Natalie Kuldell (00:02):
All right. Well, welcome, Samer. It’s so good to see you. Thank you for joining.
Samer Jaber (00:06):
Thank you for having me.
Natalie Kuldell (00:08):
It’s delightful. So you have such an interesting career, and I would love to have you introduce yourself, where you work and what you do.
Samer Jaber (00:17):
Sure. my name is Samer Jabber. I am a laboratory animal veterinarian. I work for a biopharmaceutical company called AbbVie. I’m based out of Massachusetts. And I got here through kind of a, a circuitous route in that I thought I was going to be a dog and cat private practice veterinarian. From the time I was very young, I knew that there was kind of a calling for me to, to work with animals. And over time I kind of worked towards putting together kind of a resume and experiences that allowed me to eventually get into veterinary school which can be quite competitive. Sometimes I did dabble in the private practice arena. I was in emergency room and a private practice vet in both New York City and then the suburban Philadelphia area.
Samer Jaber (01:21):
And then over time, I did a little bit of career and personal evaluation. I found a career option in working in a research setting, which I thought was very fulfilling and amenable to the, the lifestyle that I was kind of building for myself. And so out of veterinary school, out of my private practice time, I went back to do a postdoctoral training in the form of a residency program. I did that at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And have been since then, a full-time laboratory animal veterinarian first in an academic setting and now in industry.
Natalie Kuldell (02:07):
So, I have to admit to you that there are so many people who join us to have Career Conversations, and many of them will say, “I always thought I wanted to be a veterinarian, but..” and then they would go on to say, you know, I didn’t get into vet school, or, I was, you know, not prepared, or I found this other career path. We have yet to welcome a real veterinarian. And it’s just so amazing that you can go through that veterinary path to get to a what is a really satisfying and interesting career in biotechnology and biopharmaceuticals. So thank you for leading the way in the path on that, and congratulations on coming through the veterinary path. It is a very hard path, for sure. Yeah. Thank you. But I also think it’s probably surprising to people that veterinary medicine and, and veterinarians are needed as part of biopharma. So maybe can you talk about the company you’re with and what what you do with them? Sure.
Samer Jaber (03:07):
Yeah. And I, I mean, maybe before I jump too deep into that, just a background on laboratory animal medicine as a veterinary path. It interesting because I think it is classified by some people as a non-traditional route for a veterinarian to go. But the A V M A, the American Veterinarian Medical Association, which is the group that kind of certifies and does the accreditation of institutions, and they do board certification for veterinarians. In that group, there’s, I don’t remember the exact number, but there are dozens of veterinary specialties. And actually, laboratory animal medicine is the third oldest of those after preventative medicine and pathology. Based on you know, work that was needed for kind of more specialized knowledge in the veterinary field, most of what I do is not something I learned in veterinary school.
Samer Jaber (04:06):
There’s very few classes on the species that we commonly use, which in, in my case is, is mostly mice and rats. And so even though it’s thought of as this non-traditional route, there’s a good history of veterinarians going into research support functions. So you know, and to come back to what you were saying, what, you know, the company I work for, AbbVie is a global biopharmaceutical company. We’re interested in discovering and then producing drugs that really can help make an impact in people’s lives. The route to go from the idea, that idea of helping patients and, and figuring out what’s wrong to being able to address it, is a long one, and involves many different kind of subspecialties of science all the way from chemistry to human clinical medicine, of course.
Samer Jaber (05:04):
And in the middle of that somewhere is where I come in or at least, you know my function. And so what happens is: somebody has an idea that a specific target might be amenable to drugability, right? There’s something that is out there that a medicine can engage with, and then the, the after effect of that would be a benefit to the patient in terms of less clinical signs, or obviously the ideal is a cure, right? And so, you know, the process starts out by finding the molecules, whether they are small model, what’s called small molecules or large molecules like antibodies and other biological products. And then they run many of these compounds through batteries of tests in computer modeling, in Petri dishes and all kinds of things.
Samer Jaber (06:00):
Where the veterinarians come in is that there is still a lot of those models, although they’re great, don’t recapitulate the whole picture of a living organism, right? So there’s lots that the people that are making those very complicated and sophisticated models still don’t know about how this system works in a whole animal. And in those cases, we have to use whole animals to answer certain scientific questions specifically about how effective or safe any individual medication or drug candidate might be, right? And so we have a facility for that. The veterinarians are in charge of overseeing the health and wellbeing of those animals. Also we participate in the ethical review of these things. So there are certain standards that we, you know have to abide by and are ethically obligated to abide by. And so it’s part of my team’s job to make sure that they’re well taken care of.
Samer Jaber (06:59):
And of course, this is, you know, our mantra is animal welfare is good science. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> animals housed in conditions that that aren’t, aren’t suitable to their welfare. You know, that’s a variable that we try to control for, just like in lots of scientific experiments, there’s lots of variables that that we can’t control. And so we do our best to do as much control as possible. So that’s kind of the 30,000 foot view of what it is to be a lab animal vet. And there are many of us around. Like I said in the beginning, I came through an academic route. So many medical schools, a lot of NIH funded research organizations are both required by regulation to have a veterinarian, but also some of them find more value in it than just that, and higher extra ones. And so that’s true in academics and in industry and in government jobs, for example, at the NIH and the CDC, et cetera.
Natalie Kuldell (07:59):
So it sounds great. It sounds like you’re getting to work with animals, which is your training and your passion, and then also adding to the global good through development of good medicines. It also sounds like you have a team. So tell me a little bit about your day-to-day, your interact with others. It’s not just with the animals, right?
Samer Jaber (08:20):
Yeah. Yeah. And actually, you know, at the stage in my career where I am, I do more interacting with people than with animals. And so, on the team it’s a very diverse team that, you know, includes multiple people including the care technicians, the animal care technicians that are doing kind of the on the ground in facility really necessary important foundational work of animal husbandry, making sure everybody is fed and watered and healthy, on clean bedding all, and all of this kind of stuff. So there’s a lot of labor that goes into that. There are groups that certify technicians for different skill sets. The American Association for Laboratory Animals Science is kind of the big industry leader in this. And so those technicians can do fairly complicated things including administration of some of the substances, if they have to have an oral medication, the technicians that go and do the oral dosing and that kind of thing.
Samer Jaber (09:20):
On the other side of that, we’d like to get things from the animals, the data from the animals. That can be by things like tissue collection clinical and behavioral observations and those kinds of things. Again, the technicians are doing most of that. We were at a pretty sophisticated, complicated facility, so we need some experts in facility engineering and maintenance to make sure our HVAC, you know, heating ventilation and air conditioning systems are all appropriate. You know having a fair number of animals, we have to make sure they all have clean water that is beyond the quality standards of most municipal taps. And so you know, we have to have people that are, even though their functions are in support of the animal facility, they may might not be the animal hands-on experts, but they have expertise in other things facilities, maintenance, engineering that kind of thing.
Samer Jaber (10:12):
We also have, as I mentioned, you know, there’s administrative work to do in terms of regulatory paperwork. We have new scientists starting all the time. And so we have a training program on how to teach people that might be new to doing what we call in vivo or in life, work with animals on what are the appropriate ways and more successful ways of handling animals to get the work that that needs to be done. I also do some scientific consultation for people that are doing projects. I do have a medical background in veterinary medicine, so it’s helpful to bring that to the table. It’s a nice holistic view of a full animal, whereas somebody doing an experiment might be very well versed, much more than myself, in a specific biological subspecialty like immunology or something. But having the full idea of, you know, how do I translate into an animal experiment? So we help with those kinds of things. And the team is big enough that there’s supervisors, there’s the veterinary technicians that execute kind of prescribed medications by me, just like in the clinic. And so it’s a pretty broad diverse group.
Natalie Kuldell (11:27):
It seems, and highly functioning. It is incredible, the number of just interdisciplinary pieces that have to come together to have a real functioning department, like what you are working in. And it also sounds like there are multiple points of entry that, you know, you can go as far as veterinary or medical degrees or scientific PhDs. There are also places that require less of a terminal degree, less educational attainment, to actually find a satisfying career.
Samer Jaber (12:01):
Yeah. And I think that that is a great thing to point out. It’s something that is, it’s not totally unique, but I would say rare or in the research and development side of the pharmaceutical business is that, you know, there are definitely roles where people can have foot in the door, so to speak, without a college degree and then build up experience to the point where they can you know, I mentioned some of those industry certifications. Those are all on the job learning opportunities. And then, you know, eventually you know, good candidates can go into a supervisory role, eventually a facility manager and work your way up the ranks in a way that is more difficult to do in other kinds of more traditional scientific group paths.
Natalie Kuldell (12:49):
Yeah, I think it’s great. The more points of entry that we can have with different levels of educational attainment, the more people who can be involved in what is such an important area and such an important field. So you know, just because I’m curious about it, did you come from a family of veterinarians, medical people, scientists? Were you farmers? Like, like what led you to the connection of animals.
Samer Jaber (13:15):
It’s a good question. I’m a child of immigrants. Nobody in my family had a college degree before I went to school. There’s not a long history of that, certainly not a veterinary medicine. My mother is a registered nurse. This is what, when they did that before a bachelor’s degree, was kind of the standard. Despite being an RN, she does not have that BS or bachelor’s degree. I’m the first person to go to a four-year college and then to graduate, and then I didn’t stop there. The doctorate in veterinary medicine is a four-year additional on top of that. And so there’s not a big background in my family. This is something that I kind of grew into because of personal interest.
Samer Jaber (13:59):
And then once I kind of got in, I was all in. And there were definitely times in my career as I mentioned that I didn’t know what kind of veterinarian I wanted to be. And you know, you go through the kind of the whole gamut of things, right? You know, working for a zoo would be really interesting. Is that a path that works for, for me? You know, horses are beautiful animals, but could I work on a horse farm? You know? Not having, you know, background. I never touched a horse before veterinary school, for example, <laugh>. So you know, veterinary medicine itself is very broad. But what kind of drew me into this laboratory animal medicine piece was really that, even though it is a specialty, it is one of the broadest specialties because within laboratory animal medicine you could be involved in infectious disease, work, surgery, anesthesia, pain management, immunology, dermatology. There’s all kinds of things. So it allowed me to be a specialist without having to really dedicate to a specific you know, clinical disease spectrum or biological system.
Natalie Kuldell (15:12):
I mean, it sounds, the way you present, it makes it sound like you’ve been sort of fortunate and lucky to have backed in or happenstanced into a field that is so fascinating and so perfect for you. But I’m going suspect that there are people along the way that gave you advice or that people who helped guide you in those decisions. And, you know, a number of the people who watch these videos or thinking about it are trying to identify the important levers for helping them move into a career that’s meaningful and into an educational experience that’s meaningful. So I guess that’s maybe my last question. Are there experiences like that you think are important to landing you where you were or where you are?
Samer Jaber (15:58):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I would say in my personal story, I did not apply to veterinary school right out of undergrad because having the reputation for being very competitive and having just slightly above average GPA, I was a little bit nervous about being rejected the first time around. So I actually joined a laboratory group that is a larger version of the type of department that I now oversee for AbbVie. This was at a large medical school in the mid in the Midwest, I entered as an animal care technician myself. So I do know all of the workings of what does a day of working at a mouse facility look like on the ground, day in and day out. And I guess the piece of advice I would have is don’t keep your aspirations quiet.
Samer Jaber (16:46):
What happened to me in that position is I mentioned to some of the veterinarians that I was interested in going to veterinary school, and one kind of just took me under her wing. It was like, you know, if you, if you can get all your work done and you have some free time, come hang out with me. And I just remember she was involved in an imaging project where they were ultrasound imaging mouse thyroid tumors. Now, I don’t know if you have a concept of the size of a mouse thyroid, but mice are pretty small organisms, right? They’re about 30, 25, 30 grams a piece. And so their thyroids are very small. So, so looking at their small nodules on that thyroid with an imaging device requires pretty fancy equipment.
Samer Jaber (17:28):
I just was amazed by kind of the cutting edge nature of the thing that she was doing. And I thought you know, I’m going to keep this in my back pocket for after I get out of veterinary school. It’s a possible career path because it is really engaging. You are on the cutting edge. And, you know, another piece of it is, you take an oath when you get into veterinary school about what you’re going to do, and people don’t realize that the oath that you take is, I’m going to use my scientific knowledge and skills for the benefit of society. That’s the opening of it. Of course, it is through the protection of animal resources and animal welfare and of those things. But, so I thought the laboratory animal field really fell into this.
Samer Jaber (18:07):
And without voicing that to somebody else who kind of took me in, I think, you know, there would, there would’ve been a lost opportunity there. So I would say my big piece of advice is, you know, broadcast your interests because somebody hopefully will catch on to that. And I despite how loquacious I can be <laugh> sometimes I am fairly quiet and shy and introverted in my personal life. And so I know that there are challenges to getting up and over those things, but it will be worthwhile. And with practice, speaking up and not being kind of embarrassed, they get easier, I promise. <Laugh>,
Natalie Kuldell (18:44):
Ah, what a great piece of advice. I think that is so true that when you put those ambitions out into the world, it does take bravery and it is like a muscle. You have to build that muscle up. But yes, there are people who really are eager to just support and move that forward because we’ve all been helped, right? Not one of us got to where we are without somebody helping us realize our own ambitions. So absolutely. What a great piece of advice. Thank you so much for sharing your really interesting career path. It’s just been a joy to hear you clearly love what you do. So thank you for sharing that.
Samer Jaber (19:21):
Thank you for having me to share!