Photo Credit: Lisa Stromme Warren
On the Cancer Research Frontier is a series spotlighting the scientists, doctors, nurses, patients, and philanthropists at the Cancer Vaccine Institute. Join us in meeting the brilliant minds behind our cancer vaccines and immunotherapies as they share their professional journeys and personal stories.
“Neuro-oncology meshes the field that I love — brain science — with the field that I want to get to know — cancer.”
That’s Dr. David Johnson, an Invent Scholar at Seattle Children’s who studies the biology of pediatric diseases. He is also a postdoctoral researcher at the Cancer Vaccine Institute, since 2023, learning and applying tumor immunology. Working with CVI Director Dr. Nora Disis, Dr. Johnson’s research focus is to develop a cancer vaccine for a specific form of colorectal cancer that impacts children and adolescents called familial adenomatous polyposis. At Seattle Children's, he works with Dr. Siobhan Pattwell on better understanding and finding new therapies for neuroblastoma — a cancer formed in early nerve cells.
His dual roles, which intersect the fields of immunology, neuroscience, and oncology, will position him to develop therapies for pediatric cancers and diseases in the long term.
Dr. Johnson’s focus on pediatric patient populations came about when he decided to push beyond his depth. During his Ph.D. at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, he studied the biology of glioblastoma, a brain tumor primarily diagnosed in adults. But towards the end of the program, he started to think about how his scientific findings could be translated to the clinic. To gain more experience connecting research discoveries to investigational new drugs, Dr. Johnson dedicated his postdoctoral training to creating therapeutics for a different patient population: pediatrics.
“When treating pediatric diseases, it doesn't stop with curing the disease. You have to consider that child's quality of life as they grow into adulthood,” Dr. Johnson said. “That almost adds a layer of safety and humanity back to the science because, as researchers, we don’t always see the patient. But this aspect of quality of life is something I'm intrigued by and is why I wanted to switch to pediatric cancers.”
When Dr. Johnson entered Brown University as an undergraduate in 2012, he was convinced he would major in psychology and education. He was curious about how intelligence and learning styles were assessed in the classroom because of what he started to notice in the sixth grade: students being divided into cohorts, some in honors classes and others not. He wondered why.
Little did he expect to come out of graduation with a degree in neuroscience. College was where he got his first experience in a laboratory setting, studying plant biology, bacteriophages and model organisms like the nematode worm C.elegans. He appreciated the tangibility and hands-on practice of wet lab research, which contrasted with the abstractness and theories he felt in his psychology courses.
In pursuit of furthering his neuroscience studies, Dr. Johnson then joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Sciences. The Ph.D. program enrolls around 10 students per year and their first year is dedicated to learning all fields of bioscience from quantitative programming to immunology before choosing a specialty. Dr. Johnson said he felt like a fish out of water. “The coursework and learning how to speak ‘the lingo’ was tricky to grasp,” he said.
But he appreciated the challenge and grew to enjoy being uncomfortable in academic settings.
“I’m always questioning my confidence as a scientist,” Dr. Johnson said. “Scientists can publish hundreds of papers, but in 10 years someone else can publish a paper highlighting what was missing or provide data that can flip a previously held theory on its head. It’s a constant reminder to myself to not always think in absolutes. We don't truly know everything, so there's always a sense of doubt that I think pushes me to make sure I'm doing the best I can.”
Dr. Johnson’s drive to improve stems back to his formative years as a high school student. He recalled when he took an Advanced Placement course in history in high school and came home with his mid-semester report card. He had a class grade of 93 and was excited to show his mom. He still remembers today how she looked at the card and asked “Well, this is good, but where are the seven other points?”. He said there was a lot of love in that question that he didn’t feel at the time but in retrospect gave him his sense for growth and to never settle.
“Don't get too comfortable with your success,” he said. “I appreciated learning that because it allows me to set the bar for what I want for myself. You are the bar.”
In the future, Dr. Johnson hopes to establish his own cancer biology company and/or lab with a focus on addressing the discrepancies in the racial representation of scientific specimens. The history behind Black and Brown communities in science is intricate, he said, adding that a lot needs to be done to repair that relationship, starting with including those populations in our data. The underlying mission of his life science company is to sample from underrepresented groups, include them in databases and, most importantly, give back.
“There needs to be a sector, especially in research institutions, dedicated to reaching out to underserved communities,” he said. “I’d love to have a company where a big sector is dedicated to repairing that relationship, by, for example, monetarily giving back to the population we’re taking from to do our science. I rarely see that in today’s medical and scientific fields.”
If science and research weren’t his calling, Dr. Johnson said he could see himself as a comedian with a potential side gig as a DJ. He writes skits and concepts of shows in his notes and recently bought a small DJ system for his birthday. He believes humor and lightness are one of the most important interpersonal skills.
“If you're not gonna laugh, you'll probably cry,” Dr. Johnson joked. “Comedy is the best medicine. Who doesn't like to laugh?”