Historic faculty hiring: Meet Anne Talkington

I look at questions of therapeutic optimization — essentially, how can we make sure drugs are getting delivered to their target site, and then once they're there, that they’re doing what they're supposed to do. I look at all of this through a computational framework, taking these questions about drug delivery, drug optimization and broader biological questions and turning them into a question of computational or mathematical optimization to solve. Lately, I've been focused on cancer immunotherapies and how we can impact the way that cancer cells and immune cells interact with each other to improve the efficacy of cancer treatments.

I’ve wanted to pursue this research for as long as I can remember. In high school, I worked in a research lab, which was my first opportunity to see how math and computational modeling could inform experiments.

I thought it was really cool that we could make predictions with a model, test it in the lab and go back and refine our predictions. Plus, I feel like everyone knows someone who has been impacted by cancer and has not responded to treatment, so that’s a very personal motivation for me.

That interest led me to double major in mathematics and biology at Duke University for my undergraduate experience, which was where I first started asking questions about cancer immunotherapies. I then earned a master’s degree in mathematics and a PhD in computational biology from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. I had a very interesting project at the intersection of math and pharmacy, which I feel very lucky to have explored.

For my postdoctoral work, I spent a few years at the University of Virginia in systems immunology. I looked at tumor-immune interactions in the melanoma tumor microenvironment. That was a very data-driven experience looking at patient omics data to infer hallmarks of response in patients receiving immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma.

After that experience, I completed a National Research Council Fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The project I worked on there was thinking about modeling tumor-immune interactions from a different perspective and leveraging a patient’s own immune system to fight cancer.

I wanted to introduce an aspect of systemic drug delivery as well — understanding what the drug is doing at its target site, making sure the drug can get to the tumor, and ensuring that it doesn’t end up anywhere else in the body. That brings me to the work I’m starting here at UB.

I was pretty familiar with UB early in my academic experience. Many of the professors I met during my time at UNC Chapel Hill had a connection to UB, and I paid attention to what was going on at UB’s School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences through literature.

I was ready to enter the job market at the same time UB launched the Drug Discovery, Development and Evaluation (DDDE) Hub, which I thought was a great investment for the university.

This period of historic growth for UB and the pharmacy school, in combination with the university’s historic reputation and success in pharmacokinetics modeling, was the perfect catalyst for me to decide this is where I wanted to start my research lab.

As someone who didn’t know this field existed prior to graduate school, the strength of the school's pharmacokinetics program continuously impresses me. I also learned right away how welcoming and collaborative UB is — both within the school and across the university. There are so many opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations for me to explore.

Although I haven’t begun teaching yet, I have started advising students and serving on a thesis committee, and I’m beginning to hire students for my lab. I can already tell that the students here are really motivated, know what they want to do and are excited to hit the ground running with their projects. That makes it fun for me to teach and advise them.

It’s definitely exciting to join UB during this time. Through my interviews and early experiences, there’s been a clear sense that the university wants me here and wants to invest in me and my department. It’s also great to know that I wasn’t just brought in to work on one specific thing — I'm part of a larger picture where a number of us are joining the faculty and can support one another through this growth. I’m also appreciative of the number of senior colleagues I can work with here who I can continue to get to know and learn from.

I moved to Buffalo in mid-December. Having spent most of my life in North Carolina, I wasn’t used to the winter. But it’s been great so far — I have some family nearby, and I’ve begun exploring the area. I’m making it a point to check out downtown Buffalo and see the museums, theaters, restaurants and nature. I’m excited for a Buffalo summer and the opportunity to keep integrating myself into the community!