Hughes Mentor:  Douglas Antczak

Department: Baker Institute for Animal Health

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Meet a Cornell Researcher!!!

Dr. Doug Antczak is the director of the Baker Institute for Animal Health, and also still runs the Equine Genetics Center lab. He graduated from Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences and then went on to the University of Pennsylvania in order to get his VMD in 1973. He then immediately went to the University of Cambridge to complete his PhD in immunology. After receiving his doctorate he was offered at job as an assistant professor at Cornell University. His reason for accepting the position at Cornell was that he had forgotten about the winters. In reality it was a great opportunity to get a tenure track position at Cornell.

Dr. Antczak’s specialty is immunology, but with his background as a clinically trained veterinarian, he explores many interdisciplinary problems. Currently his lab at the Baker Institute, a part of the Cornell Vet School, works closely with immunology, genetics, and reproduction of horses. He is currently investigating why the mother does not reject a fetus even though it is a partial graft with half of the genes coming from the father. The mechanisms that allow this could be applied to clinical organ transplantation, and the control of cancer because tumors seem to use a similar mechanism. His initial work started in immunology because, at the time, it was a new and dynamically changing discipline. More than twenty years later it is still an exciting discipline, but the investigations across disciplines yield many new and intriguing questions.

While spending a lot of his time split between his lab and meetings as Director of the Baker Institute, Dr. Antczak still manages to have a couple of hobbies and be a family man. His most fitting hobby is his horse activities. While an undergraduate at Cornell Dr. Antczak learned how to play polo, and joined the Cornell polo team. It may have almost ruined his academic career, but he still tries to play if he can. As a less costly hobby, Dr. Antczak is an avid fly fisher. He mostly fishes for trout, and would not reveal his favorite fishing holes.

Dr. Antczak would however reveal his thoughts on undergraduates participating in research. His main comment is that he is not sure that undergraduates have enough time to spend in a lab to become competent enough to get anything done. He did spend time in a lab as an undergraduate here at Cornell. It had a positive influence on his career, but he didn’t feel that he accomplished anything in the lab. His suggestion for students that want to do research for the correct reasons is to get into the lab by the end of their sophomore year just doing basic work, like washing glassware. Then if possible get into a summer research program, like the Hughes Scholar’s Program, or just spend the summer in the lab in order to learn enough protocols to be comfortable in the lab. Then during their junior and senior years can students get things done in the lab.

In general he was very open to undergraduates doing research in his lab, but only if they were willing to so they were willing to put in the necessary time. If you are an undergraduate looking to start doing some research in a lab Dr. Antczak is very willing to talk to you, but he warns that doing research will be very time consuming. Be willing to put in the necessary time, and you will get great experience in a lab.

A Hughes Guide to Research in the Antczak Lab

I began working in Dr. Doug Antczak’s lab as a paid glassware position. After a semester of proving my aptitude by cleaning glassware and restocking shelves I began to learn more about the research that was going on in the lab from the lab tech and graduate student doing research there. The Antczak lab’s research involves the equine Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC). The MHC is a region of the genome that codes for molecules that deal with immune response. There are two main classes of molecules, class I and class II, which are cell surface glycoproteins that present non-self peptides to the body’s T-cells to induce an immune response. I began to learn some simple PCR techniques and began to design my own project with the lab technician and Dr. Antczak.

The main purpose of my project is to use microsatellite markers to analyze the MHC region of the horse genome. This summer I was able to work full time in the lab continuing this project as a Hughes Scholar. When the summer began I was a little intimidated by the amount of time that I would be spending in the lab each week since during the spring semester I was only working on this project for about ten hours a week. Each day I come into the lab and I usually run a few PCR (polymerase chain reaction) analyses as part of my fine mapping of the equine MHC region. Since PCR includes only a little set up and action time before it has to run on a machine for two hours it was hard to plan out my day without running out of things to do during the down time and at times this got a little boring. After a few weeks I began to get into the flow of things and there was enough data for me to analyze and other things to investigate during this two hour break which made the time pass a lot easier. Once I was able to look at the results that I was getting and began to understand the process and the research that I was doing more clearly it became very exciting.

My favorite part of being a member of the Antczak lab is the other people who work there. There are five other wonderful people in the lab who are all very friendly and willing to help with any question that arises. The most rewarding thing about doing research for me is to actually get to do it. I have learned so much more from actually doing the work and seeing results and then going on to the next step than I could have ever learned be reading a text book. Getting results and being able to put things together to draw my own conclusions has been an awesome and rewarding experience.