Of Mice and Mentors

Dr. Ginsburg has had two great experiences with great mentors that changed the course of his career. And in turn, he has trained 45 scientists and physicians – seven are at the University of Michigan.

“The work you do yourself, it’s a relative small drop in the ocean, which fades in importance,” he said. “What seems more important and interesting is the legacy of the people you train and what they do with that.”

Ginsburg did not enter a career in science with this impact in mind. When he entered Yale in 1970, he says he just didn’t believe he was good at much else.

“Most of my friends at Yale were liberal arts majors because the science buildings were so far away, and all the classes were in the morning,” Ginsburg explains. “If you were good at everything, you would never do science. But those of us who couldn’t do anything else, we had to get up early and trek up the hill to the science buildings.”

His first research experience was with Joan Steitz, then a new Yale science professor who taught a lab course. “I was the second undergrad in Joan’s lab. I thought she was cool.” Ginsburg said. He wrote his first papers with Steitz and knew he wanted to continue in research.

He became interested in genetics and developed an interest in molecular biology. Everyone he knew was going to medical school so the Duke MD/PhD program seemed a perfect solution. But during the lengthy training, Ginsburg realized that he wanted to get on with the clinical requirements of internship, residency, and fellowship, so he finished the medical school program without the PhD, finally returning to the laboratory in 1982 as a post-doc during his hematology fellowship training.

“It was more of the traditional route back then for researchers, though now, it is not true at all,” Ginsburg said, who has since trained several MD/PhDs. “But during those years while I was doing my clinical training, it was unbelievable what had happened in research --- DNA sequencing, cloning, enzymes, northern blot, Southern blot. None of that existed when I left the PhD program, I felt like Rip Van Winkle. All of a sudden it was an entirely new world.”

But Ginsburg’s new world had yet another young faculty star who proved a great mentor who allowed him to follow his interests. Ginsburg worked in Stuart Orkin’s lab at Harvard and was only Orkin’s second post-doc. “I said, ‘Hey can I work in your lab?’ That was it. I never talked to anyone else, looked up any of Stu or anyone elses work. In retrospect, I was pretty lucky.”

Ginsburg had some catching up to do and after four or five months, had learned enough to complete some experiments. Combining the interests of the Orkin lab and his own clinical questions, he looked for new ways to follow bone marrow transplant patients through polymorphisms in their DNA. While there, he also cloned the gene for von Willebrand factor, one of the proteins critical to the cascade of reactions causing blood to clot.

“Von Willebrand disease was a mystery. It was attractive to try to figure this out.”

When U-M called in 1985, Ginsburg didn’t exactly jump at the chance to move, having never even visited the Midwest. But he was offered a Howard Hughes Medical Institute position, and met with UM colleagues including Max Wicha, Francis Collins, Rob Todd, Bill Kelly and Tom Gelehrter and moved with his wife Maureen and their two small children.

Since here, Ginsburg has studied many genetic inherited blood diseases as well as making mouse “knock-out” models that have provided insight into a number of important diseases, including atherosclerosis, the underlying cause of heart attack and stroke. Along the way, he has mentored many other scientists both within and outside his laboratory.

“David has been and continues to be a terrific mentor to me. His abundant energy, passion, and enthusiasm ensured that his lab had fun,” said Karen Mohlke, assistant professor of genetics at University of North Carolina.

Ginsburg’s remarkable ease in the lab, sense of humor, and desire for everyone to succeed is well known.

“He used to show people in the lab Southern blots that he had done that looked absolutely terrible. It was his way of saying that we all have experiments that don't work. This is science and we should not get discouraged,” said UM assistant professor Susan Lyons, a former Ginsburg student. “His love of science is infectious.”

When he moved to the LSI upon its opening three years ago, his talent and gift at mentoring and sharing his expertise in mouse modeling was a big bonus for his LSI colleagues.

“David was the perfect choice to help anchor the LSI: an outstanding scientist, a caring and committed physician and a terrific mentor to both junior and senior faculty colleagues. Many of us seek him out for advice and encouragement on a regular basis,” said LSI director Alan Saltiel.

Now with eight post-docs and grad students in his lab, of which three are MD/PhDs, Ginsburg continues his prolific practice as physician/scientist/teacher sharing techniques and practice and building collaborations.

“I have been very lucky with my mentors and get a lot of pleasure being in the position to train some really talented scientists,” said Ginsburg.