An Open-Minded Approach: How a New Wellcome Trust Fellow Is Exploring Wnt Signalling

Dr Michael Ranes

“Leave the baggage behind and follow the data” — that’s the mindset of Dr Michael Ranes, who joined the University of Oxford’s biochemistry department as a Wellcome Trust Fellow in January.

In the months since then, Michael has been setting about getting his lab set up, focusing on finding the essential equipment and recruiting the right people as he seeks to build a team comprising three post docs and a research assistant. 

So what characteristics does he think are essential to thrive in the challenging field of research science?

While passion and respect are important, open mindedness is key — a lesson Michael learned during his post doctorate at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, which he joined in the spring of 2014. 

Back then, Michael was new to Wnt signalling — a key pathway for cell maintenance and renewal. Having left the field of DNA repair, he was determined to learn about his new domain, so he spent a great deal of time reading up on the subject, but he got more confused the more he read about this cell signalling pathway. Some of the reports about the experiments in the field showed contradictory findings.

“It’s not that they were wrong. The experiments were fine,” he says. “But the setup or the systems that they used were not robust enough or sufficient enough to really dissect the inner workings of the Wnt signalling pathway at the basic level.” 

Eventually, equipped with the knowledge of previous studies, Michael set about planning and developing his own experiments.

“When we proposed what we wanted to do, some people were somewhat sceptical,” Michael recalls. He was told that his experiments had already been attempted by others in the past, that they were overly ambitious, and that they might not provide more information beyond what was already known. Undeterred, he carried out his experiments, which yielded new data, and he gained important insight into how the Wnt signalling system worked.

“I’m not saying you should push back just to push back,” Michael says. “But it’s important to have a pragmatic approach where you take stock of potential advancements in technology and methods, or develop them yourself through a multi-disciplinary approach, then you should build on this to improve and tackle previously unmet challenges in the field.” This is the kind of approach Michael aims to adopt in his new lab as he explores the role Wnt signalling plays in health and disease.

While tackling such difficult questions and persevering through the challenges that a career in research science brings, Michael is keen to ensure that working in his lab is fun, and he is enthused at the prospect of establishing a team. Importantly, having worked in the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, he has vast experience to inform the way he manages his own lab.

“I’m most excited about building a team and training new people — the next generation of researchers,” Michael says. “Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate; I’ve always been in supportive labs, and I’ve been given so much guidance and advice. 

“I know how important that is, and that’s how I want to set up my lab — to have people come through and maximise their potential.”