'Ask Gretchen'

Science Article

Teacher, technician, inventor, Gretchen Johnson shares her knowledge of science along all points of the education spectrum

Gretchen Johnson, research technician in the Torok-Storb lab, has taught many researchers how to grow cloned stromal-cell lines. Photo by Todd McNaught

Although her official title is research technician III, many would call Gretchen Johnson a teacher extraordinaire. It's a role she has relished for most of the 26 years she has spent in the Transplant Biology Program in the Clinical Research Division.

Her students are a varied lot, from postdocs learning the details of the lab to high-school students receiving an introduction to hands-on science. Teaching takes up about half of Johnson's time. The rest is spent immersed in the world of tissue cultures, keeping lab protocols up to date and tracking patient-marrow samples for research.

As a key member of Dr. Beverly Torok-Storb's lab, Johnson helped invent the cloned stromal-cell lines that are among the lab's landmark achievements. Johnson has trained more than 30 fellows, students and visiting scientists in the intricacies of growing these cells in culture. Most of those students have gone on to academic positions at Fred Hutchinson and other institutions, spreading the knowledge to research centers around the world.

Hutch High

On the other end of the education spectrum, Johnson became involved with young, future scientists at an American Society of Hematology (ASH) symposium in Seattle several years ago. During that meeting, researchers from the Torok-Storb lab and other center staff offered hands-on lab activities and seminars for local students. What grew from those efforts was an annual program of bringing young, would-be scientists onto campus, an event dubbed Hutch High.

"Gretchen has an exceptional ability to communicate scientific principles to the community, both young and old alike, and she enjoys doing it," Torok-Storb said. "Since 1995 when we organized what would later evolve into Hutch High, Gretchen has played a key role in designing and leading hands-on activities for students. She assumed responsibility for organizing our Hutch High road show so we could host a student symposium at the yearly American Society of Hematology (ASH) meetings. This symposium has now become a tradition at ASH."

It is Johnson's expertise in growing stem cells in culture and her ability to transfer that knowledge to others that have had the largest impact on the Torok-Storb lab's research.

"Her teaching skills have benefited many postdocs and even faculty," Torok-Storb said. "Since Gretchen is an expert on growing stem cells in culture, many people come to her for tutorials. Ours has been a true partnership — it would be difficult to function without her."

Among the lab's key products are patented stromal-cell lines — bone-marrow cells that nourish the development of blood and immune cells — which Johnson co-invented. The role of these cell lines in advancing research have been so pivotal that a National Institutes of Health study section reviewing one of Torok-Storb's recent grant submissions characterized them as "national resources." Johnson and other members of the lab cloned the stromal-cell lines in the early 1990s.

Hematopoiesis resource

The lab's researchers study the regulation of hematopoiesis — the formation of blood cells — that occurs in the bone marrow. The marrow consists of two major compartments. First are the blood-forming cells, the stem cells and progenitors of all blood-cell lineages: red, white and platelets. The second major compartment consists of stroma or supporting cells. The latter is referred to as the microenvironment.

"These cells regulate the rate and direction of blood formation; that is, they tell the stem cells what to do by providing the environment for the stem cells to develop into blood cells," Johnson said. "The stromal cells are composed of many cell types, each with a different function or functions. In order for us to better understand how this regulation happens, we decided to dissect the microenvironment into its different cell components and see what role each cell type played. By doing this, we can then test what happens when there is something wrong with one particular cell type in the microenvironment."

Mentorship role

Johnson worked on cloning 30 stromal-cell lines from donated marrow (27 lines survive today), referred to as HS or human-stroma lines. Two of these cell lines are used extensively and have been deposited with a cell-line bank for medical researchers to purchase and use.

Thanks in part to Johnson's teaching, labs all over the world are using them. One of the researchers who benefited from Johnson's training is Dr. Lynn Graf, a longtime staff scientist in the Torok-Storb lab.

"Gretchen had already been here a couple years when I came. She taught me basic tissue culture and how to work with hematopoietic cells, as she has done for so many people," Graf said. "When students and teachers worked in our lab, Gretchen was always the one to mentor them on techniques and teach them the basic concepts they needed, with great patience.

"The same is true of the many postdoctoral fellows who have passed through our lab in all these years. She is the resource for tissue culture and hematopoietic colonies for the Transplantation Biology Program. Have an unusual or difficult cell type to grow? Ask Gretchen, she'll figure out how to do it. Need a growth factor or antibody? Ask Gretchen."

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