Quick Facts

  • Name: Nawal Maria Boukli
  • Comes from: Born in Algiers, Algeria where I graduated as Engineer in Agronomy and did my PhD in Geneva Switzerland and post doctoral degree in Missouri, USA.
  • Lives in: Puerto Rico.
  • In three words:  Ambitious/Independent/ Creative
  • Leisure time activities: I have always enjoyed my studies and my work, while pursuing a variety of interests that broadened my social interactions and made for a stimulating life.I grew up in a very international environment and multicultural household that encouraged me to love cooking and eating different types of savory foods from around the world. Gardening, spending time with my family. Reading books and science magazines or science articles in newspapers, exercise, swimming and meditation.
  • Likes: Empower Algerian Women
    ​I like to encourage careers in STEM. Inspire future generations, explore, mentor and lead. On a personnel level, I like making and planning annual trips to different countries to experience new cultures. I have a wide range of national and international activities, which I enjoy participating in. Despite the distance I like to stay connected to my family that is spread all over the world and share important moments with them.
  • Unsuspected talent: Speaks 5 languages (French, Arabic, English, Spanish and Italian). Beside biology, my passion since I was a kid was to pick up any new language. I was always excited to sort out the meanings, sounds, and sentence patterns of a foreign language. The best compliment I could get is when a native language speaker think that I come originally from his country. Believe or not, I love planting and gardening. It allows me to relax and enjoy working outdoor when I am not working on science (probably one of the reasons I studied in the beginning of my career engineering in agronomy). I just succeeded to plant lately beautiful cherry tomatoes in my garden, despite my gardener telling me that it won’t work in a tropical country such as P.R…
  • Currently reading: The Biology of Belief by Bruce H. Lipton, Ph. D.

 In a nutshell

  • My research matters because: it involves biomarker detection, one of the most promising area of research. I am most interested in how genes and proteins are coordinately regulated — turned on and off at the same time and their specific molecular signature including focusing on a unique regulation process the unfolded protein response (UPR), a cellular stress response related to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. Cells such as glioblastoma and immune cells that we study are remarkably good at this and we don’t know how they do it! Our lab uses the latest high throughput technologies, including quantitative proteomics multiplexing with isobaric tags approaches for the detection of biomarkers and molecular signatures in HIV, drug of abuse and cancer. The results are validated by molecular and flow cytometric analyses. See examples of peer reviewed publications generated by our lab: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=nawal+boukliRecent studies including ours  have shown the importance and scientific merit of integrating multi-omics in cancer and HIV research and clinically relevant outcomes. Therefore, examining such signatures at the site of glioma could potentially lead to identification of novel biomarkers and the identification of relevant pathways for intervention. Our in vitro and in vivo results will be compared to laboratory and clinical research in AIDS-related malignancies, HIV disease, viral-induced tumors, and related diseases and using brain banking data such as the National NeuroAIDS Tissue Consortium (https://nntc.org/). It will allow us to conduct in the future clinical studies to eliminate or modulate the HIV effect on glioma growth and resistance to chemotherapy and act as a resource of medical information. Finally, the long term goal of our PR Trust funded project is to develop improved treatment methods and clinical outcomes for HIV positive glioma patients.
  • One of the inspirations for my research has been:My PhD mentor who was very approachable and knowledgeable. He didn’t believe in close mentoring but would let you find your niche that you feel passionate about.and once you found it, he would say now go for it and show the world! I am greatly indebted to him to have read my first manuscript and for his expert suggestions and comments. He would not let us as his mentees submit a manuscript until we learnt to write as a scientist. Another person that has also been my source of inspiration from day one, I can proudly say that it is my father. My dad is a brilliant mathematician who worked as an Expert for the United Nations. I always felt proud when organizations such as ICARDA, FAO and International Bureau of Education (IBE) solicited him for his expertise. I remember of feeling sad sometimes when he would travel for long periods of time but understood latter the importance and prestige of his high-quality work commitment. He always valued hard work and career advancement and thought my siblings and I the importance of exceling in what we do. Not earning a college degree, was not an option. In other words my dad perspective and dedicated commitment to life-long learning  and science in general have shaped me. To be honest both of my parents inspired me in their own way. I should credit my mum as an educator. Even if she was not a scientist or understood the details of my research, as a teacher for elementary students, she instilled in me the value of education and the mindset of having a clear vision and working toward my vision with passion and perseverance. She accepted that at a point of time, it was time to spread my wings. I remember that she hesitated to send me out into the world by myself to pursue my Ph.D studies miles away from her but at the end she valued and blessed every moment of it. Last but not least my family love, especially my husband unconditional support aspires me a lot by expressing how proud he is of my journey.
  • The best thing about my job is:Mentoring empowering, teaching, engaging students, planning projects for research, presenting and sharing my results with the scientific community and many other versatile activities that makes this job exciting. Every day is different, I write and review manuscripts and research proposals, sit on a scientific advisory panel and executive committee or cultural organizations boards where you make a difference with your expertise.  The fact that my colleagues and collaborators have endless stimulating discussions makes my life exciting. I was lucky to work over the years with great leaders who believed in me and brought the best out of me. I personally believe that everyone can contribute to an organization, and when he is given the opportunity and guidance, he can shine…I was also lucky to earn a prestigious fellowship to do my PhD and be invited very early in my career to be part of international forums. This expanded my skills, knowledge, and network. Thanks to this, I got to travel the world in places such as Australia, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Dubai, Malaysia, several countries in Africa including Ghana, Latin America, and almost all of Europe. This experience was very enriching and impacted my life in more than just one way. It further opened my mind and new sense of wonder and empathy for other cultures and countries. I remember that I read a 2016 study by Hazel Tucker stating that it is important to expose children to travel and to learn languages at an early age for that same reason of prompting humanistic exchange. I couldn’t agree more. The reason why I always encourage my students to not have a stubborn attachment to one language or one place. I like to refer to that Swiss study, highlighting that multilingualism was estimated to contribute 10 percent of Switzerland’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), proving that the language skills of workers opened up more markets, greatly benefiting the Swiss economy as a whole. Being multilingual turned out to be vital skill for me in today’s borderless world. It also helped me to be part of international collaborations and be invited to contribute in foreign places with my expertise. It is a very rewarding feeling…
  • My career highlight so far has been…
    • To graduate from Engineer of state in Agronomy “Very Honorable, with Committee Praise”, being the highest academic distinction awarded in the Algerian academic university system.
    • To obtain a Doctoral Fellowship financed by the Swiss National Foundation (SNSF)
    • During my research as Ph.D student at the university of Geneva, Switzerland, I  had already published 5 manuscripts, 8  book chapters, regularly presented my research work in  national as well as international conferences, participated in lecturing as instructor and weekly departmental seminar series.
    • To have the honors of graduating as Ph. D in Molecular Biology from one of the highest ranked universities, which scores consistently high on various rankings of European Universities. Moreover, University of Geneva is home to several Nobel prize laureates.
    • I completed postdoctoral work at the University of Missouri in Columbia USA where I gained more expertise in proteomics technology.
    • To be founder of the first Biomedical Proteomics Facility (BPF) at Universidad Central del Caribe (UCC), in Puerto Rico. Dr. Boukli is a pioneer in the field of proteomics in Puerto Rico and published the first articles in this field at the Universidad Central del Caribe and continue to productively contribute in this innovative area of research that has multiple applications across all the fields of basic and medical science, diagnostics, and therapeutics.
    • To be involved in a prestigious leadership position by being the first scientist from P.R to be elected as Executive Board Member of the Southeastern Association of Shared Resources (SEASR), a Chapter of the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF). A peer reviewed publication just came out about our efforts as leaders and organizers of the SEASR/ABRF conference in this association (Dahlman, …, Boukli et al, 2020).
    • In 2013, I received a NIH/NIDA prestigious Fellowship which sponsored my project titled: Drug of abuse-HIV Biomarkers: Implications for Neurocognitive Impairment.
    • In 2016 I was promoted Full Professor, becoming one of the youngest receiving this title at UCC. The title was attributed by the committee of promotion for excellence in scholar accomplishments in teaching, research and service.
    • My lab was funded by multiple NIH awards and foundation grants and resulted in many peer-reviewed publications, numerous book chapters, countless presentations including speaker invitations in prominent international conferences and prestigious universities such as Johns Hopkins and Mayo Clinic and scientific conferences.
    • In 2019, among several investigators from UCC who submitted a grant to Science Technology & Research Trust, Dr. Boukli is the only one from this institution who obtained her project awarded.
    • Dr. Boukli has been active in training young investigators, both individually (as a mentor and proteomics facility resource, post-doctoral fellows, medical students, Master and PhD trainees) and in the classroom (where she has developed a proteomics graduate-level course and several workshops on proteomics in clinical research). Moreover, several Ph.D. students  successfully graduated under Dr. Boukli mentorship and are currently in postdoctoral fellowship.
    • My lab was the first to introduce at the University Central del Caribe in Puerto Rico the use of high throughput technology such as quantitative proteomics multiplexing with isobaric tags approaches for biomarker measurement. This allowed the generation of several peer reviewed publications and grants, increasing research productivity.

There are other highlights in my career that I would happy to discuss. For those interested in my research interest, here is a link to my university UCC  website http://www.uccaribe.edu/research/?page_id=1193

  • My advice to aspiring researchers is… Find your passion and niche and never let anyone discourage you or think less of you.  Tremendous passion and drive are key. Don’t be afraid to take a chance, to fail if necessary, and to start the process all over again. In fact, if you look at the early publications of some of the Nobel laureates very few made big finding from the beginning of their career.
    Don’t give up, keep trying. One day you will get there and meet that terrific leader visionary, who will give you the opportunity to grow in your career and inspire you to continue and be successful in this field, so that one day you inspire someone who needs guidance. Read a lot, learn to think as a scientist. Learn to write, present your research in front of experts in the field to get feedback. I also like to tell aspiring researchers to plan well their project and professional goals and learn to organize their priorities in life.  I also urge them to ask major questions about their field of interest, to connect research with unmet needs in clinical medicine, and to master the technical aspects of their scientific work without forgetting to have a good experimental design as an essential aspect for their successful investigation. I would end up by telling that future scientist: “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”

Nawal Boukli Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Universidad Central del Caribe – School of Medicine

Interview:

I became a researcher since I have always had a lifelong interest in science and desire to challenge myself intellectualy in new ways. Ever since I was a child,  I always wanted to find the answers to my own questions and had an intense curiosity of how things work. I knew from then on that I would be a scientist. Reflecting on my research experiences and taking note of what really excites me has made me realize that molecular biology is the what I was passionate about to the point that I decided embarking on a PhD in this highly competitive field. I would say that deep passion for the subject coupled with hard work are key to become a researcher. Research makes you think differently by engaging you in the creation of new knowledge  that nobody explored before.  An opportunity for being a pioneer in the field. Sometimes, experiments don’t go as well as planned or give you unexpected results. Designing an experiment, controlling for possible variables, finding patterns in the analyzed data and sometimes, just sometimes getting a WOW answer to the question is one of the most exciting moment. What people don’t realize is the hard work it takes and how challenging it is. It might take months to construct stimuli for the experiment and years to tease out an answer to one small question, running many experiments to follow a path. People have this very odd idea of what science is. In order to deserve a publication in a peer reviewed scientific journal, scientists have to have their work reviewed by a highly competitive review process. It is at many levels a demanding and difficult field but it is all worth it and so satisfying when we make a contribution that improves our knowledge and obtain results published for the first time.  That sensation is unparalleled for me.

  • The current project I am working on is to study the role of HIV-1 envelope protein gp120 on the most common form of malignant brain cancer glioblastoma (GBM) cells and the increasing importance of tumor behavior and chemotherapeutic resistance in patients with HIV. This project is the first ever studying HIV-associated pathogenesis in glioblastoma (Lopez et al, Boukli 2017, Valentin-Guillama et Boukli, Kucheryavych 2018).
  • The ant-viral effect of a polysaccharide peptide on HIV patients. Our lab is the first to demonstrate such effects (Rodriguez et al, Boukli 2018). We are about to submit another publication (Rodriguez et al, Boukli 2020-21) revealing the molecular mechanism behind this anti-viral effect.
  • Having a versatile background, I am even co-mentoring a Ph.D student on a project on marine biology where I already published with this student  a publication as senior author (Ricaurte et al, Boukli, 2016) on the effect of bleaching on a threatened coral species of the Caribbean.  I just submitted to the Marine Biology Journal another publication on Unique

Protein Signatures in the Endangered Coral species Acropora palmata triggered by Seasonal Temperatures.

To me, it is exciting to work on a wide range of research topics that subsequently promote lifelong learning experiences as well as very enriching collaborations.  It is extremely rewarding when these experiences result in published articles, receiving awards promoting excellence of our research projects and invitation as a speaker to share our research findings in a conference.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive malignant tumor of the central nervous system. Due to the absence of effective pharmacological and surgical treatments, the identification of early diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers is of key importance to improve the survival rate of patients and to develop new personalized treatments. In recent years, GBM famously claimed the lives of senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain, and Joe Biden’s son Beau.
Even access to what was presumably some of our USA’s best cancer care couldn’t save the high-profile politicos. Among the latest most powerful tools are the application of molecular biology and multi-omics (genomics, proteomics and metabolomics) techniques for the identification of novel biomarkers through the analysis of different biological samples obtained from GBM patients. Survival rates from GBM  enjoyed a modest bump in the 1980s when radiation became a standard part of the treatment protocol and patients could expect to live from just four to six months after diagnosis. The introduction of the chemotherapy drug temozolomide in the 2000s increased survival another few months. But since then patient survival rates have stalled. Cancer therapies using ex vivo models have been tried over the years, but none have proven especially helpful for GBM. A new report of a chip from the lab of Dr. Dong-Woo Cho, in South Korea may represent the first bioprinted cancer-on-a-chip and the first attempt to reproduce the patient’s therapeutic responses using this tool. Dr. Nader Sanai, a neurosurgeon specializing in cancer of the brain at the Barrow Neurologic Institute in Phoenix, feels that despite advances like that of the Korean group, the challenge with all of these models is that they just can’t fully recreate what’s happening in the patient’s brain. Dr. Sanai have identified drug cocktails that seem to be improving outcomes in GBM patients even if so, far they haven’t been cured. Our collaborator Dr. Mariano Viapiano of the State University of New York had developed an antibody that successfully treated glioblastoma in mouse models. A study recently published in Cancer Cell, from Researchers from the German Cancer report that three specific genetic alterations appear to drive the early development of GBM. By analyzing tumor genomes from 50 patients, they traced back how these tumors had mutated and evolved.. TheIr results suggest that the failure of investigational drugs in GBM are due to not effectively attacking the tumor, compared to the alternative scenario of the cancer outrunning a potentially effective treatment by mutating. Dr. Sanai   for his part foresees “I think 10 years from now the term glioblastoma will be a bit anachronistic”. He added: “I think we’ll need to drill down into various biomarkers and genetic changes of specific variants. We’ll need to customize therapy. That’s how we’ll make the most progress.”I can’t agree more with this, the reason why we are working on that aspect of our research.

To me there is no bigger satisfaction than the one which focuses on the understanding of life. From Engineering in Agronomy to the molecular biology of plants microbes and from working in the forefront of science, medicine and technology, I have enjoyed the challenge and information

my background and research studies provided me. The versatile and different career paths one can work on such as teaching, research learning from scientists around the world and sharing my expertise and knowledge with the rest of the scientific communities are among the most rewarding part of this job. I always come back energized from a scientific conference trip and usually bring back at least one new experimental idea or view of a problem that can significantly advance my research.

Part of my work also involves looking for potential biomarkers in different diseases such as HIV and brain cancer, which is a significant unmet clinical need in this area. Specifically, the research in my lab will help developing novel therapies to reduce cancer disparities of Glioblastoma GBM), a type of brain cancer among HIV-infected population. HIV-1 infection is known to be associated with more aggressive brain tumor behavior and chemotherapeutic resistance. Beside our recent publications (Lopez et al, Boukli, 2017, Valentin et al, Boukli, Kucheryavich, 2018) and our pre results that strongly support the hypothesis that HIV’s envelope protein gp120 activates both glycolytic and Endoplasmic Reticulum stress-induced pathways, leading to an increased proliferation and resistance to chemotherapeutic drug temozolomide in glioma. Our research will help understanding the functional role of HIV on tumor progression and chemotherapeutic resistance to develop novel therapies. We are  using cutting-edge tools and multi-omics approaches such as our metabolomics analysis revealing that gp120 significantly increases fatty acids and protein synthesis pathways in glioma.

  • Teaching classes, writing scholarly papers, reviewing papers for journals and doing administrative service for the university and scientific organization.
  • Mentoring the young generation. I am currently working on a Title V project that involves mentoring undergraduate students through a series of lectures and learning activities. It is really exciting to challenge them with quizzes and presentation after the lectures. My PhD student Eduardo Alvarez is playing a key role in mentoring too and being an instructor for undergraduate students. These are very rewarding activities beside my research. It truly pays off since one of my undergraduate student Alanis Rodriguez just earned a fellowship that sponsor her to do research in the lab and present her lab in scientific conferences.
  • On the personal level, I like outdoor activities, swimming among my number one favorite exercise, Cooking all sort of international cuisines.
  • Plannig a trip is really exciting, it starts even before traveling by checking out all the things to do, places to eat and where to stay.