CIRM SPARK program

Learning life lessons in the lab

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
Rohan Upadhyay, CIRM SPARK student 2021

One of the most amazing parts of an amazing job is getting to know the students who take part in CIRM’s SPARK (Summer Program to Accelerate Regenerative Medicine Knowledge) program. It’s an internship giving high school students, that reflect the diversity of California, a chance to work in a world-class stem cell research facility.

This year because of the pandemic I didn’t get a chance to meet them in person but reading the blogs they wrote about their experiences I feel as if I know them anyway.

The blogs were fun, creative, engaging and dealt with many issues, as well as stem cell and gene therapy research.

A common theme was how hard the students, many of whom knew little about stem cells before they started, had to work just to understand all the scientific jargon.

Areana Ramirez, who did her internship at UC Davis summed it up nicely when she wrote:

“Despite the struggles of taking over an hour to read a scientific article and researching what every other word meant, it was rewarding to know that all of the strain I had put on my brain was going toward a larger understanding of what it means to help others. I may not know everything about osteogenic differentiation or the polyamine pathway, but I do know the adversities that patients with Snyder-Robinson are facing and the work that is being done to help them. I do know how hard each one of our mentors are working to find new cures and are coming up with innovating ideas that will only help humankind.”

Lauren Ginn at City of Hope had the same experience, but said it taught her a valuable lesson:

“Make no mistake, searching for answers through research can sometimes feel like shooting arrows at a bulls-eye out of sight. Nonetheless, what CIRM SPARK has taught me is the potential for exploration that lies in the unknown. This internship showed me that there is so much more to science than the facts printed in textbooks.”

Rohan Upadhyay at UC Davis discovered that even when something doesn’t work out, you can still learn a lot:

“I asked my mentor (Gerhard Bauer) about what he thought had occurred. But unlike the textbooks there was no obvious answer. My mentor and I could only speculate what had occurred. It was at this point that I realized the true nature of research: every research project leads to more questions that need to be answered. As a result there is no endpoint to research. Instead there are only new beginnings.”

Melanie Nguyen, also at UC Davis, wrote her blog as a poem. But she saved the best part for the prose at the end:

“Like a hematopoietic stem cell, I have learned that I am able to pursue my different interests, to be multi-potential. One can indulge in the joys of biology while simultaneously live out their dreams of being an amateur poet. I choose it all. Similarly, a bone marrow stem cell can become whatever it may please—red, white, platelet. It’s ability to divide and differentiate is the source of its ingenuity. I view myself in the same light. Whether I can influence others with research, words, or stories, I know that with each route I will be able to make change in personalized ways.”

For Lizbeth Bonilla, at Stanford, her experiences transcended the personal and took on an even bigger significance:

“As a first-generation Mexican American, my family was thrilled about this internship and opportunity especially knowing it came from a prestigious institution. Unfortunately there is very little to no representation in our community in regards to the S.T.E.M. field. Our dreams of education and prosperity for the future have to be compromised because of the lack of support and resources. To maintain pride in our culture, we focus on work ethics and family, hoping it will be the next generations’ time to bring successful opportunities home. However, while this is a hope widely shared the effort to have it realized is often limited to men. A Latina woman’s success and interest in education are still celebrated, but not expected. As a first-generation Latina, I want to prove that I can have a career and hopefully contribute to raising the next leading generation, not with the hope that dreams are possible but to be living proof that they are.”

Reading the blogs it was sometimes easy to forget these are 16 and 17 year old students. They write with creativity, humor, thoughtfulness and maturity. They learned a lot about stem cell research over the summer. But I think they also learned a lot more about who they are as individuals and what they can achieve.

SPARKing the genius of the next generation of scientists

/ Kevin McCormack / 4 Comments
Dr. Kelly Shepard, SPARK program director

After almost 18 months – and counting – that have put us all to the test, made us wear masks, work from home, limit contact with all but the closest of family and friends it’s a wonderful thing to be able to get a glimpse of the future and feel that we are in good hands.

That’s how it felt this week when we held our SPARK conference. SPARK stands for Summer Program to Accelerate Regenerative Medicine Knowledge. The program helps high school students, that reflect the diversity of California, to take part in summer research at various institutions with a stem cell, gene therapy, or regenerative medicine focus. 

We hope the experience will inspire these students to become the next generation of scientists. Many of the students are first generation Americans, many also come from families with limited resources and without our help might not be able to afford an internship like this.

As part of the program we ask the students to not only do stem cell research and prepare a poster of their work, we also ask them to blog about it. And the blogs they write are things of beauty.

It’s hard to pick winners from so many fine writers, but in the end a team of CIRMites managed to identify a few we thought really stood out. First was Hassan Samiullah who spent his internship at Cedars-Sinai. Hassan wrote three blogs charting his journey at the research facility, working with mice and a deadly brain cancer. This is part of one of his entries.

“When many of us think of scientists, we think of crazy people performing crazy procedures in a lab. While I won’t try refuting the first part, the crazy procedures can actually be very consequential to society at large. What is now common knowledge was once found in the discussion section of a research paper. The therapies we will use to treat cancer tomorrow are being tested in labs today, even if they’re being injected into mice brains.” 

We liked his writing because he explained complex science clearly, with humor and obvious delight that he got to work in a research facility with “real” scientists. Crazy or otherwise. Here is his final blog which, I think, reflects the skill and creativity he brought to the task.

I’m almost at the end of my 7.5-week internship at Cedars-Sinai through the CIRM SPARK program. Looking back at the whole experience, I don’t think I’ve ever been through anything that’s required as much critical thinking.

I remember seeing pX330-dual-U6-Pten-Cdkn2a-Ex2-chimeric-BB-CBh-espCas9, and not having the slightest idea of what any of it meant. Sure, I understood the basics of what I was told: it’s a plasmid that can be transfected into mice brains to model glioblastoma tumors. But what do any of those strings of letters and numbers have to do with that? Well, I saw “Pten” and read it aloud: “P-t-e-n.” After I spelled it out like a kindergartener, I finally made a realization. p10 is a gene—specifically a tumor suppressor gene. I figured that the two jumbles of letters and numbers to the right must also be genes. Sure enough, the plasmid contains three mutated genes that get incorporated into a mouse’s genome, eventually leading to cancer. We didn’t actually end up using this model, however. Part of being in science is procedures not working out as expected.

Resilience is key.

When I found out that the image analysis software I was supposed to use didn’t support the type of data collection I needed to perform, I had to burn a little midnight oil to count the cells of interest manually. It proved to be well worth the effort: we found that mice tumors treated with radiation saw increased interactions between immune cells and endogenous (brain-resident) stem cells, even though they had fewer cells from the original tumor (difference wasn’t statistically significant due to an outlier in the control group). This is an important finding because it may explain the common narrative of glioblastoma: many patients see their tumors recede but suffer an aggressive relapse. This relapse may be due to immune cells’ interacting with stem cells to make them resistant to future treatments.

Understanding stem cells are so critical to cancer research, just as they are to many other fields of research. It is critical for everyone involved in science, medicine, healthcare, and policymaking to recognize and act on the potential of the regenerative medicine field to dramatically improve the quality of life for so many people.

This is just the beginning of my journey in science! I really look forward to seeing what’s next.

We look forward to it too Hassan.

Hassan wasn’t the only one we singled out for praise. Sheila Teker spent her summer at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute. She says her internship didn’t get off to a very encouraging start.

“When the CHORI security guard implied that “kids aren’t allowed” on my first day–likely assuming I was a 10-year-old smuggling myself into a highly professional laboratory – I’d also personally doubted my presence there. Being 16, I wasn’t sure I’d fit in with others in such an intimidating environment; and never did I think, applying for this program, that I could be working with stem cells. I’d heard about stem cells in the news, science classes, and the like, but even doing any cell culturing at all seemed inaccessible to me. At my age, I’d become accustomed to and discouraged by rejection since I was perceived as “too young” for anything.”

Over the course of the summer Sheila showed that while you might question her age, no one should ever question her talent and determination.  

Finally, we thought Alvin Cheng of Stanford also deserved recognition for his fine writing, starting with a really fun way to introduce his research into lower back pain.

“Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated”, Mary Shelley wrote her in 1831 edition of “Frankenstein”. Decades prior, Luigi Galvani discovered with his wife how a dead frog’s leg could twitch when an electric spark was induced. ‘Galvanism’ became the scientific basis behind the infamous novel and bioelectricity.”

While many of the students had to do their research remotely this year, that did not stop them doing amazing work. And working remotely might actually be good training for the future. CIRM’s Dr. Kelly Shepard, the Associate Director of Discovery and Translation and who runs the SPARK program, pointed out to the students that scientists now do research on the international space station from their labs here on earth, so the skills these SPARK students learned this past summer might prove invaluable in years to come.

Regardless of where they work, we see great things in the futures of these young scientists.

Perseverance: from theory to therapy. Our story over the last year – and a half

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Some of the stars of our Annual Report

It’s been a long time coming. Eighteen months to be precise. Which is a peculiarly long time for an Annual Report. The world is certainly a very different place today than when we started, and yet our core mission hasn’t changed at all, except to spring into action to make our own contribution to fighting the coronavirus.

This latest CIRM Annual Reportcovers 2019 through June 30, 2020. Why? Well, as you probably know we are running out of money and could be funding our last new awards by the end of this year. So, we wanted to produce as complete a picture of our achievements as we could – keeping in mind that we might not be around to produce a report next year.

Dr. Catriona Jamieson, UC San Diego physician and researcher

It’s a pretty jam-packed report. It covers everything from the 14 new clinical trials we have funded this year, including three specifically focused on COVID-19. It looks at the extraordinary researchers that we fund and the progress they have made, and the billions of additional dollars our funding has helped leverage for California. But at the heart of it, and at the heart of everything we do, are the patients. They’re the reason we are here. They are the reason we do what we do.

Byron Jenkins, former Naval fighter pilot who battled back from his own fight with multiple myeloma

There are stories of people like Byron Jenkins who almost died from multiple myeloma but is now back leading a full, active life with his family thanks to a CIRM-funded therapy with Poseida. There is Jordan Janz, a young man who once depended on taking 56 pills a day to keep his rare disease, cystinosis, under control but is now hoping a stem cell therapy developed by Dr. Stephanie Cherqui and her team at UC San Diego will make that something of the past.

Jordan Janz and Dr. Stephanie Cherqui

These individuals are remarkable on so many levels, not the least because they were willing to be among the first people ever to try these therapies. They are pioneers in every sense of the word.

Sneha Santosh, former CIRM Bridges student and now a researcher with Novo Nordisk

There is a lot of information in the report, charting the work we have done over the last 18 months. But it’s also a celebration of everyone who made it possible, and our way of saying thank you to the people of California who gave us this incredible honor and opportunity to do this work.

We hope you enjoy it.

A future scientist’s journey

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All this week we have been highlighting blogs from our SPARK (Summer Program to Accelerate Regenerative medicine Knowledge) students. SPARK gives high school students a chance to spend their summer working in a world class stem cell research facility here in California. In return they write about their experiences and what they learned.

The standard for blogs this year was higher than ever, so choosing a winner was particularly tough. In the end we chose Abigail Mora, who interned at UC San Francisco. We felt the obstacles she overcame in getting to this point made her story all the more remarkable and engaging.

Abigail Mora

When I was 15, my mother got sick and went to several doctors. Eventually, she found out that she was pregnant with a 3-month-old baby. A month after, my mom fell from the stairs, which were not high but still dangerous. Luckily, everything seemed to be okay with the baby. In the last week of her six-month pregnancy, she went in the clinic for a regular check-up but she ended up giving birth to my brother, who was born prematurely. She stayed in the clinic for a month and my brother also had to stay so that his lungs could develop properly.

When he came home, I was so happy. I spent a lot of time with him and was like his second mom. After an initial period of hard time, he grew into a healthy kid. Then I moved to San Francisco with my aunt, leaving my parents and siblings in Mexico so that I could become a better English speaker and learn more about science. My experience with my brother motivated me to learn more about the condition of premature babies, since there are many premature babies who are not as fortunate. I want to study neurodevelopment in premature kids, and how it may go wrong.

I was so happy when I got into the SEP High School Program, which my chemistry teacher introduced me to, and I found the research of Eric Huang’s lab at UCSF about premature babies and stem cell development in the brain super interesting. I met Lakisha and Jean, and they introduced me to the lab and helped me walk through the training process.

My internship experience was outstanding: I enjoyed doing research and how my mentor Jiapei helped me learn new things about the brain. I learned that there are many different cell types in the brain, like microglia, progenitor cells, and intermediate progenitors.

As all things in life can be challenging, I was able to persevere with my mentor’s help. For example, when I first learned how to cut mouse brains using a cryostat, I found it hard to pick up the tissue onto slides. After practicing many times, I became more familiar with the technique and my slices got better. Another time, I was doing immunostaining and all the slices fell from the slide because we didn’t bake the slides long enough. I was sad, but we learned from our mistakes and there are a lot of trials and errors in science.

I’ve also learned that in science, since we are studying the unknown, there is not a right or wrong answer. We use our best judgement to draw conclusions from what we observe, and we repeat the experiment if it’s not working.

The most challenging part of this internship was learning and understanding all the new words in neuroscience. Sometimes, I got confused with the abbreviations of these words. I hope in the future I can explain as well as my mentor Jiapei explained to me.

My parents are away from me but they support me, and they think that this internship will open doors to better opportunities and help me grow as a person.

I want to become a researcher because I want to help lowering the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in premature babies. Many of these disorders, such as autism or schizophrenia, don’t have cures. These are some of the hardest diseases to cure because people aren’t informed about them and not enough research has been done. Hopefully, one day I can work on developing a cure for these disorders.

CIRM’s Stephen Lin, PhD, who heads the SPARK program and Abigail after her blog won first prize

Mind altering, life changing experience in stem cell lab

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This week we are featuring the best blogs from our SPARK (Summer Program to Accelerate Regenerative medicine Knowledge) students. SPARK gives high school students a chance to spend their summer working in a world class stem cell research facility here in California. In return they write about their experiences and what they learned.

The blog that won second place comes from Emily Bunnapradist who spent her summer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Emily Bunnapradist by the poster presentation of her work

When I was in the third grade, my mom took me to the allergy wing in the UCLA Medical Center, hoping to find answers to a number of issues that accompanied my seemingly never-ending list of food allergies: dairy, eggs, nuts, legumes, and so on. Unexpectedly, without even an appointment, clinician Dr. Braskett spent an hour out of her already busy schedule just talking us through our worries in the lobby, checking out skin problems that arose as a result of my allergies and promising to see us again as soon as she could. Because of her overwhelming kindness and generosity, my mom and I went home with relieved smiles and assurance that my health concerns were manageable.

That was the day that I decided that I wanted to pursue medicine, to make an impact on people the way that she had on my family and me. However, my conception of the field of healthcare was quite limited. For the majority of my life, I was convinced that the only way to make a true connection in a patient’s well-being was as a clinician.

This unfounded claim quickly changed when I was accepted into the CIRM SPARK program at Cedars-Sinai. In the most action-packed summer I have ever had the opportunity to experience, I was exposed to the diverse field of healthcare. Transitioning between the clinical and research aspects of science, I saw firsthand the direct effect that researchers had on patients in fields I had not even considered.

While touring the blood transfusion facility at Cedars-Sinai, a technician proudly boasted about her connection to patient care in labeling and testing blood donations to ensure they were suitable for those in need. Upon viewing the imaging core, the manager of the center informed us about the revolutionary advances his team was making in developing software to identify cancerous indicators in patients. In visiting the microbiology lab, multiple lab scientists informed us about the hundreds of tests they perform on a daily basis to detect diseases such as influenza and adenovirus, without which clinicians wouldn’t be able to perform their job to the fullest degree.

In these past weeks, I have spent hundreds of hours in the lab. From drawing on sections with hydrophobic markers to loading gels with protein samples, I have gained tremendous experience in navigating a research environment. However, although I now know the mechanics of Western blots and immunostaining like the back of my hand, the most essential takeaways for me are not learning the procedures but understanding their applications. While I am now able to pipette fluids with a steady hand and make buffer solutions without second-guessing my calculations, I am also able to appreciate the science behind each protein band and cell plate. Being able to contribute to my project and hear about my peers’ experiments has shown me the scope of influence research can have on extending knowledge and generating cures to diseases.

While I had initially considered research to be cold and isolating, I have found more warmth and connection here than I believed possible. The passion that my mentors possess for their line of work, as well as their endless knowledge on essentially any topic imaginable, has shown me the importance and integrity of what they do.

The CIRM SPARK students at Cedars-Sinai (Emily is front right): Photo courtesy Cedars-Sinai

I could not be more grateful to have the guidance of Dr. Mehrnoosh Ghiam and Dr. Adam Poe, who I have formed strong relationships with and have helped me accomplish what I have this summer. Their mentorship, along with the resources of Cedars-Sinai, have granted me the most productive and exciting summer I’ve had yet!

Next generation of stem cell scientists leave their mark

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One of the favorite events of the year for the team here at CIRM is our annual SPARK (Summer Program to Accelerate Regenerative Medicine Knowledge) conference. This is where high school students, who spent the summer interning at world class stem cell research facilities around California, get to show what they learned. It’s always an engaging, enlightening, and even rather humbling experience.

The students, many of whom are first generation Californians, start out knowing next to nothing about stem cells and end up talking as if they were getting ready for a PhD. Most say they went to their labs nervous about what lay ahead and half expecting to do menial tasks such as rinsing out beakers. Instead they were given a lab coat, safety glasses, stem cells and a specific project to work on. They learned how to handle complicated machinery and do complex scientific experiments.

But most importantly they learned that science is fun, fascinating, frustrating sometimes, but also fulfilling. And they learned that this could be a future career for them.

We asked all the students to blog about their experiences and the results were extraordinary. All talked about their experiences in the lab, but some went beyond and tied their internship to their own lives, their past and their hopes for the future.

Judging the blogs was a tough assignment, deciding who is the best of a great bunch wasn’t easy. But in the end, we picked three students who we thought captured the essence of the SPARK program. This week we’ll run all those blogs.

We begin with our third place blog by Dayita Biswas from UC Davis.

Personal Renaissance: A Journey from Scientific Curiosity to Confirmed Passions

By Dayita Biswas

As I poured over the pages of my battered Campbell textbook, the veritable bible for any biology student, I saw unbelievable numbers like how the human body is comprised of over 30 trillion cells! Or how we have over 220 different types of cells— contrary to my mental picture of a cell as a circle. Science, and biology in particular, has no shortage of these seemingly impossible Fermi-esque statistics that make one do a double-take. 

My experience in science had always been studying from numerous textbooks in preparation for a test or competitions, but textbooks only teach so much. The countless hours I spent reading actually demotivated me and I constantly asked myself what was the point of learning about this cycle or that process — the overwhelming “so what?” question. Those intriguing numbers that piqued my interest were quickly buried under a load of other information that made science a static stream of words across a page. 

That all changed this summer when I had the incredible opportunity to work in the Nolta lab under my mentor, Whitney Cary. This internship made science so much more tangible and fun to be a part of.  It was such an amazing environment, being in the same space with people who all have the same goals and passion for science that many high school students are not able to truly experience. Everyone was so willing to explain what they were doing, and even went out of their way to help if I needed papers or had dumb questions.

This summer, my project was to create embryoid bodies and characterize induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from children who had Jordan’s Syndrome, an extremely rare neurodevelopmental disease whose research has applications in Alzheimer’s and autism.

 I had many highs and lows during this research experience. My highs were seeing that my iPSCs were happy and healthy. I enjoyed learning lab techniques like micro-pipetting, working in a biological safety hood, feeding, freezing, and passaging cells. My lows were having to bleach my beloved iPSCs days after they failed to survive, and having unsuccessful protocols. However, while my project consistently failed, these failures taught me more than my successes.

I learned that there is a large gap between being able to read about techniques and being “book smart” and actually being able to think critically about science and perform research. Science, true science, is more than words on a page or fun facts to spout at a party. Science is never a straight or easy answer, but the mystery and difficulty is part of the reason it is so interesting. Long story short: research is hard and it takes time and patience, it involves coming in on weekends to feed cells, and staying up late at night reading papers.         

The most lasting impact that this summer research experience had was that everything we learn in school and the lab are all moving us towards the goal of helping real people. This internship renewed my passion for biology and cemented my dream of working in this field. It showed me that I don’t have to wait to be a part of dynamic science and that I can be a small part of something that will change, benefit, and save lives.

This internship meant being a part of something bigger than myself, something meaningful. We must always think critically about what consequences our actions will have because what we do as scientists and researchers— and human beings will affect the lives of real people. And that is the most important lesson anyone can hope to learn.

                                                                                                   

And here’s a bonus, a video put together by the SPARK students at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Stem cell summer: high school students document internships via social media, Part 3

/ Todd Dubnicoff / 4 Comments

Today we share our third and final pair of social media awards from CIRM’s 2018 SPARK (Summer Program to Accelerate Regenerative medicine Knowledge) program, a 6-12 week summer internship program that provides hands-on stem cell research training to high school students throughout California.

AnthonyTan

CIRM SPARK 2018 Best Instagram Post winner by Caltech SPARK intern Anthony Tan

As part of their curriculum, the students were asked to write a blog and to post Instagram photos (follow #cirmsparklab) to document their internship experiences. Several CIRM team members selected their favorite entries and presented awards to the winning interns at the SPARK Student Conference earlier this month at UC Davis.

The two winners featured today are Caltech SPARK student, Anthony Tan – a senior at John A. Rowland High School – one of the Instagram Award winners (see his Instagram post above) and UCSF SPARK student Gennifer Hom – a senior at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts – one of the Blog Award winners. Read her blog below. (To learn about the other 2018 social media winners, see our previous blog posts here and here.)

Best Blog Award:
My SPARK 2018 summer stem cell research internship experience
By Gennifer Hom

genniferhom

Gennifer Hom

When I was seven, I remember looking up at the stars, I stared hard at the moon through my car window, thinking that it only revolves around me as it followed me home. I later learned in class that we rotate around the sun, as gravity holds the spinning planets in place, simultaneously, the moon revolves around the earth. Out of nowhere, I abruptly felt an actual light bulb switched on above my head once I learned how day and night came. Overcome with curiosity,“ Where did the Big Bang take place? When will my Big Bang happen?”

My interest dissipated as I entered into my high school career. I was struck with incoherence, an inconsistency to my thoughts, as I leaned my shoulder against the wall—for I had already decided to let my fatigue to take over. I felt lacking, unconfident in my abilities even to solve a simple balance chemical equation in chemistry class. Science was not my forte. I could never see myself working in a lab setting.

Still, a spark within me still held onto that childhood curiosity of mine. I remember sitting on the bus on my way to school reading about stem cells, which were fascinating to me. We can use these little cells for so many scientific research.

My Big Bang unfolded when I was accepted into the UCSF SEP internship program. I
studied the human-specific population of cortical neural stem cells and evaluated the signaling mechanisms that govern the formation of their identity. Through my performance, I am also contributing to this phenomenal study, helping my community by potentially providing information to help cure mental illnesses. At times, the results of our data did not come out as we wanted it to be. The staining went wrong, and the images were lacking. I would have to repeat the experiment or troubleshoot on the spot continually. However, it’s all a learning process. Even if I do get beautiful image stainings, I still need to repeat the experiments to confirm my results.

Learning was not the only side that is needed under this program. CIRM encouraged us to share our internship experiences on social media. I posted once a week on my studies, what I’ve learned, and how I could teach my viewers about this new research I am performing. I remember in one of the first few meetings we had, where we had to share our research with our peers, “ I can actually understand your studies,” a friend of mine claimed.

I felt powerful, in a sense, that I was able to communicate my knowledge to others to help them understand and teach my study. When I talk to my family and friends about my summer, I feel confident in my ability to comprehend these complex ideas. I could see myself researching, engineering, and fighting for a solution. I want to find the best form of gene therapy, and map each neuron of the brain. Through this two month program, science has become a new passion for me, a cornerstone of my new academic pursuits. It strengthened my theoretical knowledge and gave me an experience where I witnessed the real world laboratory setting. Not only did I learn the fundamental techniques of immunohistochemistry and microscopy, but I was able to receive encouraging advice from the scientists in the Kriegsteins lab and especially my mentor, Madeline Andrews. The experience in a lab comforted me by the idea of the never-ending changes that lured me to a world of thought and endless potential.

Stem cell summer: high school students document internships via social media, Part 2

/ Todd Dubnicoff / 2 Comments

Well, just like that, summer vacation is over. Most kids in California are back in school now and probably one of the first questions they’ll ask their friends is, “what did you do this summer?”. For 58 talented high school students, their answer will be, “I became a stem cell scientist.”

Best Instagram Post Award: Mia Grossman

https://www.instagram.com/p/BleQFSFASgQ/?tagged=cirmsparklab

Those students participated in a CIRM-funded internship called the Summer Program to Accelerate Regenerative medicine Knowledge, or SPARK for short, with seven programs throughout Northern and Southern California which include Caltech, Cedars-Sinai, City of Hope, Stanford, UC Davis, UCSF and the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. Over the course of about 8 eight weeks, the interns gained hands-on training in stem cell research at some of the leading research institutes in California. Last week, they all met for the annual SPARK conference, this year at the UC Davis Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, to present their research results and to hear from expert scientists and patient advocates.

As part of their curriculum, the students were asked to write a blog and to post Instagram photos (follow #cirmsparklab) to document their internship experiences. Several CIRM team member selected their favorite entries and presented awards to the winning interns at the end of the conference. We featured two of the winners in a blog from last week.

Our two winners featured today are Cedars-Sinai SPARK student, Mia Grossman – a senior at Beverly Hills High School – one of the Instagram Award winners (see her looping video above) and UC Davis SPARK student Anna Guzman – a junior at Sheldon High School – one of the Blog Award winners. Here’s her blog:

The Lab: A Place I Never Thought I’d Be
By Anna Guzman

AnnaGuzman

Anna Guzman

My CIRM SPARK journey started long before I ever stepped foot in the Institute for Regenerative Cures at UC Davis. Instead, my journey started two years earlier, when my older sister came home from the same internship with stories of passaged cells, images of completed western blots, and a spark in her eye when she described the place she had come to love. Barely 14 years old, I listened wide-eyed as my sister told us about the place she disappeared to each morning, stories of quirky professors, lovable mentors, and above all, the brilliant flame that everyone in her lab shared for learning. But even as she told her stories around the dinner table, I imagined this cold place where my charismatic, intelligent, and inquisitive sister was welcomed. I imagined the chilling concentration of dozens of geniuses bent over their work, of tissue culture rooms where every tiny movement was a potential disaster, and above all, of a labyrinth of brilliant discoveries and official sounding words with the door securely locked to 16 year old girls – girls who had no idea what they wanted to do with their life, who couldn’t confidently rattle words like “CRISPR,” “mesenchymal” and “hematopoietic” off their tongues. In short, this wasn’t a place for me.

But somehow I found myself applying for the CIRM SPARK internship. Seconds after I arrived for my first day at the place I was sure I would not belong, I realized how incorrect my initial assumption of the lab was. Instead of the intimidating and sophisticated environment filled with eye-rolling PhDs who scoffed at the naïve questions of a teenager, I found a room filled with some of the kindest, funniest, warmest people I had ever met. I soon found that the lab was a place of laughter and jokes across bays, a place of smiles in the hallways and mentors who tirelessly explained theory after theory until the intoxicating satisfaction of a lightbulb sparked on inside my head. The lab was a place where my wonderful mentor Julie Beegle patiently guided me through tissue culture, gently reminding me again and again how to avoid contamination and never sighing when I bubbled up the hemocytometer, miscalculated transduction rates, or asked question after question after question. Despite being full of incredibly brilliant scholars with prestigious degrees and publications, the lab was a place where I was never made to feel small or uneducated, never made to feel like there was something I couldn’t understand. So for me, the lab became a place where I could unashamedly fuel my need to understand everything, to ask hundreds of questions until the light bulbs sputtered on and a spark, the same spark that had glowed in the eyes of my sister years ago, burned brightly. The lab became a place where it was always okay to ask why.

At moments towards the middle of the internship, when my nerves had dissolved into a foundation of tentative confidence, and I had started to understand the words that tumbled out of my mouth, I’d be working in the biosafety cabinet or reading a protocol to my mentor and think, Wow. That’s Me. That’s me counting colonies and loading gels without the tell-tale nervous quiver of a beginner’s hand. That’s me explaining my project to another intern without an ambiguous question mark marring the end of the sentence. That’s me, pipetting and centrifuging and talking and understanding – doing all the things that I was certain that I would never be able to do. That’s the best thing that the CIRM SPARK internship has taught me. Being an intern in this wonderful place with these amazing people has taught me to be assured in my knowledge, unashamed in my pursuit of the answer, and confident in my belief that maybe I belong here. These feelings will stay with me as I navigate the next two years of high school and the beginning of the rest of my life. I have no doubt that I will feel unsure again, that I will question whether I belong and wonder if I am enough. But then I will remember how I felt here, confident, and unashamed, and assured in the place where I never thought I’d be.

It was not until the end of my internship, as I stood up to present a journal article to a collection of the very people who had once terrified me, that I realized the biggest thing I was wrong about two years ago. I was wrong when I assumed that this was a place where I would never belong. Instead, as I stood in front of this community of amazingly brilliant and kind people, my mouth forming words that I couldn’t have dreamed of understanding a month ago, I realized that this was precisely where I belonged. This was the place for me.

Stem cell summer: high school students document internships via social media, Part 1

/ Todd Dubnicoff / 1 Comment

My fellow CIRM team members and I just got back from two days in Sacramento where we attended one of our favorite annual events: the CIRM SPARK Student Conference. SPARK, which is short for Summer Program to Accelerate Regenerative medicine Knowledge, is a CIRM-funded education program that offers California High School students an invaluable opportunity to gain hands-on training in stem cell research at some of the leading research institutes in California.

This meeting represents the culmination of the students’ internships in the lab this summer and gives each student the chance to present their project results and to hear from stem cell research experts and patient advocates. Every summer, without fail, I’m blown away by how much the students accomplish in such a short period of time and by the poise and clarity with which they describe their work. This year was no exception.

Best Instagram Post Award: Skyler Wong

To document the students’ internship experiences, we include a social media curriculum to the program. Each student posts Instagram photos and writes a blog essay describing their time in the lab. Members of the CIRM team reviewed and judged the Instagram posts and blogs. It was a very difficult job selecting only three Instagrams out of over 400 (follow them at #cirmsparklab) that were posted over the past eight weeks. Equally hard was choosing three blogs from the 58 student essays which seem to get better in quality each year.

Over the next week or so, we’re going to feature the three Instagram posts and three blogs that were ultimately awarded. Our two winners featured today are UC Davis SPARK student, Skyler Wong, a rising senior at Sheldon High School was one of the Instagram Award winners (see his photo above) and Stanford SPARK student Angelina Quint, a rising senior at Redondo Union High School, was one of the Blog Award winners. Here’s her blog:

Best Blog Award:
My SPARK 2018 summer stem cell research internship experience
By Angelina Quint

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Angelina Quint

Being from Los Angeles, I began the SIMR program as a foreigner to the Bay Area. As my first research experience, I was even more so a foreigner to a laboratory setting and the high-tech equipment that seemingly occupied every edge and surface of Stanford’s Lorry I. Lokey Stem Cell building. Upon first stepping foot into my lab at the beginning of the summer, an endless loop of questions ran through my brain as I ventured deeper into this new, unfamiliar realm of science. Although excited, I felt miniscule in the face of my surroundings—small compared to the complexity of work that laid before me. Nonetheless, I was ready to delve deep into the unknown, to explore this new world of discovery that I had unlocked.

Participating in the CIRM research program, I was given the extraordinary opportunity to pursue my quest for knowledge and understanding. With every individual I met and every research project that I learned about, I became more invigorated to investigate and discover answers to the questions that filled my mind. I was in awe of the energy in the atmosphere around me—one that buzzed with the drive and dedication to discover new avenues of thought and complexity. And as I learned more about stem cell biology, I only grew more and more fascinated by the phenomenon. Through various classes taught by experts in their fields on topics spanning from lab techniques to bone marrow transplants, I learned the seemingly limitless potential of stem cell research. With that, I couldn’t help but correlate this potential to my own research; anything seemed possible.

However, the journey proved to be painstakingly arduous. I soon discovered that a groundbreaking cure or scientific discovery would not come quickly nor easily. I faced roadblocks daily, whether it be in the form of failed gel experiments or the time pressures that came with counting colonies. But to each I learned, and to each I adapted and persevered. I spent countless hours reading papers and searching for online articles. My curiosity only grew deeper with every paper I read—as did my understanding. And after bombarding my incredibly patient mentors with an infinite number of questions and thoughts and ideas, I finally began to understand the scope and purpose of my research. I learned that the reward of research is not the prestige of discovering the next groundbreaking cure, but rather the knowledge that perseverance in the face of obstacles could one day transform peoples’ lives for the better.

As I look back on my journey, I am filled with gratitude for the lessons that I have learned and for the unforgettable memories that I have created. I am eternally grateful to my mentors, Yohei and Esmond, for their guidance and support along the way. Inevitably, the future of science is uncertain. But one thing is always guaranteed: the constant, unhindered exchange of knowledge, ideas, and discovery between colleagues passionate about making a positive difference in the lives of others. Like a stem cell, I now feel limitless in my ability to expand my horizons and contribute to something greater and beyond myself. Armed with the knowledge and experiences that I have gained through my research, I aspire to share with others in my hometown the beauty of scientific discovery, just as my mentors have shared with me. But most of all, I hope that through my continued research, I can persist in fighting for new ways to help people overcome the health-related challenges at the forefront of our society.

 

Stem cell roundup: summer scientists, fat-blocking cells & recent human evolution

/ Todd Dubnicoff / Leave a comment

Stem cell photo of the week: high schooler becoming a stem cell pro this summer

InstagramAnnaJSPARK

High school student Anna Guzman learning important lab skills at UC Davis

This summer’s CIRM SPARK Programs, stem cell research internships for high school students, are in full swing. Along with research assignments in top-notch stem cell labs, we’ve asked the students to chronicle their internship experiences through Instagram. And today’s stem cell photo of the week is one of those student-submitted posts. The smiling intern in this photo set is Anna Guzman, a rising junior from Sheldon High School who is in the UC Davis SPARK Program. In her post, she describes the lab procedure she is doing:

“The last step in our process to harvest stem cells from a sample of umbilical cord blood! We used a magnet to isolate the CD34 marked stem cells [blood stem cells] from the rest of the solution.”

Only a few days in and Anna already looks like a pro! It’s important lab skills like this one that could land Anna a future job in the stem cell field. Check out #cirmsparklab on Instagram to view the ever-growing number of posts.

Swiss team identifies a cell type that block formation of fat cells

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(Left) Mature human fat cells grown in a Petri dish (green, lipid droplets). (Right) A section of mouse fat tissue showing, in the middle, a blood vessel (red circle) surrounded by fat cell blocking cells called Aregs (arrows). [Bart Deplancke/EPFL]

Liposuction surgery helps slim and reshape areas of a person’s body through the removal of excess fat tissue. While the patient is certainly happy to get rid of those extra pounds, that waste product is sought after by researchers because it’s a rich source of regenerative cells including fat stem cells.

The exact populations of cells in this liposuction tissue has been unclear, so a collaboration of Swiss researchers – at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ) – used a cutting-edge technique allowing them to examine the gene activity within single cells.

The analysis was successful in identifying several newly defined subpopulations of cells in the fat tissue. To their surprise, one of those cell types did not specialize into fat cells but instead did the opposite: they inhibited other fat stem cells from giving rise to fat cells. The initial experiments were carried out in mice, but the team went on to show similar fat-blocking cells in human tissue. Further experiments will explore the tantalizing prospect of applying these cells to control obesity and the many diseases, like diabetes, that result from it.

The study was published June 20st in Nature.

Connection identified between recent human evolution & risk for premature birth
Evidence of recent evolution in a human gene that’s critical for maintaining pregnancy may help explain why some populations have a higher risk for giving birth prematurely than others. That’s according to a recent report by researchers at the University of Stanford School of Medicine.

The study, funded in part by CIRM’s Genomics Initiative, compared DNA from people with East Asian, European and African ancestry. They specifically examined the gene encoding the progesterone hormone receptor which helps keep a pregnant woman from going into labor too soon. The gene is also associated with preterm births, the leading cause of infant death in the U.S.

The team was very surprise to find that people with East Asian ancestry had an evolutionarily new version of the gene while the European and African populations had mixtures of new and ancient versions. These differences may explain why the risk for premature birth among East Asian populations is lower than among pregnant women of European and African descent, though environment clearly plays a role as well.

Pediatrics professor Gary Shaw, PhD, one of the team leaders, put the results in perspective:

“Preterm birth has probably been with us since the origin of the human species,” said Shaw in a press release, “and being able to track its evolutionary history in a way that sheds new light on current discoveries about prematurity is really exciting.”

The study was published June 21st in The American Journal of Human Genetics.