Animal Magnetism: Q&A With Erik Nelson, PhD

From growing up with a keen interest in animals to conducting cutting-edge cancer research and receiving the Endocrine Society’s 2025 Richard E. Weitzman Outstanding Early Investigator Laureate Award, Erik Nelson, PhD, talks to Endocrine News about the award, his research, and why all early-career scientists should improve society by advancing science.

Growing up surrounded by the Rocky Mountains gave a young Erik Nelson an up-close view of nature and the wonder of animals. It also sparked a curiosity about how chemicals work in animals that has lasted a lifetime and recently help earn him the recognition of the Endocrine Society’s 2025 Richard E. Weitzman Outstanding Early Investigator.

Nelson is an associate professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned both his Bachelor of Science degree and PhD in Comparative Endocrinology from the University of Calgary, Canada, followed by six years as a postdoctoral associate at Duke University School of Medicine. He joined the University of Illinois in 2014. Nelson’s significant research contributions include defining the biochemical links between dyslipidemia/hypercholesterolemia and the pathobiology of osteoporosis and breast cancer. His goal is to use his findings to develop novel therapeutics for the treatment of cancer.

We spoke with Nelson to learn more about his chosen path in research and his words of wisdom for future early investigators.

Endocrine News: What does receiving the Outstanding Early Investigator Award mean to you?

Nelson: It’s truly an honor to be recognized by your peer scientists in such a way. It’s really gratifying to know that your peers value what you’ve been doing, and your contributions to science through the years. In addition, to being re-inspired by my own scientific goals, the exposure I will receive from this award will no doubt lead to new collaborations, and ultimately, better outcomes for patients.

EN: What inspired you to pursue your current area of research?

Nelson: I decided to get into endocrinology because I’ve always had an interest in animals, and animal biology, and that was inspired by both my parents and where I grew up. I grew up close to the Rocky Mountains, and our family had a strong interest in nature and animals. So, I always knew I wanted to pursue that. I’ve also always been interested in chemistry and how molecules work. Endocrinology merges these two fields; it’s how chemicals work in animals to signal and change animal responses and maintain what we call homeostasis. So, that’s what really inspired me to pursue a career in endocrinology.

My more recent studies focus on how cholesterol homeostasis can impact and influence the immune system, especially how it can change the immune system within tumors. This was inspired from my work as a post-doctoral associate [at Duke] in the lab of Donald McDonnell, where we recognized that we needed better therapies for the treatment of breast cancer, and so we took a systematic approach to review previous literature and look for retrospective analysis, or epidemiological evidence, for things that were associated with survival from breast cancer, but also, potentially, druggable.

The one thing that came up over and over was cholesterol. It turns out that if you have elevated cholesterol levels, then you are more likely to develop metastatic recurrence sooner than if you had lower cholesterol. And I think even more strikingly, survivors who are taking statins or cholesterol-lowering medication tend to have a better prognosis.

So that’s how we started, from this clinical observation, and for the last 10 to 15 years, we’ve been investigating how cholesterol contributes to cancer pathophysiology. We have noticed that both cholesterol and how we regulate cholesterol robustly impact how immune cells function, and how they respond in a tumor microenvironment.

EN: How do you see hope this award might influence your future work or opportunities?

Nelson: I think it’s a strong validation of what we’ve been doing, and the importance of what we’ve been doing is being recognized by the preeminent society in endocrinology. So, I think that is inspiring in and of itself and helps motivate me to keep doing what we’re doing.

And also, the exposure that the award brings through the Endocrine Society membership and news articles like this. It’s already led to new connections and new collaborations across the Society, as well as new directions for our research, which is to explore fundamental biology that is, eventually, translated into clinical care.

EN: Who are your collaborators in your research?

Nelson: I have an immediate team of people who work in my lab, and they’re all fantastic. The size changes a little bit depending on the year, but we always have a number of PhD graduate students, postdoctoral associates, research technicians, and undergraduate research assistants.

“Historically, the biggest changes and revolutions, or improvements in our human lives and society have usually been sparked by some sort of scientific advancement. So, we need to continue investing in science for the betterment of society.” – Erik Nelson, PhD, associate professor of molecular and integrative physiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Ill.

That’s my immediate team. They take care of the day-to-day, real work, if you will. And then, you can’t complete big tasks in isolation, so we collaborate extensively throughout our own University of Illinois and throughout the U.S. and the world. Those collaborations really help facilitate our science, so that no one group has to reinvent the wheel. We make use of each other’s expertise, so that we can really synergize, and move the next set of discoveries forward.

EN: What advice do you offer to young scientists who are at the beginning of their research careers?

Nelson: I will give you the answer in three parts. First, when I was wrapping up my PhD studies at the University of Calgary in 2008, just as the housing crisis and the 2008 recession was starting, a member of my PhD thesis, Bill Cole, gave me really good advice that I continue to hold near and dear to this day, ‘Science, and a career in science, is going to be hard, but if you believe in your ideas, keep pursuing them, take the feedback you get from your peers, and help that shape those ideas, eventually, you’ll start convincing others that your ideas are important, too.’ It’s really a message of perseverance.

The second piece of advice is that as a scientific community, we really must learn how to communicate our work to the general public. We publish in scientific journals, but we also need to learn how to communicate better with the public and our government officials as to the importance of what we do, how what we do fits into a longer-term puzzle, and how science improves the world.

And the third part of that is related and that’s if you look historically, the biggest changes and revolutions, or improvements in our human lives and society have usually been sparked by some sort of scientific advancement. So, we need to continue investing in science for the betterment of society.

EN: What’s your favorite way to pass the time when you leave the lab?

Nelson: Well, this links into how I got into this area of research in the first place. I continue to love nature and the outdoors, so you will often find me hiking or camping and enjoying everything the prairies around the University of Illinois have to offer.

-Shaw is a freelance writer based in Carmel, Ind. She is a regular contributor to Endocrine News and writes the monthly Laboratory Notes column.