Nana Kwame Kwabi Boateng, Dr. James Luyendyk Have Formed an "Amazing Connection"

By Chuck Carlson

It started with Nana Kwame Kwabi Boateng sending a “cold” email to a professor at Michigan State University he knew by reputation alone.

Kwabi Boateng was working at the ubiquitous Boots Pharmacy in Aberdeen, Scotland, after earning his master’s degree in Clinical Pharmacology (with Distinction) from the University of Aberdeen.

However, the native of Ghana wanted more, and after surviving a year in Scotland where he says he has never been colder (“I said, ‘There’s no way people live here. It’s too cold,’ he recalled with a smile), he knew his future would take him to the United States.

So, he sent unsolicited emails to universities across the country seeking the right opportunity to pursue his Ph.D., with a special emphasis on Michigan State’s Pharmacology & Toxicology Department and Professor James Luyendyk.

“I sent him a cold email out of the blue,” Kwabi Boateng said. “Because I had worked in a thrombosis and hemostasis lab (in Scotland), I had read extensively about people in the field. I read that (Professor Luyendyk) specialized in coagulation and was a toxicologist, and that doesn’t happen that much.”

Kwabi Boateng’s email found an intrigued recipient.

“We get a lot of emails, but this one struck me,” Dr. Luyendyk said. “This email comes from this fellow who says, ‘I’m an aspiring toxicologist studying fibrin (which helps blood clot after injury),’ and I said this is for me.”

He was impressed that Kwabi Boateng had completed his master’s work at Aberdeen under respected Professor Nicola Mutch, and he responded to the email from a student he knew very little about.

“His email was very welcoming,” Kwabi Boateng said, though he admitted in his conversations with Dr. Luyendyk, who extolled the quality of the MSU PhmTox program, that he had his sights set on MSU all along.

“I had to come to MSU,” he said. “It’s well known regarding its toxicology program and training people in toxicology for working in the industry.”

Now, Kwabi Boateng is beginning his second year in the PhmTox program with Dr. Luyendyk as his principal investigator. It has been the ideal match.

“He is among the most professional people I’ve ever interacted with,” Dr. Luyendyk said. “He responds to my dad jokes with an eye roll, just like everyone else. But it’s been an amazing connection. I’m glad he wrote. I think my research interests fit the precise paradigm of what he wanted for his graduate work.”

Initially interested in pursuing a path to neurosurgery, Nana’s interest shifted to drug discovery and medicinal chemistry, which led him to pharmacy school at Central University in Ghana. Eventually, training in both hospital and community pharmacy settings, he was registered to practice as a pharmacist and worked at the Safety Monitoring Department of the FDA- Ghana.

“I was exposed to people with adverse reactions to medicines,” he said. That included his father, who had undergone chemotherapy. “I saw how the drugs affected him,” Kwabi Boateng said.

And that led to where he is now and his interest in not just finding out how drugs work, but why they work.

“I’ve always been more interested in bringing to light things not previously known,” he said. “I really want to know what’s behind the drug. It’s cause and effect. Why does pain go away? Patients want to be cured, but I’m more intrigued with the science behind the pill.”

These questions have led to his plans for his upcoming comprehensive exam, where he will discuss transglutaminase 2, an enzyme that modifies the fibrin component of blood clots.

Along the way, he is working to develop his skills as an instructor with an eye one day toward possibly working in academia. He took his first steps this summer as he mentored students in the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow Program (SURF), which introduces undergraduate students to pharmacology research.

“SURF was a good experience for me,” Kwabi Boateng said. “Teaching really tests what you know about your subject area. It also opens your mind, and it honed my leadership skills. The students look to you when things don’t go right, and you must have an explanation for why it didn’t. And sometimes you don’t.”

For Kwabi Boateng, the future remains in flux, but he knows his decision to come to MSU and study under Dr. Luyendyk was the correct one.

“Dr. Luyendyk and I had quite a few conversations before I came to MSU, and I realized MSU was the place to be because he spoke highly of the institution,” he said. “And so far, it hasn’t been anything short of what he spoke of.”

And Dr. Luyendyk knows whatever Kwabi Boateng decides, he will thrive.

“Whatever Nana wants to achieve, he is going to achieve,” Dr. Luyendyk said. “What he ultimately chooses to do will grow from the experiences he has with the people he interfaces with. There’s genuinely nothing that stands in his way.”