Getting to Know...Alex Theos

February 6, 2008

New NHS faculty member Alex Theos didn’t have to travel too far down I-95 when he left the University of Pennsylvania for Georgetown, but he was born, raised and educated in England. Theos graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in Natural Sciences and then stayed on to do his doctorate in biochemistry. His postdoctoral research at Penn built upon his graduate work on the pigment cell system focusing on the intracellular membrane trafficking pathways followed by melanocyte-specific integral membrane protein cargoes including tyrosinase and Pmel17. He will continue his research at Georgetown as well as taking on new teaching responsibilities. We caught up with Theos on a chilly winter morning to find out how he’s enjoying life at Georgetown.

Tell me a little bit about how you came to Georgetown.

Well, I got my doctoral degree in England—at Cambridge in the Department of Clinical Biochemistry—and I’m a basic cell biologist who specializes in membrane trafficking. I’m interested in organization of membranes and not really focused on any particular human pathology. I came over to the U.S. in 2002 to do an NIH post-doctoral fellowship at Penn to continue my graduate research on the biogenesis of specialized organelles. We were using pigment granules from melanosomes as a model system to understand the basis of some interesting and rare genetic diseases like Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome. These diseases affect specialized subsets of the body’s systems, including pigmentation.

There are very few of us around who are looking at pigmentation from this very specialized cell biology point of view—trying to figure out how to build a specialized organelle in a pigment-producing cell. If we can find out as much as possible about how these proteins get to certain compartments within the cell, then we might be able to use them to better understand human diseases. The lab I joined at Penn was at the front line of this type of research.

At Georgetown, I am continuing research I initiated at Penn based on a cargo protein called GPNMB. No one knows too much about it, but there’s an ongoing debate as to whether it acts as a tumor suppressor or acts to promote tumor growth. 

Hmm, tumor growth. So how come you are in NHS and not Lombardi?

Well, after spending four years as a post-doc, I was getting to the point of thinking of next steps in my career and starting down a more independent research path. But what I’d always wanted to do a lot more of—and this is something I did even as a graduate student—was teach. But there weren’t too many teaching opportunities at Penn, and I jumped at the opportunity of a visiting professorship at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia. The faculty there are encouraged to take “research sabbaticals” every four years, so I switched places with the Swarthmore cell biology faculty member.

It was a baptism by fire being at Swarthmore, a place that really emphasizes teaching, for someone like me who had been on the research track. I was in the classroom three times a week and in the lab two afternoons during the week. But it was really perfect—I wouldn’t have learned as much anywhere else. It was an incredibly supportive and collegial place. And being there opened my eyes to the opportunities that exist in more teaching-focused academic environments. Being here in NHS affords me the opportunity to do both research and teach undergraduates, as well as supervise them in my lab.

Not that you have much of it, but what do you like to do in your spare time?

I’ve played rugby my whole life. I coached the women’s rugby team at Swarthmore, actually, and it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately the teams here both have coaches. I played rugby when I was in Philly and I know there are three teams in the D.C. area, so we’ll see how things go and if I’m ready to bite the bullet and play rugby again.