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Leadership Profile: Nina Isoherranen, ASPET Councilor
Leadership Profile
A Conversation with ASPET Councilor, Dr. Nina Isoherranen
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Dr. Nina Isoherranen joined the ASPET Council on July 1, 2022, when she began her three-year term in this role. Dr. Isoherranen is a Professor and Milo Gibaldi Endowed Chair, Pharmaceutics at the University of Washington School of Pharmacy. An ASPET member since 2010, she served in a variety of roles for the Society, including Chair and Secretary/Treasurer of the Division for Drug Metabolism and Disposition, committee member of the Program Committee, committee member of the Science Policy Committee, and ASPET representative to the FASEB Science Policy Committee. Meet Dr. Isoherranen.
Q: How did you get started in pharmacology?
A: I started working in pharmacology as a graduate student developing novel derivatives of the antiepileptic/antiseizure drug valproic acid. I worked in synthesizing novel derivatives of valproic acid with the goal of identifying a compound that could maintain the pharmacological activity of valproic acid towards multiple seizure types and as migraine prophylaxis, while being devoid of the teratogenic and hepatotoxic adverse effects of valproic acid. As part of this project, I learned how to characterize structure-activity relationships, assess pharmacological activity by use of a variety of animal models and some electrophysiology. I also learned how to assess toxicity of the novel compounds in various models. In addition, a key component of the work was evaluating the pharmacokinetics and pharmacokineticpharmacodynamic (PK-PD) characteristics of the compounds developed which became a major foundation for my subsequent career.
Q: How did you first get involved with ASPET?
A: As a post-doctoral fellow in the University of Washington in Dr. Ken Thummel’s laboratory I became familiar with ASPET and ASPET journals as Ken was a DMD editor at the time and an active member of ASPET serving in the DMDD division and subsequently on council and as ASPET president. I was drawn to ASPET largely from reading the literature and many of the seminal publications in DMD and JPET that related to drug metabolism, drug interactions and in vitro to in vivo predictions of drug metabolism. I became more involved in ASPET when I was nominated to run for the DMDD division secretary/treasurer and when Dr Eddie Morgan recruited me to be one of the DMD associate editors.
Q: What do you want the ASPET membership to know about you and your ideas about how to move the organization forward during your term?
A: As a member of ASPET council I would like to hear more from the membership at large, what is most important for them as Society members and what are the most important investments the Society should make to provide the best value for their membership. For example, over the past few years, I have been a member of the ASPET Science Policy Committee. During that service, I realized that the Society puts an enormous amount of effort to advocate for the membership to protect funding for research, feasibility of research in the areas of animal research and weighing in on legislation in many areas that affect the everyday research of the members such as controlled substances classifications and processes. It would be wonderful to have more input from the membership on how these efforts are felt in the individual institutions and laboratories and whether the members see the value of these efforts. Another area that I care strongly about is the Society journals and publications. I hope, as a member of the ASPET Council, I will be able to help strengthen the journals and make sure they provide the right avenue and format for members to publish their research.
Q: What has been your proudest accomplishment in your career so far?
A: It would be hard to pinpoint a single achievement that I would be proudest of in my career. It is the nature of science that every accomplishment generates more hypotheses, new questions and new research avenues and it is not uncommon to look back 10-20 years and ask why we didn’t think about another way to assess a given challenge at the time. I am uniformly proud of the graduate students and postdocs who have gone through my lab over the years and who have been instrumental for all the accomplishments in my career. I am proud of how well they have done both during their time in my laboratory and subsequently in their careers.
Q: What advice would give young scientists who are just starting in their careers?
A: I would advise young scientists to think about their passion and the scientific questions they really want to unravel and not lose sight of why they chose pharmacology and biomedical sciences as a career. I think the saying is “when you think about quitting, think about why you started.” Everyone who chooses science as a career, junior or senior, must deal with adversity and challenges fairly frequently. I would advise junior scientists in particular to find a small group of colleagues, mentors and/or peers who are supportive, collegial and helpful to share experiences both ways.
