The Backbone of the Jefferies Lab: Conversations with Our Experienced Researchers

Writing and photography by Sonal Gupta from the Jefferies lab, Michael Smith Laboratories

Scientific progress is often measured in discoveries and publications. But behind every successful lab is a group of dedicated researchers whose experience, persistence, and mentorship quietly shape the direction of the work. We sat down with three long-standing members of the Jefferies lab at the Michael Smith Laboratories – Dr. Suresh Kari, Kyung Bok Choi and Dr. Cheryl Pfeifer – to hear about the journeys, challenges, and reflections that have collectively built the lab into what it is today.

From left to right: Dr. Suresh Kari, Dr. Cheryl Pfeifer, and Kyung Bok Choi

Dr. Suresh Kari, Research Associate

Suresh’s path to the Jefferies lab spans veterinary medicine, immunology, thyroid cancer research, and moves across India, the United States, and Canada. His interest in immunology was sparked at veterinary college, when he first encountered alopecia – an autoimmune condition in which the body fails to recognize its own cells, resulting in hair loss. That question of immune tolerance never left him. After a PhD focused on thyroid cancer and a postdoctoral fellowship in the US, he arrived at his current passion: cancer vaccines and cancer immunology with Dr. Wilfred Jefferies.

He reflected that his move from India to North America encouraged him to thoughtfully adapt and refine his approach to scientific research. He shared that his experience in Canada offered valuable access to resources and the opportunity to collaborate with highly dedicated scientists, which helped foster more rigorous and impactful work.

He did share, however, that building a career across borders came with personal challenges. Navigating immigration as an early-career researcher, performing under pressure in a new country, and sacrificing time with family are challenges that don’t necessarily appear on a grant application. Looking back, he reflects that the personal dimension of a research career deserves more attention than it typically receives, as it also plays an important role in shaping the research process. This led him to offer thoughtful advice to those beginning their journey: scientists should strive to maintain a healthy balance between their professional commitments and personal lives, giving due importance to both.

Kyung Bok (KB) Choi, Senior Research Coordinator

“My initial motivation was an interest in finding biological mysteries,” KB reflects. A broad curiosity about health, disease, and biological design drew him toward science in the first place. When he encountered the Jefferies lab and its focus on vaccine immunology, he found a place where those interests converged. The opportunity to translate biological questions into coding frameworks and experimental platforms made the work feel especially meaningful to him. KB’s research currently focuses on self-amplifying DNA/RNA platforms for vaccine development – a cutting-edge area with real implications for how immune responses are generated and measured.

KB brings an international perspective to the Jefferies Lab, having trained in both Korea and Canada. His research sits at the intersection of vaccine development and immunology, and his technical expertise has become a vital resource for the lab’s research programs. He reflected that his move to Canada involved a broader cultural shift based on how research is structured, funded, and valued, along with language adjustments. He also indicated that compensation in academic research can vary, which may influence how individuals consider long-term career paths in the field.

Dr. Cheryl Pfeifer, Research Associate

Cheryl’s connection to the MSL runs deep. She completed her PhD here under the supervision of Dr. Brett Finlay before completing a postdoctoral fellowship, and eventually finding her home, in the Jefferies lab.

Much of what Cheryl does goes well beyond the bench. Navigating policies, permissions, and the administrative layers that keep a lab running is a quieter but indispensable part of her role, work that rarely makes it onto a CV. In reflecting on some of the personal challenges she’s faced in helping to manage the lab, she mentioned that there is “give and take from family,”. To her, this has meant relying on support from her family to pursue her research career while trying to find a balance between family time and time in the lab. Deadlines don’t pause, assays sometimes take longer than expected, and the balancing act never fully resolves, so support from her family has been crucial.

One of the most important shifts in her perspective over the years has been around self-advocacy. “You don’t get anything unless you ask for it – ask questions,” she says. It sounds simple, but for many early-career researchers switching to this mindset can be a genuine turning point. It was for Cheryl, and it is advice she offers freely to anyone earlier in their journey.

Together, these three researchers have supported an unusually broad research program spanning neuroscience, immunology, and vaccine development.

In neuroscience, that program opened the field of receptor-mediated drug delivery across the blood-brain barrier, the principle behind today’s brain-penetrant therapies. They also established the vascular-first paradigm of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which reframes AD as a vascular as well as a neurodegenerative disorder, recently extended to evidence that familial AD could be transferred during bone marrow transplants in mice.

In immunology, their work includes the first definitive proof that our adaptive immune systems surveil against cancer, the conceptual bedrock of modern immunotherapy, as well as the definition of a new antigen presentation pathway for priming killer T cells. They’ve also closely dissected metastatic immune escape, the stage at which most cancer therapies fail, through exploring both innate (non-specific) and adaptive (specific) immunity.

Alongside these mechanistic discoveries, the lab has developed vaccine strategies against viral and cancer targets, including platforms designed for distribution without cold-chain or lipid-nanoparticle delivery. Such breadth depends on outstanding researchers willing to move between fields.

Talking to these researchers and looking back on decades of hard work in the lab, it becomes clear that scientific progress is not only about individual discoveries, but also about sustained dedication and collaboration. Researchers devoting years to developing expertise, guiding emerging scientists, and fostering continuity within a lab contribute significantly to its identity and long-term success. Conversations like this remind us that behind every experiment and publication is a long story of curiosity, resilience, and community – and that the people who patiently support the lab over many years truly form its backbone.