Title: Funding Therapies: Advancing Research for Chronic Pancreatitis with Daniel Morgan ‘23, ‘23

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I'm Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I'm Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.
Christa Downey: Today, we're joined by Daniel Morgan, a research portfolio manager for Mission Cure. This is a patient research organization dedicated to finding therapies for chronic pancreatitis. Daniel shares how his research background helps his team make informed decisions about allocating research dollars to discovering life altering therapies for this painful, rare disease with no cure.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: Daniel, thank you so much for being with us today. We always like to start with our guests asking about where are you now and what are you doing? So can you fill us in on the context of where you're working right now?
Daniel Morgan: Yeah, my pleasure to be here. So right now, I am the research portfolio manager for Mission Cure, and Mission Cure is a nonprofit using an impact investment model to improve outcomes for pancreatitis, ultimately going for a cure. And essentially, this means the money used on these projects are invested on an outcome basis, and profit is more of a secondary priority for these things. Chronic pancreatitis is a devastating disease. It affects the pancreas, which is responsible for both insulin and digestive enzymes. Without it, you become diabetic and need to take replacement enzymes before every meal. Its characteristic symptom is really, really intense pain and many claim this to be the worst pain someone can feel. My role as the portfolio manager means I'm in charge of finding new partners for chronic pancreatitis research and accelerating the science toward patient use. This means a lot of different things ranging from helping to recruit for clinical trials to even developing a wearable device to better track and understand symptoms of the disease.
Christa Downey: I love it. How did you get there?
Daniel Morgan: I actually interned for them in high school back in 2017, and we stayed in contact.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: Oh, wow.
Daniel Morgan: So when they asked if I wanted to work for them part time during my masters, I said, Are you looking for a full time scientist? And they said, Yes. So, you know, they did a brief interview, and I'm back with them now, and I'm loving it.
Christa Downey: I'm so glad to hear that. So you're a scientist with a lot of interaction with clients and people in general. Can you tell us more about your day today?
Daniel Morgan: Yeah, totally. The day to day looks very different depending on what projects have more urgent needs than others depending on deadlines. Sometimes I'm looking for new partners through surveying scientific papers, pitching to life sciences companies to take on pancreatitis, or attending conferences to present or see new research. Right now actually, I'm working on submitting an abstract to the Digestive Disease Week conference on clinical trials that have already occurred for chronic pancreatitis and recurrent acute pancreatitis. This will be very helpful in proving the viability of how we can approach clinical trials for these diseases and different endpoints that can be used for measuring interventions' usefulness. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to seeing that go through.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: It sounds like so many different factors have to come into play, right, to make a set of successful practices. And so we ask everybody, like, what's a significant challenge that you faced at work? And how did you overcome it? It sounds like you're doing that well, but walk us through an example, maybe.
Daniel Morgan: Definitely. So I've been here for about a year now, and early on into starting here, there was a change in management, which meant I was taking on more responsibilities in my role, which was both exciting but also a little nerve wracking since this is my first full time job out of education. And I didn't want to make too many mistakes. You know, a little nervous. But I stuck close by with the CEO who has been working at this for a couple of years and continuously asking questions before making mistakes, I think, has led me to be able to excel in this role and continue to improve with the more projects I take on.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: I appreciate your point about not being afraid to ask questions, right? I think so many people think they just have to know or figure it out on their own.
Daniel Morgan: Yeah, and taking over large projects, it's a lot of project management, making sure that people are on track and hitting their milestones. Definitely had some experience at Cornell, but working with both small and large biotech companies, it's very different and you need to understand there will be different responsibilities, different levels of information that they'll give you to be able to actually make an impact, and making sure that you're not stepping on too many toes is also important.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: That's a great point.
Christa Downey: So in the day today, I mean, certainly, so you mentioned some of these challenges with relationships and the skills needed. Can you talk more about the skill sets that you're using in this role?
Daniel Morgan: Yeah, so for project management specifically?
Christa Downey: Across General, right, like when you talk about investments, I think, you know, are you doing using some financial knowledge and skills? Or are you using more the scientific, you know, knowledge and skills? And then, yes, project management.
Daniel Morgan: There's a something I've really enjoyed in this role is the combination of needing to understand the science and being able to parse out what is you know, maybe a little more exaggerated versus what is legit? What is actually going to be the difference maker in this field. And I've definitely learned that through Cornell, many classes having us analyze different research papers that one would expect to be very professional, but there are ways to figure out that, the overlapping error bars makes you less confident or the way that this molecule interacts with other parts of the body might make it not suitable for a cure. And also being people-facing and using my people skills is very important as well because not everyone I interact with is a PhD in the pancreas. I need to work out how to best explain to them why something might be better than a different molecule and really work on listening so that I can best tailor the work that I'm doing to them.
Christa Downey: Yes. Excellent. So then I started to think about so many students across the board and BME, in particular, you know, ask about, do I need an M.Eng.? How does that help me? What does that look like? Can you speak to that?
Daniel Morgan: Yeah, I think the M.Eng, was great for me. Specifically Professor ed Faria's class, innovation and design of biomedical technologies, was very helpful in learning the ins and outs of taking a molecule or a device from start to finish. What do you need to hit? What do you need to take into account? Different stakeholders, different payers, and ensuring that everyone's on board so it can actually get to market and actually help the people it needs to help.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: So it sounds like you have so many partners and collaborators. So will you talk to us more about which people or organizations, you know, you hold in that collaboration environment that you have?
Daniel Morgan: I think the most important has to be the patients. This is all for them, so we want them along our side and closest to us. But beyond them, we also work closely with academics across the country, actually across the world, from India to Denmark to Alabama. We are finding the professionals and try to rope them into our community to create something bigger. But something that's really important for further collaboration is working closely with life sciences companies. And this is because funding is a major issue in rare disease research. There's just never enough and many academics are not geared towards creating a business out of their science. They'll take it to the clinical trial stage and then have to pass it off. But if there's no one to pass it off to, it'll start collecting dust, even if it is a good cure. So by working closer with life sciences companies, convincing them to take on pancreatitis, getting more investors willing to fund these projects, we'll be able to get closer to a cure.
Christa Downey: This is such an interesting model, and you know, I'm not sure how common this type of model is if this exists everywhere, and I'm just not familiar. I'm fascinated. You know, I guess I never spent a lot of time thinking about this as a possibility, and I work with so many students interested in healthcare. And so I'm just thinking through if I have a student who listens to this podcast perhaps and comes to chat with me more or who doesn't, and they're wondering about how to get involved, how to make an impact with a particular disease, perhaps, but I guess could be anything in healthcare, maybe beyond you know, what are some possibilities? Like, what does that look like? What does it look like for someone to maybe get a similar position to you, or, you know, what it might look like from here? What are some other roles in this field? Can you talk more about just this space in general?
Daniel Morgan: Yeah. So I think academics, the training is very important. Getting both the understanding of the sciences side of things, but also understanding the business regulatory works, the background that you don't always hear about is important to focus on. But also, if there is an organ you're interested in, a disease that you're interested in, there might be a nonprofit associated with that. And a lot of these places, including Mission Cure takes interns every year. I just had two lovely interns, Julian Morales and Lisa Colbert from the CUNY system. And they really helped me put together work, the research on the clinical trials actually because it's all unstructured data. It was so much to parse through. There were huge helps with that. And I kept them involved in every single thing I did. So they were able to basically be my understudy, and I think that helped them and they're definitely ready to take on a position similar to mine if they chose to. So I think looking for non profit, many of them do pay as well. So if that's a concern, you can be getting a salary for this as an intern. And that's definitely a way to pursue both this people facing but science-y side of the STEM career path.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: I love the shout out to your interns.
Daniel Morgan: Yeah, they're awesome, so I had to.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: That's a wonderful wonderful thing to note when you can also be so proud of your interns as an organization, that's really a remarkable thing.
Daniel Morgan: Yeah. It was definitely a great experience taking on the leadership role of working alongside them, educating them, but also learning from them, too.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: Right? All those fresh perspectives that they walk in the door with.
Daniel Morgan: Exactly.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: So I just came out of teaching a class 10 minutes before we logged on here, and we were talking about AI. For us, specifically, it was about presentations, but AI in general, became the conversation for several different things. But we were wondering, also, how is AI having an impact in the space where you work?
Daniel Morgan: Yeah. It's definitely early stages. It's still in development, needs to be improved. And aside from climate concerns and energy impact, I'm really looking forward to the way it can contribute to this field. I think it'll be huge for finding new potential molecules because AI will be much faster than I could ever be at looking up what these molecules interact with, their mechanism of action, and how they could potentially treat the disease. So that would just give us probably hundreds of new targets to pursue. And work with new collaborators to get it into market. We like to take multiple shots on goal and this would be the perfect path to increase our shots.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: I like that explanation. Multiple shots to get on goal. That's a great description of that. Might steal it from you, Daniel.
Daniel Morgan: Please do.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: So also one of the things that we like to ask is that you dial back to being sophomore. And because that's the year where you start to get a good sense of, you know, which kind of engineering you might want to do. And most students at the end of their sophomore years matriculate into one of the majors. And so with that in mind, what do you wish you knew that you can send out into the world right now as a sophomore?
Daniel Morgan: I think it can be difficult to see and know at first, but there are so many different ways to use an engineering degree. At its core, an engineering degree helps you become a better problem solver, and that's what I try to do day to day, figure out how we can best solve the problem of pancreatitis. I used to think that the only way to use an engineering degree would be working at a research bench or get a PhD, and I've been proven wrong, and I'm really enjoying this alternative path, not to say that I might get a PhD later in life, but as of now, I'm enjoying this interacting with patients, people. I feel like I'm really making an impact. They're very appreciative and we're taking these steps together. Still using the critical thinking and problem analysis skills I gained from my biological engineering degree, reshaping the approach that we're taking to cure this disease.
Christa Downey: I love this. I can't wait to tell students about this example. And, you know, I don't know that I've spoken with any other alumni who are doing this type of work, and I think a lot of people would be interested, so it's exciting. Okay, so again, back to when you were a student thinking back to when you were a student, what class or classes had the greatest impact in preparing you for your career?
Daniel Morgan: Mm hmm. I already touched on Professor de Faria's class, so I won't repeat that, but two other classes that come to mind would be Professor Datta's Heat and Mass Transfer in Biological Engineering, which is very niche and might only apply to you if you're a bio engineering major. But also Professor Brito's Advanced Microbiome Engineering class. Starting with Professor Datta's class, he really taught us how to break down problems into their most basic pieces, which really helps me every day in determining how to achieve the best outcomes for any problem. Break it down to the building blocks, tackle each one individually, and it all comes together to be a great end result. Then in Professor Brito's class, this is really where I think I learned how to be appropriately skeptical of scientific work, which is immensely helpful to me determining which projects need to be prioritized.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: I love that phrase appropriately skeptical. Right? Like, that's the scientific method down to its basic, down to its skeleton. That's really wonderful. And what wonderful professors to be able to work with?
Christa Downey: Yeah.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: So I mean, you're absolutely out there in the mix of everything as it's developing, right? And so how do you keep on top of things? Where do you get information that keeps you the most current?
Daniel Morgan: Yeah, it's really convenient, actually. You can set up alerts from different sources from Google to PubMed and more, and they'll send you emails with the new science or mentions of keywords like PRSS1 is one of the genes that can contribute to pancreatitis. I have an alert set up for that, but also just even pancreatitis and chronic pancreatitis, I have alerts set up for. And so every other week or so, I go through the news articles, the new research papers posted, and determine if they're relevant, depending on stage of research, credibility, and its results, determining how to prioritize it.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: That's really cool. I need to learn to set up more alerts for myself. I have a few, but I need to do more.
Daniel Morgan: It's worth it.
Christa Downey: Yeah, great way to organize things and to keep track of things that is relevant. Students could be using that for their career exploration as well, you know, as they're thinking about what they're interested in. Yeah, fantastic. So, Daniel, what do you do to relax, have fun, and re-energize?
Daniel Morgan: Well, I love to cook with friends and family. You know, science and engineering can be so exact a lot of the time, and it's nice to have an activity where going off script can actually make things better. And, you know, even with that, I do try to incorporate this attitude into my own work, analyze things from different perspectives of stakeholders. It's important to understand, you know, needs of patients, but also researchers, investors, and anyone else who's involved to ensure that this cure actually gets to patients in the best way possible.
Christa Downey: Excellent. This is fantastic. I really appreciate your time, and I truly am excited to share this story with students. Thank you.
Daniel Morgan: Glad to join.
Traci Nathans-Kelly: Absolutely. Thank you for your time today. It's been really great to explore some of these, like Christa said, we need to fold in more BME students along the way, but this has been a wonderful window into not only a specific disease that you're trying to cure, but also a very specific, right, the nonprofit part of it, which is something that is well, so many organizations work this way hand in hand with research organizations and for profit entities, as you said. And so it's really this intersection has been interesting for us to explore. Thank you.
Daniel Morgan: Thank you.
Christa Downey: Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable and more sustainable world.