Scientist, pharmacist, and media personality, Dr. Jamie Alan has found her niche in MSU PhmTox

Dr. Jamie Alan grew up in middle America, Ohio, the epitome of “Anytown USA,” and perhaps that’s why she still maintains her approach to science and research and the amazement she still feels about being able to do the work she was born to do.

“I can’t discount the amount of luck that played into my career,” she said. “I found people to support me along the way. I didn’t even know if there was an opportunity to do this when I went to college. This is my dream career, and I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing. I’m working with students, I’m doing advocacy work and science education. I’m happy as a clam.”

She is also very good at what she does in her study of cancer biology, her growing advocacy of gender-affirming care, and the voice of MSU Pharmacology and Toxicology in the local media.

A first-generation college student from Coshocton, Ohio, she earned a doctorate in pharmacy from Ohio Northern University, making her a licensed pharmacist in three states.

“I had no idea what I wanted to do,” she said. “But I knew I liked chemistry, and I liked biology, but I also knew I wanted a Dodge Viper and wanted to be called ‘doctor,’” she said with a laugh. “I read about medical school, and I knew that wasn’t for me, but I thought pharmacology was a field I might enjoy.”

She would go on to a pivotal research rotation at Purdue University, which she called a “transformational experience.” She then earned her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina and set rather modest goals for herself.

“I just wanted to teach at a small undergraduate college and do some research,” she said.

When her partner, Dr. Eric Olson, landed a research position at Michigan State, she took one at Central Michigan University. Before long, she joined him in East Lansing as an Assistant Professor, and in 2020, she was promoted to Associate Professor.

Her focus remains on cancer biology, but her interests run in many directions, from the subject of aging to gender-affirming health care to neurodegenerative diseases. She also enjoys collaborations with MSU’s Dr. Sing Lee, and she continues to work in partnership with two researchers at Central Michigan – Dr. Felix Amissah and Dr. Rosemary Poku.

“I’m neurodivergent,” she said. “I’m working on multiple projects at the same time. It seems disorganized, but it works for me. I do a lot of collaborative work.”

And she finds her research works best, and more rapidly, with the ubiquitous roundworm, also known as C. elegans. Inexpensive, plentiful, and easy to work with, their gene function may also be directly applicable to human development and disease. And it provides Dr. Alan with exactly what she needs to do her work.

“Its biological processes are remarkably similar to ours,” she said. “There’s a lot of cell signaling seen in C. elegans. The other advantage is you can look over its entire lifetime in three weeks. You can move a lot faster.”

Using C. elegans, she is investigating the role of dietary lipids in neurodegenerative disorders. Her lab, in cooperation with Dr. Lee, has discovered that various lipid species have roles in models of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease.

Thanks to her research background and experience as a pharmacist, Dr. Alan is also a frequent interview subject with local and state media. Most recently, when the Food and Drug Administration in January announced the ban of Red Dye No. 3, Dr. Alan could be found on numerous media outlets, including WOOD-TV and Fox17 in Grand Rapids, WILX-TV in Lansing and quoted on the National News Desk website, discussing why that FDA decision was necessary.

“I’m a licensed pharmacist in three states (Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina), and I have to keep up on all the new drugs, bans and items pulled from the market to keep my license,” she said. “I have no idea how I got involved in the media, but they know I’m here, and I respond. I don’t say anything super outrageous, but I think science communication is so important right now. The real information about science is coming from academia.”

Dr. Alan is also deeply involved with gender-affirming health care, a subject she says is steeped in stigma and misinformation.

“Science tells us there are unequivocally not two genders,” she said. “People are intersex. Period. Full stop. But these patients have poor health care outcomes; they are stigmatized and treated poorly in health care.”

Dr. Alan is deeply committed to physician education around gender-affirming care, which is likely to improve LGBTQIA2S+ patient healthcare outcomes. She is currently a board member of the Grand Rapids LGBTQ+ Healthcare Consortium and the faculty advisor for the student-run Gender-Affirming Healthcare Course.