UVA Today, February 27, 2018
Jesse Persily spent his summer chasing after answers to questions about one of the most deadly kinds of cancer.
Persily, a 4th year human biology major, received a Harrison Undergraduate Research Award last year to perform research on a specific subset of cancer patients. His work analyzed cell surface receptors on pancreatic cancer cells in the context of liver metastasis...
Persily, and the team in Dr. Todd Bauer's laboratory, developed a way to model clinical relevant scenarios in mice. The process takes advantage of the intrinsic ability of cancer cells to divide repeatedly. When a tumor is removed from a patient, small tumor chunks are sewn onto the pancreata of mice. The resulting tumors can be minced into what are called "patient-derived cell lines," which can be grown for months at a time on cell culture dishes, or frozen for later investigation.
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"I was drawn to the Bauer lab because I was interested in pursuing a career in medicine, and the opportunity to work with a physician who also ran a basic science research lab seemed to good to pass up," Persily said. "I thought it would allow me to look at academic medicine from a number of different perspectives."
"I was drawn to pancreative cancer because I knew it was a disease with a horrific prognosis, worthy of active investigation," Persily said. "Finally, I knew surgical residents spent time in the lab, and I loved the idea of getting to work with physicians in training."
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"By developing an understanding of the underlying biology and common methodology, I've learned how to put new findings in the context of old information," he said. "I've also learned the experiment you design dictates the questions you can and can't answer, which has allowed me to critically assess the conclusions others and myself draw from the data."
"I've also learned I love the process of taking information, synthesizing it, and using that to come up with intelligent, answerable questions," he said. "I've learned how to fail, and that in science, it's not about the failures, but about how you move forward from them, how you shape your understanding of the biology based on the answers you get, so you can continue to work toward a goal, even in the face of data you didn't expect."
*Excerpts from original article; emphasis added.
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