Summer Undergraduate Research Program - Fred Hutchinson ...

Graduate School Personal Statement #4
If nothing else, my undergraduate experience has taught me that failures will almost always
precede successes. Academically I’ve crashed midterms before acing finals. Athletically I’ve lost
scrimmages against schools I hadn’t known existed before winning a national title against the best‐
ranked team in the country. In research I’ve broken gels, mislabeled tubes, forgotten to feed cells fresh
media, and mixed up PCR primers, all in route to finding meaningful results. To paraphrase, I’ve learned
the lesson of “try, try again” quite thoroughly and, in the process, discovered a deep personal store of
perseverance that is especially well‐suited to an aspiring scientist.
Completing my undergraduate bioengineering degree in the Collegee of Engineering at XXX has
equipped me with a strong quantitative reference frame with which to approach scientific questions.
Core bioengineering courses such as Stem Cell Technology, Cell and Tissue Engineering, and BioMEMS
(Biological Microelectromechanical Systems) underline the value of using first principles to understand
complicated cellular processes and rational design to successfully intervene when they founder. I have
also completed molecular and cell biology courses to supplement my understanding of basic eukaryotic
biology. Tumor Biology, Systems Biology, and Molecular Immunology especially captured my interest in
the molecular machines and precise interactions which govern either protection from or entry into
disease states. A marriage of academic experience in engineering and biological science uniquely
qualifies me to contribute to innovative biomedical research at the graduate level.
Compelled to start sooner rather than later, I have participated in both basic science and
translational research projects as an undergraduate. As a member of XXX’s laboratory in the
bioengineering department at XXX, I focused primarily on trying to understand and predict protein
folding, particularly in relation to aggregation phenomena. Many neurodegenerative diseases, including
Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s disease, are characterized by mistimed aggregation in β‐rich
proteins, so I set out to understand if increased propensity for aggregation is exclusively restricted to
disease states or rather a general property of all β‐rich proteins. Working with postdoctoral researcher
XXX (now a senior biochemist at XXX Laboratories), I performed dynamic protein folding simulations and
in vitro kinetic experiments to characterize the tendency of a β‐rich but non‐disease related protein to
aggregate under various conditions. However, even under favorable conditions, I found aggregation in
the non‐disease protein to be extremely fragile and rare. These results indicated that, unlike in disease
state conformations, wildtype β‐rich proteins are protected from aggregating. Dr. XXX, Professor XXX,
and I have submitted a publication describing our findings to which I contributed experimental design,
execution, data analysis, figure generation, and original text. My experience in the XXX laboratory was
particularly valuable because it provided me with my first opportunity to conduct independent
investigation and to participate in the publication phase of scientific research.
In addition to research in the bioengineering department at XXX, I spent the recent summer
working as a research intern in XXX’s laboratory at the XXX in XXX. While there I was mentored by
research associate XXX and contributed to a drug delivery project in which we characterized the
specificity and efficacy of a novel vehicle called the “polyplex.” The polyplex uses RNA interference to
help overcome a major problem in conventional cancer treatment, which is the innate resistance many
cancers have to chemotherapy. We hypothesized that delivering pro‐apoptotic small interfering RNA
(siRNA) to cancer cells would help sensitize those cells and potentially allow loser‐dose chemotherapies
to be prescribed in the clinic with equal therapeutic benefit. My involvement entailed performing assays
to quantify drug uptake, target RNA transcript knockdown, and cytotoxicity in human breast and ovarian
cancer cell lines. I found that the polyplex successfully delivers siRNA into the cytosol of cells expressing
targeted surface receptors and, furthermore, initiates degradation of sequence‐specific RNA transcripts
without a widespread effect on gene expression. At the conclusion of the summer program I presented
my results in both a XXX laboratory meeting and a competitive poster symposium at the XXX, where I
was awarded “XXX” by a panel of graduate and postdoctoral researchers.
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