Behind the Scenes: Mining for Markers of Health

How do you become the director of a top-tier analytical core facility?

Looking at Renu Nandakumar, PhD, director of the Biomarkers Core Laboratory at the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, may give you some insight.

Nandakumar was raised in a home full of readers and writers, but instead of pursuing a literary life, she gravitated toward all things biological. Taking inspiration from the novels that filled her shelves, Nandakumar’s studies took her across the globe, from India to Japan, Sweden, and various corners of the U.S. She felt no limits in the world of biology: she learned everything from marine biology and microbiology to mass spectrometry and bioinformatics. “I’ve traveled far and wide to reach here,” she says.

It happened to be just the right combination of training for running the Biomarkers Core Laboratory a specialized facility for identifying and measuring biomarkers—the various molecules found in body fluids or tissues that provide insights into biological processes, diseases, and the effects of drugs. “They are the readouts of everything that happens within the body,” says Nandakumar.

In her first academic position, at the University of Maryland, she worked on a NASA project that launched a bacterial payload into space to test the theory that microbial life once came to Earth on a meteorite. “That was my 15 minutes of fame,” says Nandakumar. Her career also included researching bacteria found in marine waters, hot springs, and alpine glaciers, developing biosensors to detect pollutants and monitor fermentation processes, and generating the first-ever reference map of Staphylococcus aureus membrane proteins for the identification of vaccine candidates for this highly infectious pathogen.

Nandakumar could have followed the traditional academic path and become an independently funded investigator with her own lab. Instead, she chose to dedicate herself to essential behind-the-scenes efforts, managing a core lab in metabolomics and proteomics at the University of Nebraska for five years, with a focus on oxidative stress mechanisms.

Markers of health

In 2014, Nandakumar was hired as a senior staff associate at the Biomarkers Core Laboratory at Columbia’s Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. Just four years later, she was promoted to lab director, where she quickly made a significant impact. She expanded the lab’s capabilities in metabolomics and mass spectrometry, a technology that identifies and measures biological molecules, and established a lipidomics core. Nandakumar also led efforts to set up a biobanking facility to support the All of Us biobank, as well as biobanking initiatives to study COVID-19 and cardiometabolic diseases. In her most recent venture, she collaborated with Gary Miller, professor of environmental health sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health, to establish an exposomics core—one of only four nationwide—focused on identifying molecules in the body that provide insights into our exposures to environmental factors, such as air pollution and diet.

During her tenure as the Biomarkers Core director, Nandakumar successfully tripled the lab’s user base to over 400 researchers, with a particular emphasis on supporting early career investigators. Each year, she and her team of nine dedicated staff scientists analyze approximately 30,000 samples for more than 100 investigators, including several from outside the U.S. With a single sample, her lab can detect tens of thousands of markers of health. “Give me a vial of blood and I’ll give you back volumes of data,” says Nandakumar.

Assisting Columbia researchers

But the work in her lab goes far beyond simple sample analysis. This is especially true for early career investigators at CUIMC, who often require guidance with writing grant sections about analytic testing, the ins and outs of specimen handling, and how to mine data to detect biological pathways involved in disease and identify potential therapeutic targets.

“We will assist with everything from grant applications and budgets to experimental design and manuscript preparation,” she says.

For clinical researchers like Matthew R. Baldwin, a critical care physician who studies ways to improve outcomes in patients with life-threatening lung disorders, the Biomarkers Lab is indispensable. “Trying to do these analyses on my own would be prohibitively expensive, if not impossible,” he says. “Not only is Renu an outstanding lab manager, she’s also an outstanding teacher. I've learned so much from her: everything from collecting and storing samples to analyzing data. Her team makes me a better investigator.”

Muredach Reilly, vice dean for clinical and translational research and director of the Irving Institute, is also quick to praise Nandakumar: “Renu is always looking for new ways to meet the needs of the research community and expand the lab’s efforts inside and outside of Columbia. She’s a remarkable investigator in her own right. One of the unspoken heroes at Columbia.”

Thanks to Nandakumar and her team’s contributions, more than two dozen Columbia researchers have been able to move their drug discoveries into preclinical trials. Most notably, a potential treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) called prosetin (discovered by Hynek Wichterle and Brent R. Stockwell) is currently undergoing clinical trials. If successful, prosetin could become the first drug to directly target the neurogenerative process in ALS.

“The opportunity to help people is very precious to me,” says Nandakumar. “For me, a vial of blood is not just a sample. It represents a person facing serious health challenges, each with their unique story. I feel a deep responsibility to handle that sample with utmost respect.”