curriculum vitae
FRANCES BRODSKY, DPHIL
Professor, UCSF
Departments of Biopharmaceutical Sciences, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and Microbiology and Immunology
Member
UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center
Education
| Institution | Degree/Position | Year | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harvard University, Massachusetts | B.A. | 1976 | Biochemistry |
| Oxford University, England | D. Phil. | 1979 | Genetics |
| Harvard University, Massachusetts | Postdoc | 1980 | Biochemistry |
| Stanford University, California | Postdoc | 1980-82 | Structural Biology |
Professional Experience
| Year | Position |
|---|---|
| 1976-1979 | Graduate Student with Dr. W.F. Bodmer, Genetics Laboratory, Oxford, U.K. |
| 1979-1980 | Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. J.L. Strominger, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA |
| 1980-1982 | Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. P. Parham, Stanford University, School of Medicine, Stanford, CA |
| 1982-1986 | Program Manager, Cell Biology, Research and Development Department, Becton Dickinson Immunocytometry Systems |
| 1987-1991 | Assistant Professor of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, School of Pharmacy; Assistant Adjunct Professor of Microbiology, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. |
| 1991-1994 | Associate Professor of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, School of Pharmacy; Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco |
| 1994-Present | Professor of Biopharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, School of Pharmacy; Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco |
Honors and Awards
| Year | Achievement |
|---|---|
| 1975 | Dreyfus Fellowship (summer research), Phi Beta Kappa-junior year |
| 1976 | Graduated Summa cum laude in Biochemical Sciences, Harvard |
| 1976-1979 | Marshall Scholarship for study in the United Kingdom |
| 1980-1982 | Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Fund, Postdoctoral Fellowship |
| 1984-1999 | Member, Editorial Board of Human Immunology |
| 1987 | Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association Fund Research Starter Grant |
| 1988-1992 | Pew Scholar award |
| 2005 | Boehinger-Ingelheim Lecturer, McGill University |
| 2005-2007 | Honorary Professor, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland |
| 2006-2011 | Member, Searle Scholars Advisory Board |
| 2006 | Margaret Pittman Lecturer, National Institutes of Health |
| 2006 | Visiting fellow, King's College Cambridge |
| 2007 | WICB Senior Career Recognition Award, American Society for Cell Biology |
Publications
For a list of selected publications please see our publications page
profile
Frances Brodsky grew up in Princeton, New Jersey where her artist mother, Professor of Visual Arts at Rutgers and Director of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Printmaking, still lives. Brodsky's father was Executive Vice President of the Educational Testing Service, where he spent his entire professional career.
Attending Princeton public schools, Brodsky's seventh grade teacher got her interested in biology. Somehow, with primitive microscopes, the students did microscopy. Brodsky's parents encouraged her interest in science, hoping that she would become a medical doctor.
In 1972 Brodsky entered Radcliffe, her mother's almamater, where she majored in Biochemical Sciences. Although she cultivated an interest in medicine in deference to her parents, she eventually faced the reality that "I fundamentally was interested in the principle, but not the practice of medicine."
At Harvard Brodsky designed her own curriculum, combining science with her other intellectual passion, comparative language and literature. It was also in her college days that she developed a passion for hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire, a pastime she indulges still in many parts of the world, and which recently resulted in a broken leg.
Brodsky's interest in immunology led her to work in the laboratory of Paul Gottlieb at MIT for her undergraduate thesis. Following college, Brodsky went to England on a Marshall scholarship for graduate study at Oxford. Of the two institutions, Brodsky observes, "Harvard was relatively unstructured, but Oxford was completely unstructured," which delighted her, because she could spend all her time in the lab. Gottlieb had brokered an introduction to immunologist Walter Bodmer (later "Sir Walter") and Brodsky took a position with Bodmer for her fellowship. She reflects that she was "extremely lucky" to be at Oxford when work on monoclonal antibodies began. The year before she arrived, Kohler and Milstein published their first paper on monoclonal antibodies; Bodmer's lab, along with Alan Williams', picked up on this new technology early on. Brodsky's graduate work applied this new technology to study human histocompatability molecules (HLA), eventually providing Brodsky an entrée to cell biology.
Upon completion of her doctorate, Brodsky returned to Harvard to work with Jack Strominger. A decided advantage to the Strominger lab was that her British sweetheart and scientific collaborator, Peter Parham, whom she had met while he was on leave at Oxford, had taken a position there. At the prompting of a former undergraduate mentor, crystallographer Steve Harrison, Brodsky initiated using monoclonal antibodies to study the protein clathrin (from the Greek word Clathrate meaning "basket-like," because it forms basket-like structures). Though Brodsky realized that she "didn't really know much about cell biology," she became increasingly interested in it while characterizing the antibodies. This work continues today. Recently Joel Ybe in Brodsky's lab, with Peter Hwang in Robert Fletterick's lab, have completed the crystal structure of the central portion of the clathrin molecule, which in combination with a part of the structure solved by Tomas Kirchhausen, Steve Harrison and colleagues at Harvard completes the structure of the whole molecule.
After a year, Parham took a junior faculty position at Stanford, where Brodsky followed to do a second post-doc in his lab. Brodsky spent two years in her second post-doc at Stanford where she pursued her work on both clathrin and HLA. There, she combined the discipline of immunology into her cell biology and discovered, at the interface of the fields, that clathrin controls intracellular transport that is important for how histocompatability molecules stimulate an immune response.
Following her post-doc in 1982, Becton Dickinson Immunocytometry Systems hired Brodsky as a Program Manager where she ran her own lab. She explains that Becton "had been a medical supply company, and was branching out into basic research in monoclonal antibodies and cell surface biology." She learned a great deal of cell biology by attending the ASCB Annual Meeting to meet others in the field, ("infiltrating" cell biology, as she thinks of it).
After four years in industry, Brodsky made the then-uncommon decision to go back to the academic world when she took a position as Assistant Professor at UCSF. Brodsky is now a full professor with joint appointments in the departments of Biopharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the School of Pharmacy, and in Microbiology & Immunology in the School of Medicine.
Brodsky relishes her return to academics for three reasons: to be able to teach and work with graduate students, to have diverse colleagues with whom to interact, and because it forces her to broaden her perspective. "When you work in industry you tend to be quite focused, but with teaching you have to generalize and know a little about a lot more subjects."
Brodsky has served on the Allergy & Immunology Study Section at the NIH and will start a term of service on the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease Board of Scientific Councilors which reviews laboratories at the NIAID.
Despite her busy life in research, Brodsky has maintained and developed her lifelong interest in literature. Under the pseudonym B.B. Jordan, she has written two murder mystery novels, Principal Investigation and Secondary Immunization. She will complete her three-book contract with Triplet Code, which is underway. Brodsky finds that the murder mystery genre is an effective way to describe different professional worlds; her series is based in a biomedical research laboratory. Brodsky explains, "mysteries are not unlike what occurs in the laboratory in terms of collecting evidence in order to come to a conclusion." She finds her plots in the world of academic intrigue and uses scientific detail to spice them up, along with the requisite dose of sex and romance, though staying light on violence. Her protagonist, Dr. Celeste Braun, who she is quick to claim is not based on herself, works at the "Bay Area University," in San Francisco. Braun uncovers a biotechnologist's plot to release a virus strain in order to cash in by selling the cure. The subsequent popularity of movies with similar story lines, like Outbreak, ultimately augmented the interest in and success of the first book, which was nominated for the "Poison Pen Best Paperback Original List."
Janice Blum of Indiana University says, "Frances has bridged several worlds in her career as a scientist and author. She has conducted pioneering work on endocytosis and clatherin biology linking the fields of immunology, cell biology and more recently pathogenesis. All the while, she has deftly navigated the halls of industry and academics."
Brodsky is co-editor of a new journal, Traffic, which specializes in intracellular transport. The other co-editors are Mark Marsh and Sandra Schmid. Sadly, the late Thomas Kreis was to be a co-editor as well.
Brodsky and Parham have two homes, one on the Stanford campus, and one they recently bought in San Francisco that they are working to renovate. The two homes give each a retreat close to their laboratories and both of them an opportunity to enjoy a mix of city and suburban life.
ASCB Profile 1999
b. b. jordan
Under the pen name B.B. Jordan, Professor Frances Brodsky has written a series of scientific mystery novels featuring crime-solving scientist Dr. Celeste Braun.
Principle Investigation
ISBN: 978-0425160909
Published: Nov 1997
"On the cutting edge of medical research,
a shattering debut novel featuring virologist Dr Celeste Braun."
Secondary Immunization
ISBN: 978-0425171189
Published: Oct 1999
"An electrifying new novel featuring virologist Dr Celeste Braun."
Triplet Code
ISBN: 978-0425179208
Published: Apr 2001
"B. B. Jordan is a dazzler" - Jon A. Jackson, author of Dead Folks