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Jason Collins, Ph.D. is a double Monarch. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry in 2008 from Old ��ֱ���� University as well as his doctoral degree in Biomedical Sciences in 2015.  Less than five years later, he was part of a team that discovered a new disease that had gone undiagnosed for decades. His triumph to figuring out this disease took persistence, high acumen and collaboration, all of the pillars he believes he learned at ODU. With his out of the box thinking, he is excited about uncovering more about this disease and explains why diverse thinking and growing up abroad has helped him reach high goals professionally in science.

Dr. Collins was born in Germany and raised on a military base. “My dad was in the Army for 20-plus years and my mom is German,” said Dr. Collins. The couple met and had three sons and Dr. Collins is the youngest.

“I grew up on the military base and everything was very structured and very well organized, so I always had access to any kind of resources,” said Dr. Collins. His two older brothers left Europe and one attended Norfolk State University and the other went to Hampton University.  “I wanted more diversity because I like the idea of having access to a lot of different cultures anyways because that's kind of how I was raised,” said Dr. Collins. “They told me, ‘ODU is a great school.’”  

After narrowing down his college choices to the Hampton Roads area, to be close to his father’s side of the family, next he had to select a major. At his German high school, Dr. Collins took AP science classes and excelled. “I wanted to do biochemistry as a major because I was just really good at it in high school and I really enjoyed it,” said Dr. Collins. “I knew I was going to make this my career.”

Transitioning from Europe to America and then to campus at ODU was a breeze for Dr. Collins because as a military kid he constantly met new people. Academically, he settled right in.

His first chemistry teacher at ODU Dr. Patricia Pleban. “She was one of the chemistry department heads and she ended up later, much later, becoming one of my Ph.D. advisors,” said Dr. Collins.

“The classes that I took were all pretty straightforward and our department was actually very small at the time, so I got to know all the professors pretty quickly which really made me feel at home,” said Dr. Collins. “I think that was really advantageous to learn more about what it took to do scientific research because a lot of the professors were involved in their own research programs, which is when I also realized I wanted to pursue research too.”

Dr. Collins worked with Associate Professor John Donat in his oceanic chemistry lab which involved precisely measuring oceanic dissolved organic molecules. “It was very fascinating, and I learned a lot.”   

Discovering more about research became Dr. Collins’ mission at ODU as he worked in other labs. Towards the end of his bachelor's degree Professor Leslie Green arrived at ODU. “I remember speaking with Dr. Green, when she told me she was biochemist and came from Oxford,” said Dr. Collins. “I told her, that I was really looking to do biochemistry research, and she said, ‘absolutely, come to my office.’”  From then on Dr. Collins pursued research intensely.

ODU’s biomedical science program was relatively new in 2008, Dr. Collins applied and was accepted into the doctoral program transitioning right into his Ph.D. program with Dr. Green as his mentor.

Green speaks highly of Collins: “As a Ph.D. student Jason was an exceptionally talented and passionate researcher. He continues to make important contributions to science and is expanding the frontiers of medicine at NIH. He is the future leadership in the field of biochemistry and his achievements reflect great credit upon himself and ODU.”

In the Green Lab, Dr. Collins learned all he could about protein folding, synthesis, and novel proteins all of which play a vital role in all cellular processes, development and molecular functions. “This research is really important because my first project was focused on understanding proteins that transition into amyloid fibrils or amyloid-like plaques, which are associated with Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease,” said Dr. Collins. “These are all protein folding diseases where misfolding leads to the buildup of aggregated plaques and things that cause disruption in the tissue function and ultimately lead to disease.”

“ODU is a very supportive environment, and I learned a lot about science research and what it means to take it on and try to make it your own,” said Dr. Collins.

That was kind of the understanding that problem will help us understand more about these diseases and try how to characterize them.

He developed as a scientist and doing research was the foundation for him. Dr. Collins was a part of the Honor Society for the Biological Chemistry as well as the American Chemistry Society. When he wasn’t in the lab he taught chemistry, organic chemistry, analytical chemistry as well as lecturing for biochemistry.  

In 2015, Dr. Collins earned his doctorate in biomedical sciences and applied to several labs for a postdoctoral position. He was eventually accepted into a position at the Scripps Research Institute Florida campus, in Jupiter, Florida.

“At that point, I had a really strong interest in continuing to study diseases and specifically maybe transitioning into trying to understand cancers a little bit more and trying to find new therapeutics,” said Dr. Collins.  During his two and a half years in Florda, Dr. Collins expanded his understanding of proteins, cellular biology and molecular biology. Also, he published several papers. One of the biggest papers he published “related to understanding ribosome biogenesis and how it works mechanistically, and then when it goes wrong, how it plays a role in the development of cancer,” said Dr. Collins.  Also, he did some faculty teaching at Florida Atlantic University, mostly in organic chemistry.   

Professionally, Dr. Collins wanted to do research on the connection between molecular biology and disease, which led him to his current position. Dr. Collins is currently, a staff scientist in the Stem Cell Biochemistry Section of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR).

“We started on a collaborative project that led us down the road of discovering and characterizing a new disease,” said Dr. Collins. The lab he worked in had been investigating how disease mutations affected the differentiation programs of stem cells and in collaboration with a genetics lab, we discovered novel mutations that underlie a previously undiagnosed disease.

“My mentor, collaborators and I, published the initial mechanism and cause of this disease called, VEXAS Syndrome, which stands for Vacuole, E1 enzyme, X-linked, Auto-inflammatory, Somatic syndrome,” said Dr. Collins. “And we published that in 2020 in the New England Journal of Medicine as a novel new auto-inflammatory disease.”

For the past five years Dr. Collins and his co-workers have been focused on understanding how VEXAS Syndrome disease works. They are investigating the molecular mechanism and clinical pathology of the disease and how different distinct mutations can led to this disease. “I've been working on understanding this novel disease in collaboration with the New York University Grossman School of Medicine,” said Dr. Collins.

He is enthused to be able to utilize everything he’s learned over the years. “I'm actually looking at patient samples and tissues. Focused on trying to understand the molecular biology, trying to understand the biochemistry, trying to understand how the proteins work, how do they change when they're mutated,” said Dr. Collins. “The more we understand about the disease pathology, the better we'll be able to target and create therapeutics for it and right now, it's just very not well understood at the moment.”

In his role, he gets to work with scientists from National Cancer Institute and other departments of the National Institutes of Health. “You can work with people who have all those expertise and you can come together to create great ideas and you can really interrogate and understand disease mechanisms,” said Dr. Collins. In addition, he is responsible for driving projects and he has postdoctoral in the lab. “I help guide their research and mentor them, as well as train them,” said Dr. Collins.

Dr. Collins credits ODU with laying the foundation for his pursuit in studying diseases mechanisms.

According to Dr. Collins, “One of the biggest things ODU really did for me, was to help me keep my mind open to different possibilities and different options. I'm from two cultures and I'm also from a different country, so having the option to see how different people think really opened up the idea that possibilities are limitless. It really just comes down to how good is your imagination because if you can imagine it, you can achieve it. I think this was 100% stemmed from the fact that ODU was such a melting pot.”