October 2018
Our October Ambassador of the Month is Juan Carlos Balandrán, PhD Candidate at the Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Oriente (IMSS-Puebla) Puebla, México. Juan Carlos has made an enormous contribution to Immunopaedia this year. He was part of the team of Ambassadors that conducted interviews at the ALAI/IUIS meeting in May this year. He co-authored a summary of the Flow Cytometry workshop preceding the meeting, as well s conducting and editing some of the ALAI/SMI interviews featured in our newsletter and Youtube Page. Thank you Juan Carlos for the hard work.
Name: Juan Carlos Balandrán Juárez
Position: PhD in Molecular Biomedicine
Research Institute: Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Oriente (IMSS-Puebla) Puebla, México. In English: Eastern Biomedical Research Center of Mexican Security Social Institute, Puebla, Mexico.
Research Interests: Malignant bone marrow microenvironment
Recent Publications:
- Kourtis N, Charampos L, Hockemeyer K, Balandrán JC et al., 2018. Oncogenic hijacking of the stress response machinery in T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Nature Medicine.
- Balandrán JC, et al., 2017. Pro-Inflammatory-Related Loss of CXCL12 Niche Promotes Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemic Progression at the Expense of Normal Lymphopoiesis. Frontiers in Immunology.
- Balandrán JC, et al., 2016 Analysis of normal hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell contents in childhood acute leukemia bone marrow.Arc Med Res.
Why do you love immunology: Because the biggest successful in Medicine has been due to Immunology, viruela eradication happened thanks to vaccination. I think Immune system is the most fascinating tissue, since their ontogeny until the action of effector cells.We have learned a lot from this system like stem cell models, plasticity and specification of responses that are paradigms which can be applied to other models.In fact, current efforts in precision medicine are focusing on the immune system like CAR-T cells technology, regulatory T cells and dendritic cells to control diseases.
If I wasn’t an immunologist I would be: Definitely a Chef, just because I really love cooking.
Tips for young people who want to enter the field of immunology: I learned from my mentors that discipline is the base of successful. I suggest you stay extremely close to your lab and other lab members and maintain good communication with your mentor. Discuss your data! the more experience you have in explaining your results with your colleagues is going to be easier write your reports. Attend seminars! even if it content is not pure immunology, you don’t even know if you can collaborate with other colleagues in other fields. Participate in Scientific Meetings with poster or oral presentations, you won’t know if your next paper-reviews are going to hear you 😉 Do trainings in other labs, all experience that you will gain is going to give you and your research to other level.
What being an Immunopaedia Ambassador means to me: Immunopaedia is the best platform to stay connected with other colleagues and stay tuned to novel discovers in Immunology. For me, represent a personal compromise to spread immunology in my institution, during my classes and seminars. Is a honor position and I’m very proud to be an Immunopeadia Ambassador.
How I have contributed to Immunopaedia so far: I collaborated with Jennifer Enciso (other Immunopedia Ambassador) in the Oncoimmunology-Mexico content and I’ve contibuited with some interviews to very recognized Immunologists like Dr. Alberto Mantovani, Dr. Paul Frenette and Dr. Alberto Orfao.
You can get in touch with me by: e-mail: jcbalandran@gmail.com ; Research Gate: ; Facebook: JC Balandrán ; Twitter: @jc_balandran ; Instagram: jcbalandran