Learning to Lab

As a high school student excited about entering the field of medicine, I found it challenging to find the right outlets and ways to pursue my interest. According to healthcare regulations, I was too young for clinical work, so the closest I got was a hospital lobby. Opening doors as a volunteer seemed like the closest I could get to patient interaction. Don’t get me wrong, providing service in any capacity was an important job and I was happy to fill it, but I wanted a way to ask and test out the bigger and tougher questions about improving treatments in medicine.

After my great-aunt passed away due to cancer, I became disheartened that cancer treatments were only limited in effectiveness because the body developed resistance to the therapies and drugs. I developed a passion to pursue research about novel cancer treatments based on the body’s immunity. I searched for programs by Googling “medical science research programs for high school students” and found The Clark Scholars Program at Texas Tech University at the top of a MIT list on high school programs. I noticed that participants earn a decent stipend, so I figured that I would give it a shot but had no idea if I would even have a chance at being accepted. Luckily, I was, and in the summer after my junior year of high school, I pursued research for seven weeks as one of 12 Clark Scholars.

In the Immuno Engineering and Nanomedicine lab, I developed microneedles and nanoparticles as a new mechanism to deliver adjuvants into tissues. I also discovered that CpG, an important adjuvant, can overexpress certain genes in cancer cells, which can help in maximizing an immune response from the body. My research led to a culminating presentation and paper which earned recognition from the Regeneron Science Foundation. It sounds shiny and perfect on paper, but my journey in the lab, especially as a young and inexperienced researcher was far from it. It quite a daunting experience, fraught with challenges and failures. It ended up teaching me a lot about myself.

In my first week as a scholar, I had no direction, no idea what I wanted to study for the whole summer, and no idea how to go about an idea or process. When I came in on the first day, my mentor told me that I could shadow many lab members and learn about the procedures they worked on. Hearing the long-term goals of these driven PhD students filled me with wonder and I was in a daze thinking about how I might eventually get there someday. At the end of the week, there was a lab meeting that began with members presenting their progress since the last meeting. As soon as each person spoke, my lab’s Principal Investigator, Dr. Gill, had a plethora of questions ranging from objectives, to procedures, to data analysis. I was shocked to see doctoral and post-doctoral researchers speechless as they tried to substantiate their work and their findings. Most frequently, they were asked to modify the process or repeat it many more times.

I grew suddenly anxious. I had only been in the lab for 3 days; what was I supposed to say? When my turn came, I introduced myself and quickly summarized a nanoparticle synthesis process that a PhD student had shown me earlier. Nodding, Dr. Gill responded “That’s great. Keep up the good work. We’ll hear some more next time.” With those words, I felt a pang of relief. This whole “research thing” is going to be so easy, I thought. I could just ask lab members to teach me procedures, help them complete their lab tasks, and report them to Dr. Gill without being grilled.

That night, I reflected on my experience at the lab meeting. The initial comfort of shadowing other researchers and working on established procedures quickly turned to longing to do something original. When I applied to be a Clark Scholar, I wanted to earn the pride of performing my own research and working through all of the challenges that entailed getting to such a point.

The next morning, I woke with a sense of purpose and determination to perform independent research. I started out by identifying some scientific papers and journals and battled through the jargon and abstruse diagrams. My readings prompted me to pose questions, which prompted me to narrow down a problem and a plan. I met with Dr. Gill regarding my hypothesis, which was based on one of the lab’s established protocols for encapsulating materials in nanoparticles, as well as coating microneedles. I also wanted to test my nanoparticles on a carcinoma line to observe their effect. This second part was a totally new extension of my initial plan, and something that I mentioned to my PhD student but never to my mentor until the very last meeting.

Execution of my ideas was a slow but steady process, and I made mistakes on a daily basis. When making nanoparticles, I tried about ten different protocols each about six times before finally completing one that proceeded as I wanted it to. While growing cells, I lost reagents, and accidentally contaminated large containers of media. I also accidentally killed my cells, and broke the aspirating pipette. My experiments had to be repeated many times because I did not plan sufficiently or complete my reactions in a timely manner.

It was frustrating to learn so many tips and tricks solely through trial-and-error, but the work was fascinating so I persevered. At every lab meeting following my decision to pursue an independent project, I never fully talked about my project because my work felt incomplete and I was afraid of what my mentor would say. If he was firm and doubtful about brilliant PhD students’ work, he was going to rip my silly experiments to shreds!

After about 10 weeks went by, my mentor emailed me and insisted that I give a full presentation of my work over the summer at the last meeting. This was separate from my program’s final presentation, which had a much less intimidating audience of other 17 years olds. After waiting for my turn anxiously throughout the meeting, sweating bullets, I narrated how I tested delivery of CpG nanoparticles into pig skin and also analyzed their role in cancer cells. I cautiously awaited comments from my mentor, Dr. Gill. The depth and detail with which he questioned me sounded all too familiar from my first meeting. “I get what you’re trying to demonstrate, but… I have concerns about the equipment and protocol you used for encapsulating the CpG and injecting into cells. How did you…?”

As soon as I heard that intense volley of questioning, I tried to mask my joy at being treated like a researcher. Not a high school intern, or student shadowing, but a real researcher in a lab. Granted, the job came with accountability, hard work, and repetition, but the associated sense of excitement was unparalleled.

In the 50 sunny days that I spent as a Clark Scholar at Texas Tech University, I discovered Torchy’s Tacos, Arrogant Texan ice cream, and my love for independent research. Yes, here is asymptotic learning curve in research, with always room to grow and improve protocols inside and outside of lab. There are always be mistakes, retesting is the only way to be sure about what you are doing, and without collaboration, research is a dead end for answers. Despite those expected challenges, thousands of scholars around the world, myself included, find themselves chipping away at research day in and day out.

The thing that brings tens of thousands of brilliant minds back to the labs, sometimes in the middle of the night and the thing that brought a smile to my 17-year old pimply face were one in the same: the potential to find answers that make a difference in humanity. And that potential is unequivocally worth pursuing, no matter how small you may feel in the research world.