Faculty Research Award

Love for work pushes Khalili to neurovirology innovation

Khalili

Kamel Khalili, professor and director of Temple’s Center for Neurovirology and Cancer Biology, is an internationally recognized researcher into the molecular biological causes and consequences of viral infections of the central nervous system.

He has played a pioneering role in creating the field of neurovirology and has led its growth through the launch of the prestigious Journal of Neurovirology, of which he is editor-in-chief. He also helped found the International Society of Neurovirology, which brings together researchers and clinical scientists from around the world to work in collaboration for the prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative and neoplastic disease in the nervous system.

As a researcher, he has made key contributions to his field by unraveling the molecular pathogenesis of viral-induced demyelination of brain, establishing a connection between the JC virus, brain tumors and certain types of colon cancer.

But if you ask Khalili, a 2005 Faculty Research Award recipient, what is the one thing he is most proud of in his career, he will tell you without hesitation, “my students, honestly, because I’ve had the opportunity to train them and see them develop into independent investigators.”

Although he is a world-class researcher with more than 235 publications in top peer-reviewed journals, Khalili views himself first as a teacher and mentor, and considers his ongoing encouragement and commitment to young scientists to be the most important accomplishment of his career.

“I’m always most proud of being among talented individuals,” he said. “We are able to work together, and it is fantastic.

“I feel I have such a huge family around me,” Khalili added. “You cannot get that feeling in any other environment except a strong academic environment, and I’ve been lucky to work at academic research institutions. That’s the highlight of my career.”

It is a distinguished career that came to a fork in the road very early. After earning his bachelor’s degree in biology, Khalili began exploring his options for graduate school.

“I was very interested in microbiology, and for some reason, when I was looking at graduate programs, I had two kinds of interests,” he said. “One was marine biology focusing on pathogenic bacteria and the other one was molecular biology."

Khalili even considered attending the University of Miami to pursue marine biology, but ultimately decided to study microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine.

After graduating with his doctorate in microbiology in 1983, Khalili served for a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Penn’s Wistar Institute before receiving a Fogarty Scholarship for postdoctoral work at the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

“I have always been interested in the molecular pathways that regulate events in the cells, and the biochemistry and physiology of cells,” Khalili said. “That’s what I continue to work on.”

During his three-year stint as a postdoc at the NCI, Khalili began working with viruses that affect the brain and received his training on the molecular virology of the central nervous system. He also worked under researcher George Khoury, who would shape Khalili’s future as a mentor to young scientists and researchers.

“George Khoury was a great molecular virologist and just a fantastic role model,” Khalili said. Khoury would contract lymphoma and pass away during Khalili’s third year at the NCI; at the same time, he felt something was missing, something more than just his role model.

“That was working with students,” Khalili recalled. “I always loved to teach and work with students. So I wanted to get back into academics.”

Khalili wanted to stay in the Northeast, but didn’t see New York, Washington or Boston as options. Having fallen in love with Philadelphia during his day at Penn, he landed at Thomas Jefferson University in 1987, where during his decade-long tenure he developed the division of neurovirology.

In the early 1990s, Khalili attended an NIH-sponsored workshop in Portland, Maine, where he gave an invited talk about the basic aspects of a neurotropic virus that causes the disease PML in the brains of AIDS patients.

“As I was talking, I began to realize that there were a lot of clinicians in the audience who did not have much information about the biology of the disease, or the lifecycle of the agent that causes the disease they were dealing with every day,” he said. “So there was really a huge gap between basic scientists and the clinicians who were working on the same problem. We needed a better way of communicating and sharing our information."

Upon returning to Philadelphia, Khalili decided to expand his group’s research portfolio from the basic science to include disease-oriented translational research with clinical samples.

As his group expanded, discussion with his chair and dean at Jefferson led to the formation of the division of neurovirology. In 1996, Khalili moved to MCP-Hahnemann University and Khalili’s group, which had grown from 15 to almost 50 people, became the Center for Neurovirology and Neurooncology. In 1999, he moved to Temple’s College of Science and Technology and renamed his center to Neurovirology and Cancer Biology.

“Temple has been extremely, extremely supportive particularly in recent years,” Khalili said. “The Provost’s Office and the Vice President for Research’s Office have been very supportive of our research enterprise. The President also has expressed his pleasure in our program and productivity.”

As a researcher, Khalili has made key contributions to his field by establishing a connection between the JC virus, brain tumors and certain types of colon cancer. His findings have been published in numerous prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as Molecular and Cellular Biology and Cancer Biology .

“These discoveries have focused new attention on JC Virus as a potential target for antiviral and immune therapies,” said Allen Nicholson, dean of the College of Science and Technology.

But to Khalili, it all comes down to friends, colleagues and, of course, those who are under his mentorship.

“There have been times that I’ve gotten up in the morning and thought, ‘Wow, they are actually paying me to do this,’” he said. “I love to get to the lab early in the morning and be the first one there. Now, when I open the door, I often see students, postdocs and other faculty members already working.

“All the research that we’ve done, the publications that we’ve had, they’re just the fruits of labor,” he said. “You need dedicated, smart people around you. You can’t get to this stage unless you have excellent people supporting you.”

“I feel so lucky to be in this position.”

- By Preston M. Moretz