Your full title as you’d like it to appear.

James Londino, PhD
Assistant Professor
The Ohio State University
Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, & Sleep Medicine

 

• Three statements about you – two true, one false.  

As a big fan of indoor sports, I once won a trip to Las Vegas to shoot billiards.

I am an excellent snowboarder.

I was a landscaper longer than I was a graduate student.

• Give us your “elevator pitch” biography.

I grew up in New Jersey and went to a small commuter college. I worked in industry for a few years until I knew management wasn’t for me. I applied to several graduate schools and was invited to attend the University of Alabama at Birmingham. From there I moved to Pittsburgh for my post-doc and to Ohio State University as an assistant professor. I am highly involved in the ATS community and currently serve as a co-chair for the PhD Basic and Translational Scientists Working Group, as a member of the RCMB Early Career Working Group, and as a member of the Education Committee.

In my lab, I study how the ubiquitin machinery alters cellular signaling. Although there are more e3 ubiquitin ligases than kinases in the genome, we’ve only just begun to understand how these proteins regulate cellular signaling. One difficulty surrounding ubiquitin biology is determining targets of e3 ligases in an unbiased manner. I use proximity labeling mass spectrometry to study these interactions and have designed my own biotin labeling construct to facilitate these studies. We use these techniques to examine how the ubiquitin machinery regulates the inflammatory response in acute lung injury and ARDS to discover novel therapeutic targets.

• What would you tell yourself as an Early Career Professional?

You will never think it’s perfect. Stop editing and submit already!

• If you weren’t in medicine, and were in a different industry altogether, what would you be?

I would love to be a science fiction author.

• What is your favorite way to spend a day off?

At the community pool with my wife and son or playing deck hockey with the kid.

• What areas of medicine are you most excited to see develop?

I am excited to see how genetic engineering and CRISPR technology move towards clinical treatments. As a researcher who focuses on the basic science end of translational medicine there are real opportunities to bridge the gap from bench to bedside.

• What is one advancement in your field you’d like to see in your career?

 There is a profound unmet need for specific therapies for ARDS. The pandemic provided a renewed interest in examining the molecular mechanism responsible for ARDS and the opportunity to test novel interventions that will hopefully lead to better therapeutics for everyone.

• Which statement did you make up?

I’ve been snowboarding for years, but I’m still just passable.