On her first morning in the lab, she was called to the endoscopy suite where a child was being evaluated. The view through the endoscope revealed a small red blob of bleeding tissue from an ulcer that was being biopsied. Viney fainted. Later, as she studied the biopsied cells, she began wondering about how these tiny cells in the intestine work to protect the body.

 

That experience spurred Viney's interest in gut immunology. "I realized being a scientist would not just entail studying cell cultures in a lab – it would actually be about making a difference in the lives of real patients," she says.

 

It was her curiosity and passion that fueled her through long days at the bench. Now the executive director of inflammation at Amgen, her daily work has shifted to the desk, where she leads the discovery and development of new therapeutics for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. She oversees 70 scientists who are working to discover new therapies for inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and fibrosis. In the past year, the team has developed four molecules that entered human clinical trials.

 

Viney has more than 20 years experience working on immunity and the gut, including a doctoral degree and two postdoctoral fellowships. For her Ph.D., she studied T cells within the lining of the intestine. Twenty years ago, these cells typically took seven or more hours for a scientist to isolate. Despite the challenges, Viney discovered that many of the immune cells in the gut expressed proteins called gamma-delta T cell receptors.

 

In the early 1990s, during her firstpostdoctoral fellowship, she continued her study of gamma-delta T cells and was involved in creating the first knockout mouse that lacks the more prevalent alpha-beta T cells. This provided an opportunity to study gamma-delta T cells, and helped prove that gamma-delta T cells were important to the immune reaction in their own right. 

 

For her second postdoctoral fellowship, she moved to the United States and began a completely new line of work at Genentech in California. There, she used molecular modeling to identify binding sites on the mucosal addressin cell-adhesion molecule, MAdCAM, a molecule that directs trafficking of T cells and other cell types to the gut to help fight disease. The molecule is thought to be expressed abnormally in intestinal disorders such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.  

 

The lab work was much different from her previous experience with cells and mice. "I had never done real molecular biology and molecular modeling, so I chose a lab that was very skilled and I worked with one of the world leaders," she recalls. The new research focus didn't intimidate her. "It was a totally different technology, totally different methods, and seemed very high-tech. That’s what made it appealing."

 

Viney joined Amgen as a staff scientist working on dendritic cells, tolerance and inflammatory bowel disease, and soon moved up the ranks of scientists.

Now, as an executive director of research, Viney oversees the big picture questions, but not from the bench. Her daily life involves back-to-back meetings and phone calls, giving talks, and interacting with top scientists in academia. It's anything but routine: "Every piece of data that comes in," she says, "can alter the course of what we actually do."

 

Ideas for drug candidates are born out of a grassroots approach. "Each of the PIs in my group has their own ideas about new targets, and they are free to investigate those with a low level of resources. Once they have a good story or good program that they think can move forward, that’s when I start asking them to make presentations and to form a project team."

 

When new scientists come in to Amgen, Viney gets them involved with project teams, with the expectation that, within six months to a year, they'll have their own ideas on which to base a small program. Once a team is formed, the team leaders pull in representatives from protein science, chemistry and other specialties. Viney assigns project managers to help the team leaders run meetings, set goals, and draw up timelines.

 

Throughout her career, Viney has noticed a few key ingredients for advancing a career in industry. For one, researchers must deliver results, whether that involves identifying a new drug target, developing a drug, or generating basic research to support preclinical studies. But the scientists also must work well with teams."You really need a combination of both to succeed," says Viney. “The people who become leaders in industry can inspire a group to rally around them. They’re able to direct a program and efficiently move that program forward," she says. What's more, industry scientists who can lead their own group at the same time as contributing to other programs will move up the scale quickly, she says.

 

Perhaps the biggest piece of advice, especially to budding scientists, is to find your passion within science. "I think science and drug discovery can be really hard and frustrating," she says. "So find an area of research that you really love, and you will do well at it!"