting it can be. They don’t motivate us. So I feel like I really wanted these to change, so. I was a very good student, but I have a lot of friend that weren’t and they just hate the way that we have to study things, just memorizing things. So I started like helping my friends with all of the lessons that we have.

00;05;23;02 – 00;05;33;18
Irene
That’s kind of motivating me like to become probably in the future like a professor, because I really enjoy sharing my interest in science with other people and teaching them.

00;05;33;20 – 00;05;45;15
Isabella
That’s really sweet. So then you went to university, you were thinking about potentially being professor. How did you decide on a specialty within science? What made you land on neuroscience?

00;05;45;17 – 00;06;10;19
Irene
During my high school, I love science just in general, but when I was mainly more interested in biology, I have really good, good teachers, biology teachers, that they inspire me. Before becoming teacher, they also did some research in university. So they were the first one that talk to me about like being a scientist in biology. I was very interesting about how our body works.

00;06;10;22 – 00;06;37;08
Irene
Also, one of the things that influenced me to be more motivated about studying, like, biology science, when I was a child, my grandfather, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. So we spent a lot of afternoons when I was a child, with him, watching him, because it’s a very tough disease. At the end, your brain controls all your body, so when you have a brain tumor, you are losing capacity slowly.

00;06;37;10 – 00;06;58;27
Irene
My grandfather kind of like now, cannot speak, cannot watch, cannot hear, cannot move. So he was slowly losing all all of his abilities and he stayed in a vegetative state for three years. So the doctors say that it’s going to be like a few months at the end, and I remember my mom and my uncles asking question like, Oh, he can feel us.

00;06;58;27 – 00;07;35;22
Irene
He can hear us. He can hear what we are saying to him. The brain is amazing. He can control all of our body. How the brain do this? I become very, very interesting that it understanding how our body works. And this is one of the main reasons why I wanted to to study like biology. During my university studies at IDM, I decided to study biochemistry because we are more focusing like cell at a cell molecular level, are more like immune or like more in human focus, because biology you have more plants and biology that I wasn’t really interesting on it.

00;07;35;24 – 00;07;45;23
Isabella
I’m so sorry to hear that about your grandfather. It seems like such a powerful motivator to get you into brain research. Did you consider medical school during that time in your life?

00;07;45;26 – 00;08;04;29
Irene
Not really, because my grand mom also recommend me to go to med school, but I’m very afraid of blood and all of this kind of stuff. I cannot handle every time that my dad or someone close to me have, like, a small a small something, I will just… Okay, I just, my whole body will feel the pain and it’s like I cannot.

00;08;04;29 – 00;08;19;22
Irene
I cannot handle this. But I’m very interested in how our body works. But yeah, I knew that I wanted to like more research focus and less take care of patients. Not because I wasn’t interested, but I knew that I couldn’t handle that.

00;08;19;22 – 00;08;32;10
Isabella
Well I’m glad you landed on research in the end. And once you decided you wanted to study neuroscience, did you know you were going to go beyond undergraduate studies? Was your vision always long term like that?

00;08;32;12 – 00;08;51;16
Irene
At least in Spain during our undergraduate studies, you have to do like a few months stay in a lab, doing some research. And I heard that there are some people and some teacher recommend me that if you wanted to really enjoy that experience and then just to stay like longer in a lab, like one year, the last year of your undergrad studies.

00;08;51;18 – 00;09;13;29
Irene
So I was looking for research lab. Then I found one about neuroscience that I really like it. I spent then the last year of my undergrad started working in that lab. So working in the mornings in the lab, going to off to the school in the afternoons. And there I really realized that I, I love researching in the neuroscience field.

00;09;14;01 – 00;09;28;15
Irene
By that time they had the research lab was focusing on Alzheimer’s disease. This is the most common cause of dementia worldwide. And yeah, I just is like, okay, I really like this. I wanted to go on doing this in my future.

00;09;28;15 – 00;09;41;05
Isabella
Super interesting, you just started this Alzheimer’s research and kind of got hooked. Was that a conscious effort to stick with Alzheimer’s research, or did that just happen to be, within neuroscience, the labs that had positions available?

00;09;41;08 – 00;10;03;27
Irene
Yeah, at the beginning I was interested in neuroscience, and then I found this lab that was more focusing on Alzheimer’s. And then I realized that I spent like 6 years working in that, that I had quite a lot of knowledge about that disease, that for me is starting out something completely new will be stimulating, but will be kind of like, I don’t know, I wanted to, with all of the knowledge that I already have,

00;10;04;00 – 00;10;17;08
Irene
I wanted to use it in my future research. Even though right now I’m doing something a little bit different, I can still use all of that knowledge that I acquired that I really wanted to, to use it in my future research.

00;10;17;10 – 00;10;43;14
Isabella
And now you’re applying all that knowledge in the context of immunology here at Salk. It’s a super cool crossover, I know it’s this emerging field, neuroimmunology. Lots to explore. Very exciting area right now. What was that like transitioning from strictly neuroscience into this more interdisciplinary work? And how is all of that academic transition at the same time as a big physical transition from Spain to San Diego?

00;10;43;17 – 00;11;15;25
Irene
Yeah. So at the beginning was a little bit tough, you know, like moving from a different city, different a language, being very far away from your family and friends, then studying a new field. Like for me, immunology right now is like very, very new. I studied some immunology lessons during my bachelor’s, but this was probably ten years ago now, so I have to the first month like read a lot of papers, so was a little bit hard, but really stimulating for me because I really love learning—it’s one of the things that I like the most about being a scientist.

00;11;15;27 – 00;11;38;29
Irene
So yeah, the beginning was tough, but now it’s very interesting for me, having this chance to learn something new and integrating it with something that I already know with my knowledge, and creating and doing research in something like new that merge two fields that for many, many years they were like very separate fields. They didn’t talk to each other in the past.

00;11;39;01 – 00;11;53;03
Isabella
Right? Any time I read a paper coming out of your lab, I’m so shocked and excited by how different they are. It’s so interdisciplinary. I’m curious, what would you say are the biggest advantages to studying Alzheimer’s through that entire disciplinary lens?

00;11;53;10 – 00;12;17;11
Irene
So it’s very useful because, you know, Alzheimer’s disease and other brain disease are very, very complex disease where a lot of processes are playing an important role there. So yeah, Alzheimer disease is not just something that is going wrong in your neurons. It’s got inflammation, it’s got your immune system also there, too. There are like your energy metabolism of the cells is also altered.

00;12;17;13 – 00;12;46;08
Irene
So having the chance to have this multidisciplinary lab where I’m working with people that have very huge expertise in immunology is very helpful for me. And open your perspective and your mind on things that you didn’t think about before. Now, sometimes as scientists, we are very, very focused, very specialized in one particular thing, but sometimes you have to, make our step out and think about how everything is like more broader.

00;12;46;11 – 00;13;03;09
Irene
And we need desperately to for other people to really see the big picture and see the complexity of the disease.

00;13;03;12 – 00;13;08;11
Isabella
So let’s get more into the science itself. What sorts of experiments are you doing now at Salk?

00;13;08;17 – 00;13;34;27
Irene
Right now we have like two main models. One of them was a mouse model that we sometimes use to study some human diseases. So we have a mouse model that I already the experience during my PhD that I also use. And then we have another more human model that I’m more excited about. So this human model is like a big collaboration with other PIs at Salk Institute, it’s a big group that is led by Rusty Gage’s lab.

00;13;34;29 – 00;13;57;22
Isabella
PI stands for Primary Investigator. These are the scientists like Professor Susan Kaech or Rusty Gage, who are in charge of entire labs. Also, Irene is about to start chatting about these cool new model systems scientists are using for research called organoids. Think of them as mini lab grown organs. In Irene’s case, the mini organs are brains.

00;13;57;24 – 00;14;23;03
Irene
His group developed what we call like organoids, or brain organoids. So what we do is like we take fibroblast so cells from the skin of the people, normal healthy old people. So we take these cells. We grow with time in culture. The cool thing here is that we can convert these skin cells in a neuron. So in a cell that is a cell type that live in our brains.

00;14;23;05 – 00;14;44;29
Irene
And we can create like a mini brain in a dish. So this is very cool, and we’re also integrating it we we can take like immune cells from the blood of the people. So we can merge these immune cells with the brain organoids and, and see how the immune cells talk to the mini brain. And all of them are cells from the patient.

00;14;45;01 – 00;15;02;06
Irene
So we can recapitulate all their genetic background. And we can do like a more personalized research. Of course, the models are important, but they are also some difference between the mouse and the human. So having these models, they are very, very helpful. So I’m very exciting to work with these new models.

00;15;02;09 – 00;15;24;23
Isabella
Wow. So you take these skin cells from actual patients and essentially program them to become neurons, then grow those neurons into a little brain, all the while retaining that original patient’s personal genetic imprint. There’s a lot going on. So many steps. Is a focus right now development and improvement of these organoids, or are you already able to ask questions with them?

00;15;24;26 – 00;15;48;24
Irene
Yeah. So right now with trying to do it’s first developed a model where we call culture. Or we put together the immune cells with these brain organoids to optimize them. But we are almost there. I will say once we have that model, we can start asking questions, you know, like, what are the molecules that the T cells use? T cells are one type of immune cell that we are very interested in.

00;15;48;26 – 00;15;58;06
Irene
So what are the molecules or the small molecules that they use to communicate with the neurons or with other types of cells on the brain, how they affect to each other?

00;15;58;08 – 00;16;24;01
Isabella
Very cool. For the listeners, T cells are one of the major cell types in our immune system. They patrol around the body, recognize invaders, illnesses, cancer, virus. What Irene’s saying is that these T cells are communicating with one another and potentially with the brain, with these little traveling molecules. All very cool, new neuroimmunology stuff. Is there anything else going on in the field that’s particularly exciting to you, Irene?

00;16;24;04 – 00;16;50;15
Irene
For many, many years, we thought that the brain was an immunoprivileged organ, what this means is that in all of the organs of our body, we have our immune system that can enter there, control if there is something exogenous, like a pathogen that we need to eliminate. But the brain, for many years we thought that the peripheral immune system couldn’t enter the brain because was very, very protective from the periphery.

00;16;50;18 – 00;17;12;11
Irene
And the brain have their own like, kind of immune cells, resident immune cells that we call microglial cells. So we thought that they were the only ones that play a role inside our brain. Now we know that we have like different layers of our brain that we call meninges. Now, we we realized that they are very, very rich in a lot of immune cells.

00;17;12;13 – 00;17;47;15
Irene
They can actually expand and proliferate when we have a peripheral infection, even though the pathology doesn’t enter the brain, that immune cells proliferate there send molecules to the brain to communicate, Hey, there’s infection going on in other parts of your body. But we don’t know exactly how those immune cells that live there in the borders of the brain affect the brain, communicate with the brain, and how the brain affects and communicates to these immune cells and control those immune cells to then maybe go to other part of our body.

00;17;47;17 – 00;17;59;22
Irene
So I think that the field is now understanding much better what is the role of those immune cells there, what they are doing there, how they affect our behavior, and other type of thing.

00;17;59;23 – 00;18;29;18
Isabella
Now those brain resident immune cells, the microglia, have a whole bunch of new friends. It’s like a whole new world to imagine now the rest of the body sharing its immune cells with the brain, and there’s certainly some communication happening there between the body and brain through those immune cells. Such a can of worms. Do you have any idea yet if there are links between this exchange of immune cells, signals and Alzheimer’s, or any specific diseases? Or is it still in that exploration phase of what does this even mean?

00;18;29;20 – 00;18;59;17
Irene
What we are studying right now is like how different peripheral infections lead to the accumulation of immune cells in our brain and have our role, particularly in Alzheimer’s disease, because what we found in the mouse model also in brain human samples of Alzheimer’s disease patients, is that there are some protein aggregates in the brain. So we have these protein aggregates there that that kind of toxicity is going to produce this neuronal death.

00;18;59;19 – 00;19;47;17
Irene
These immune cells are very close to these protein deposits that are toxic in the brain. So what is the particular role of these cells, these immune cells in Alzheimer’s disease? We don’t know. We know that they are there that accumulate around these protein deposits. But we don’t know the role that they’re play there. We know that these immune cells play important roles in other diseases such as multiple sclerosis or another ones, but what is the role of these immune cells in Alzheimer’s disease?

00;19;47;19 – 00;19;58;00
Isabella
Now that you’re establishing yourself in San Diego and doing such cool and exciting research, have your plans changed at all for the future, or are you still hoping for the professor role?

00;19;58;02 – 00;20;24;16
Irene
Yeah, I always wanted to be a professor and be like a PI, having my own lab, but I really love also like teaching and helping others and sharing my love and interest about science. And I really love like learning new things. Apart from doing your own experiments on the bench that sometimes you loves your job, but sometimes is also very frustrating because experiment doesn’t work, you have to try new things.

00;20;24;19 – 00;20;52;12
Irene
So in my future, I really wanted to focus more in the teaching part. So I really wanted to be like a professor, but probably like university, more like in a research institution, to have more contact with the students and to have this close relationship with them. Because I really, really like in the future to to share my knowledge and the enthusiasm about science that I have.

00;20;52;15 – 00;20;55;18
Isabella
Do you think you’ll go back to Spain for that?

00;20;55;20 – 00;21;21;22
Irene
Yeah, I don’t know, to be honest. I really love to to be closer to my family and friends there. But it’s also, sadly, it’s also very hard to be a professor there in Spain. There’s not a lot of opportunities there, so it’s harder to work there as a professor. And to be honest, I also love traveling and discovering new cultures and yeah, living in other cities.

00;21;21;22 – 00;21;26;23
Irene
So probably I end up living in, I don’t know which part of the world, but probably in another city.

00;21;26;23 – 00;21;33;28
Isabella
Have you gotten a chance to do traveling outside of California since moving here, or do you have other hobbies that are keeping you busy outside of the lab?

00;21;33;28 – 00;21;56;08
Irene
One of the things that I like the most when I moved here to to California was like camping and the national parks. I’m a very outdoorsy person and I love spending time in nature. It’s very, very important for me and to feel good with myself. So I moved here with my boyfriend and we have like a small car with like a little bit camper-ized.

00;21;56;10 – 00;22;20;26
Irene
So every time that we have the chance, or we have like a long weekend or mini holidays, we, we like to go there camping. Our goal is to visit as many national parks and state parks as we, as we can. We already visited a few ones. We been in Joshua Tree, Anza-Borrego, like more close to San Diego, but we also drove like eight hours to Zion in Utah.

00;22;20;28 – 00;22;26;11
Irene
I’m I’m exploring a lot and I really love that about living here in California.

00;22;26;13 – 00;22;29;00
Isabella
Do you have a favorite spot so far?

00;22;29;02 – 00;22;52;10
Irene
So for me, I really, really love Bryce Canyon in Utah. All of those rock formations and the colors, there’s orange and white. When I arrived there, it was like, oh my gosh, I never see something that weird and beautiful at the same time. Yeah, I don’t know. I really love that place. I hope that I can come back again soon.

00;22;52;12 – 00;23;02;25
Isabella
Beyond hopefully going back to Bryce Canyon and other travel adventures, is there anything else outside of the lab that you’re especially looking forward to?

00;23;02;27 – 00;23;25;07
Irene
Yeah. So I’m really looking more into like learning more about new immunology field. I feel like like a baby in this new field. So I’m very excited about having more expertise in these in this particular field because it’s very exciting. It’s growing a lot, very fast during these last year, there’s a lot of people involved in very, very new projects.

00;23;25;09 – 00;23;51;11
Irene
Is everything very, very excited. So I’m very, very excited about being part of this movement in science, being in the edge of these new knowledge that is coming. So I’m very excited about that, to learning more things. I’m also excited to keep living in California and living here well, almost for one year yet. But I really like the lifestyle here, like just the traveling.

00;23;51;13 – 00;24;12;09
Irene
I have also like very close friends at here. Apart from my boyfriend, I have like some good friends from Spain that luckily they also live here. So we have a small Spanish community. So I’m very happy also to experience this new adventure and this new part of my life with them.

00;24;12;12 – 00;24;20;28
Isabella
That’s amazing. You’ve got all these connections, a lot going on. I’m so excited to see what comes out of your lab in the coming years. I’m so happy I got to chat with you today.

00;24;21;01 – 00;24;30;02
Irene
Thank you so much for everything and for giving me this opportunity.

00;24;30;04 – 00;24;59;23
Isabella
As is expected for someone working at the frontlines of an entirely new discipline like neuroimmunology, Irene’s got so many questions. A complicated organ like the brain means the diseases that affect it are also complicated. But these new organoid models are the future of Alzheimer’s research. With these organoids comes a more personalized window into patients’ health, meaning scientists like Irene can get a clearer look at the influence individual genetic differences make on neuronal health.

00;24;59;26 – 00;25;21;23
Isabella
Our progress also hinges on our evolving understanding of the relationship between the immune system and the brain. Like Irene said, we’re currently discovering the role that immune cells from outside of the brain are playing inside the brain, and whether that’s impacting the development and progression of diseases like Alzheimer’s. I can’t wait to see what discoveries are made in the coming years

00;25;21;25 – 00;25;38;29
Isabella
As Irene and her colleagues continue asking their important questions, getting us closer than ever to understanding Alzheimer’s and tackling it.

00;25;39;01 – 00;26;09;16
VO Victoria
Beyond Lab Walls is a production of the Salk Office of Communications. To hear the latest science stories coming out of Salk, subscribe to our podcast, and visit Salk.edu to join our new exclusive media channel, Salk Streaming. There, you’ll find interviews with our scientists, videos on our recent studies, and public lectures by our world renowned professors. You can also explore our award winning magazine, Inside Salk, and join our monthly newsletter to stay up to date on the world within these walls.