Dr. Farah Lubin

• Associate Professor Heersnick School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham

• Postdoctoral Fellow Baylor College of Medicine and University of Alabama at Birmingham

• PhD in Cell/Molecular Biology and Immunology SUNY Binghamton University

From immunology to neuroscience, Farah Lubin has followed her passion, along the way discovering how having an interdisciplinary perspective can make a big impact. 

Farah completed her PhD in cellular and molecular biology at the State University of New York, Binghamton, where she specialized in immunology. However, when she set her sights on postdoctoral fellowships, she was drawn to neuroscience because it represented the pinnacle of biological and physiological science. Farah remembers a striking comment from a senior neuroscientist: “If you haven’t done it in the brain, you haven’t done it at all.” With each postdoc interview, her fascination with the brain continued to grow. Encouraged by her PhD advisor, Farah set out to discover how her skillset in immunology and molecular genetics could be applied to a new, challenging target like understanding the brain. Although immunological techniques are now widespread in neuroscience, at the time that Farah was searching for postdocs, the now-flourishing field of neuroimmunology hadn’t even been born yet. Little did she know, she was on the precipice of something great.

Early on during her transition into neuroscience, Farah realized that the brain worked differently than the systems she had previously worked with. Cells in the brain didn’t respond to typical immunological techniques like the epithelial cells she was accustomed to; antibodies have different effects depending on tissue type. Furthermore, she noticed that the prevalence of many molecular tools in neuroscience, like the cAMP response-element binding protein (CREB) used to study epigenetic changes in neurons, had broadly impacted the direction of research in the field. “People shape their theories based on the tools available,” she says. However, just because tools like CREB are widespread and easy to use doesn’t mean that there isn’t a hidden arsenal of other types of proteins, transcription factors, and gene targets available to neuroscientists. As an outsider looking in, she knew something needed to change. What if there were other molecules out there that weren’t being used to their full potential? And importantly, how had the standard tools used in molecular neuroscience influenced the essential theories and experiments in the field?

With these questions in mind, Farah began her first postdoc at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas with Professor Anne Anderson. At Baylor, she investigated the properties of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), another transcription factor, in epilepsy. Using hippocampal explant cultures and in vivo models of epilepsy in mice, she found that NF-κB, a molecule traditionally associated with inflammation, plays a key role in seizure susceptibility. By associating a molecule that had almost exclusively been used as an indicator of inflammation with a neurological disease state, Farah began to crack open the wealth of immunological techniques in molecular neuroscience. At this point, the interdisciplinary perspective that scientists like Farah had brought to neuroscience began to reverberate throughout the field, marking the birth of neuroimmunology.  

In her second postdoc at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB), Farah continued to study molecular epigenetics, this time focusing on the relationship between memory and epigenetic regulation of certain transcription factors. At the time, Farah was working on the most exciting frontiers of epigenetics in learning and memory. She discovered that brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is epigenetically regulated in memory consolidation. However, as she studied the epigenetic mechanisms underlying memory, Farah began to wonder how the molecular basis of memory might be different in brain regions affected by epilepsy, a topic she chose to follow when she started her own lab.

Now, as an associate professor at UAB, Farah and her lab study epigenetics, memory, and epilepsy using approaches that go beyond tracking traditional epigenetic mechanisms like DNA methylation and acetylation. Her lab’s techniques take into account the multi-dimensional roles of different transcription factors, their unique actions in different cell types, and the complex effects of some molecules in pathological and healthy memory function. Her research is driven both by exploration and theory. Furthermore, her exploratory research generates large amounts of data which she freely shares publicly, an open-science philosophy she encourages for the sake of replicability and efficiency in science. 

At every point in her career, Farah has been driven by her passion for science, and she has followed her curiosity to the cutting edge of modern neuroimmunology and molecular neuroscience. However, she has always faced naysayers. “At every step along the way, someone has said I can’t do it. Someone has said that either I couldn’t obtain my PhD, or that I would not be a successful scientist.” Frustratingly, much of the opposition she faced had to do with her colleagues and peers feeling sympathetic about the obstacles she would ultimately face due directly to her race and gender. She was told that, “you will always be seen as a Black female that has become successful because you’re a Black female,” and “that somehow things were handed down to me,” she reflects. This perception is particularly salient when she gives talks and is congratulated for being the “first Black female” or the “first African American” to give a talk at a given conference instead of being praised for the quality of work she had just presented. “It throws me off often, and that happens a lot.” 

Although Farah has maintained her optimism, humor, and generous consideration of well-meaning comments, she also knows that there is a pool of young scientists from minority backgrounds that want to be able to just do great science, without being spotlighted the way she has. To make sure that these students have the support and compassionate mentorship they need, she serves as the director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Neuroscience Roadmap Scholars Program at UAB. The Roadmap Scholars program seeks to combat the lack of diversity in academia by enhancing the engagement and retention of underrepresented graduate students. By working with Roadmap and running her own lab of talented young scientists, Farah is making sure that anyone who loves science can follow their passion to the pinnacle of their field, just like she has.

Find out more about Farah and her lab’s research here.

Listen to Nancy’s full interview with Farah on September 27, 2021 below!