My introduction to research at MSNU began on my school visit here when my tour guide mentioned a program she was involved in called RISEbio. The way she talked about researching lizard brains sparked my interest and was a contributing factor in me coming here. RISEbio is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and their mission is to develop undergraduate students into leaders and effective researchers. While in the program you get to engage in real world research while being mentored by a professor, graduate students, and former RISEbio scholars. After finishing my RISEbio research in the Cancer stream with Dr. Land, I presented my work in front of biology faculty and representatives from the NSF. As student eager to get my hands on more research, I joined my Genetics professor Dr. Hartert’s team and kept with the theme of cancer research. The work I do with Dr. Hartert slightly changes each semester depending on if we are focused on publishing work or gathering a lot of data. Ultimately, our work in and outside the lab can be broken down into two parts. The first part is gathering data from published patient data sets from some of the largest peer journals out there such as “Nature” and “Blood”. The publishers we use tend to be major contributors to the field of hematology who are reputable. What we learn from our sources is how patients respond to different therapies such and CAR-T and different drug combinations. CAR-T allows clinicians to modify one’s own immune system to directly target their cancer cells.

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Once we gather patient outcomes, we can start building a story of how a genetic profile of one patient may result in worse outcomes than another and why. Sequencing RNA is one way we show this and tells us what genes are affected after patient’s initial chemotherapy. We then predict what drugs would be best paired with their genetic deficiencies. We can then use drugs on live cancer cells taken from people who also had Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL). Albeit the cell lines we use are grown in our lab, they still come from a human which means ethical and safety concerns are important to keep in mind. We wear gloves and go through plenty of ethanol to clean our equipment before we bring it into the sterile flow hood. This is also important so that our samples don’t get contaminated with bacteria or yeast which ruins our data. Since we use real human cell lines it’s important that we don’t misuse and misrepresent them in our findings. We get the cell lines from research physicians at medical institutions and on their side it’s important that informed consent is given, the patient’s identity remains confidential, and they aren’t used for commercialization and profit. Not only has research prepared me for my future scientific endeavors but it has helped me immensely with understanding content in my major. The specific knowledge I need to have related to cancer and genetics to be successful in my research is a much higher understanding than in my undergraduate courses. I am now less intimidated by more difficult content and can relate anything I learn related to cancer or drugs with genetic implications to my research.

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In the lab, we conduct experiments to investigate drug synergy, where the combined effect of two or more drugs surpasses the sum of their individual effects. This involves loading a sample containing varying concentrations of two drugs into a 96-well plate, strategically arranging them to test different combinations. After adding cancer cells and allowing them to incubate, we use a machine to the plate and analyze the results. It is critical for us to maintain optimal conditions for cell growth and prevent contamination by fungi or bacteria, which can derail our experiments. Additionally, we follow protocols strictly to avoid errors such as adding the wrong concentration of drugs or number of cells. If we accidentally add too little or too much drug for the number of cells we will either kill everything and not see synergy or have little cell killing occur. It is inevitable that we will encounter setbacks, but I am trying to approach these challenges as opportunities for growth and refining our methods. For example, there are days when we work for hours in the lab with everything going smoothly and when we go and read the plate there is nothing to see. During my three years we have made considerable contributions to DLBCL research. Several of our successful drug synergy combinations are the first of their kind and our data analysis has shown considerable evidence for genetic mutations being associated with worse patient outcomes.

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While talking to my peers I have noticed similarities and differences between their research experiences and mine. Many projects are very specific to a field and are zoomed in. I am happy to be working on something that is both zoomed in and easily simplified as testing drug combinations on cancer cells. This allows everyone from my friends who are math majors, to a practicing Oncologist to understand and discuss what I research. Another difference I have is freedom to decide what drug combinations I’ll use and on what specific cancer cell. The main constraint with my research also affecting other students is money and equipment. This isn’t super uncommon as an undergraduate student, especially one at an education focused institution. Having gone to a professional conference in San Diego, I have seen what research universities and hospitals can do and the large amount of data they can acquire. I think it would be cool someday to have the capability to have large research grants to work with and leave no stone unturned for potential cancer therapies. I don’t know yet if I will be a physician primarily practicing in a hospital or if I’ll be doing research. Either way research will be important during medical school and residency, and I will need to keep up with the latest published work in my specialty.