#Scifund Round 3 is underway and each day I will highlight a new proposal from the Challenge to give you a more in-depth understanding of each participant and their research.

Today I present Ethan Perlstein. His project launched before the start of the #SciFund Challenge, but because he is an advocate of open science and crowdfunding science, and because #SciFund-ers believe in “the more, the merrier” I decided to share his science and help push his project which so far as amassed over $15,000! His research aims to understand how amphetamine’s interact with brain cells.

Tell us about yourself, where you are from, and where you see yourself going.

I’m originally from South Florida. I got my first taste of lab research in high school, when I interned at a local biotech company after school. I went to Columbia for college and graduated in 2001. That same year, I started graduate school at Harvard in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. I began my independent postdoctoral position at Princeton in the Fall of 2007. My appointment comes to an end on Jan 1, and I don’t have a traditional academic position lined up. I’m not sure where I’ll wind up but I will be doing science, by hook or by crook.

How did you get involved in your research project?

I became interested in psychopharmacology toward the end of grad school. In my thesis work, I examined the genetic basis of cellular drug responses in the humble brewer’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. I noticed that a number of psychoactive drugs, e.g., antidepressants, have biological activity in yeast cells, and I found these observations both puzzling and intriguing. So when I started my independent position at Princeton, I set out to determine the molecular basis of the biological activity of psychoactive drugs in yeast. Our work has shown that the cell membrane is an evolutionarily conserved target of psychoactive drugs.

In an attempt to parlay our results from yeast to mice (and ultimately to people), I decided to collaborate with a psychopharmacologist at Columbia Med School named Dave Sulzer. The Sulzer lab has been studying the mechanism of action of amphetamines, including methamphetamine, for over two decades. Along with Danny Korostyshevsky, the project’s lead experimentalist, we will determine where radioactive amphetamines accumulate in mouse brain cells at the molecular level.

Why is your research important to you? Why should others fund it?

Millions of people take amphetamines every day, and yet we don’t really understand how they work. Knowing exactly where and how fast psychoactive drugs accumulate inside brain cells is the first step in reinvigorating stagnant pharmaceutical R&D pipelines for brain diseases and addictions.

I think members of the public should fund our project because we need more “Small Science” in this country, both to stay competitive and to address real gaps in our basic scientific understanding. By Small Science I mean focused, shovel-ready projects carried out by collaborative teams over months rather than years, and involving 1/10 of the amounts traditionally disbursed by government agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

We also want to do something different with the way basic research is done. In contrast to most basic biomedical research that is done behind closed doors or never even sees the light of day, we offer an “open covenant” based on three components: 1) an open budget, so the public can see how we’re spending their money; 2) data sharing on the Web in real-time, so we are leaving behind a digital paper trail that the public can monitor; 3) proactive engagement with public and other scientists, so the fruits of our research can be understood in plain English.

Do you have a favorite story that came from working on your research project?

My evolutionary approach to understanding how psychoactive drugs actually work is a great icebreaker at any party. When I tell people that my lab gives antidepressants to yeast cells, the most popular reply is, “Do yeast get depressed?” Usually, really interesting conversations ensue because I’m having these discussions with non-scientists who don’t know anything about pharmacology other than what they hear in the popular press.

Why did you decide to crowdfund your project? Why did you launch independently instead of with the SciFund Challenge

My Princeton lab shut down on September 1, but my appointment runs through the end of the year. As I said earlier, I don’t have a professorship lined up, like many of my peers who have been battered by a hyper-competitive academic job market. When I learned about SciFund Challenge earlier this year I immediately thought, what a wonderful idea! But many of the scientists involved in SciFund are of an ecology bent, and are raising sums of money that unfortunately don’t go very far in the biomedical sciences. Given my time constraint, I needed to launch our project before Round 3 of SciFund launched last week. But I’m watching it with great interest and I’m happy to give advice about what’s worked for us to any active SciFunder who’d ask!

You’ve raised over $15,000 so far! What’s been the most critical component to gain so much support?

Hands down, it’s all about the marketing. Some people in the sciences consider that a dirty word, but I think basic research projects can be promoted responsibly while recognizing that some topics are more popular or understandable than others. I aggressively sought out members of the online and mainstream science journalism establishment, and it paid off, though there have been many no replies and rejections along the way. And I was fortunate through my social network to get introductions to science writers and bloggers by mutual friends.

Over half of our donors are people I don’t know, so our media strategy has been an essential ingredient of our success so far.

What was the most difficult aspect of building your Rockethub proposal? What was your favorite?

The most difficult part was crafting a proposal that could appeal to both experts and non-experts in science, but also to both scientists and non-scientists. I think our 3-minute project video by the talented LA-based creative team including videographer Ryan Griffin, voiceover artist Veronica Amaya, and composer Jon Steinmeier, did an excellent job of balancing our message and scientific content. Without their video I don’t think we’d be in the position we are today, with less than a week to go till our grassroots campaign ends.

Tell us something random. Something funny. Something borrowed. Something blue.

It will take some time for crowdfunding to mature as a funding mechanism for basic scientific research. In order to raise over $10,000, and from there to approach the sums distributed by traditional grants, science projects will need to attracts hundreds and eventually thousands of donors, most of whom will necessarily be strangers. I think many scientists are uncomfortable with self-promotion, not to mention the idea of asking people for money. There are personality and temperamental differences between people sure, but I think a lot of it simply has to do with practice and finding your scientific voice.

When I was in high school interning at a local biotech company, it was 1996-1997, right around the time when scientific articles started to include this newfangled innovation called email for corresponding authors. I would read papers and then email the authors with questions. I must have sent over hundred of these emails over the course of a year. Most of the time I got no reply or a cursory reply. But in one instance I got an enthusiastic response from a scientist named Ron Germain who invited me to work in his lab at the NIH as a summer intern, which I did for 3 summers. Without that research experience, and the experience of reaching out to lots of strangers, I may not have ended up where I am today.

One of the reasons I reached out to Ethan with this interview (besides helping promote his Rockethub campaign) was to highlight another open scientist in the field. The fact that both of our career arcs are pretty similar (do open research, crowdfund it, publish it) are nearly identical was icing. Hopefully my model can help him. I’ve been openly documenting my SciFund expenditures, research, results, etc here.

Also I hope that others can learn from his experience and my own. He needed funds sooner and opted to go his own route. I chose to participate in the SciFund Challenge. Together, I hope we convince others to follow a more open approach to research. While SciFund is a great start, to me it is simply not enough. Science literacy is important, but can only take you so far. To me a full open project will bring you the rest of the way.

Thanks Ethan for sharing your science! And to save you time from scrolling up, you can read about his project and contribute here.