Precision Medicine

At 11:00am today, Barack Obama announced a $215 million endeavor known as the Precision Medicine Initiative. That may seem like a large price tag (it is), but let’s briefly highlight what the initiative includes and why it’s important for science:

1. $130 million will go to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a voluntary cohort of research volunteers (at least a million) for a long term study on overall health. This initiative is intended to measure everything, from eating habits to data on exercise to the composition of their genomes.  These huge cohort studies have already been established in the UK and Japan, so it’s about time that we pursued it here in the United States.

Such studies are very important. Although time consuming and pricy, data like this will help solve important questions regarding the effect of different lifestyles on the body. It’ll also help scientist analyze how large of an effect your genetics has on your different aspects of your life. For example, let’s take that group of 1,000,000 people and follow them throughout their life. Down the line, if we noticed that 10,000 become morbidly obese, we can look to see if there are any genetic components that these people have in common that would predispose them to such a state. The possibilities are pretty much endless with huge data sets like this – and if the data remains largely accessible, it’ll be a huge boon to scientific research.

Figure 1: Let’s take a closer look at this, shall we?

2. $70 million wil go to the National Cancer Institute (part of the NIH) to map “genomic drivers” in cancer and apply this knowledge to developing treatments.

Cancer is a very tricky disease. Unlike diseases that are caused by a specific mutation or other agent (such as a bacteria), cancer can be caused by a huge variety of genetic mutations. Our understanding of what mutations cause what cancers is still in its infancy, so great knowledge in this field will hopefully lead to smarter therapies.

The idea of precision medicine has been here for a while now, but newer technologies has been making advances in this area more of a reality. One of the largest problems in treating any disease is that not a single person on this earth is the same, especially on the genetic level. Prescribing the same dose of the same drug for thousands of people with a similar disease seems kind of silly, doesn’t?

Precision or personalized medicine seeks to address that problem by tailoring treatments to the individual patient, based on their individual genetics and needs. Efforts in understanding the subtle nuances that govern each disease will help us know what to look out for in people, which will hopefully lead to more effective treatments!

P.S. The remaining cash in this initiative will be used to set up the databases/data transfer agreements that will make generating this much data possible!

The humanity of it all

Every now and then, I like to take a step back from my workload and put everything I’m doing into perspective. I think that it’s incredibly easy for us to lose sight of our purpose when all you feel like all you’re doing is running from one task to the next (which is pretty overwhelming, I might add). This practice of asking myself, “Why are you doing this? Why does this matter?” helps me see the value in the things that I do on a daily basis.

Earlier today, I was working on some stem cells from a patient who had Wolman disease, which is a fatal genetic disorder where your cells lose the ability to degrade certain fats. Out of curiosity, I did some research on where the cells exactly came from. I scrolled down the screen, looking at information related to specific mutations. Eventually, I came to some lines that really struck me:

GENDER: Female
AGE: 4 months (At sampling)

Wolman disease is fatal in infants – they usually die within 6-12 months of being born, which means that this patient probably died just a few months later. These cells aren’t just cells – they were somebody’s baby girl. Someone’s daughter that was taken far too soon. Somewhere in the world are two parents who spent time calling relatives, excited over the prospect of a new life. Two parents who went shopping for baby shoes, baby clothes, and baby bottles. Two parents who had to hear the devastating news from their doctor, that their little girl wouldn’t make it to her first birthday. And as painful as this story is, it is not unique. It happens every day, in every country around the world. And it’s unacceptable.

Thinking about this really made me realize how important it is to realize the humanity of science. For the past few months, working with these cells was just a routine. Come in, feed, experiment upon. Now when I put them under the microscope, I think about the family that had to suffer from this loss and how important it is that we continue to work to make these diseases things of the past. It’s my team’s responsibility to make sure that her cells are a gift to the world, and that they contribute to finding a cure for dozens of other little infants around the globe.

The humanity of it all is really humbling, and it’s why I’m so in love with what I do.

STOP EATING LUNCH AT YOUR DESK (Please)

If you’re like the majority of Americans (two in three, to be exact),  you either don’t take a lunch break or you usually spend your lunch sitting at your computer. You wander over to the office freezer, heat up your Lean Cuisine, and quietly sit back at your desk to finish that report you were working on. Sounds thrilling, right? Now that 2015 has rolled around, it’s time to make a new commitment to your health and to your office mentality: stop eating lunch at your desk!

Figure 1. This guy. Don’t be this guy.

You’re probably thinking, “But Francis, I can’t afford to take the time to sit outside for lunch. My boss is breathing down my neck to get all of this work done!” Be that as it may, taking the time to sit with coworkers or leave the building during lunch actually increases your productivity and improves cognition. In fact, researchers at Humboldt University in Berlin found that those who chose to go out for lunch with coworkers had increased sensitivity to detecting subtle changes in facial expression, indicating  an enhanced perception of minute stimuli. Want to be on your toes at your next meeting with that big client? The science shows that going out may be your best bet.

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to eat at a restaurant to get these positive benefits. After all, I’m sure that your New Year’s resolutions include a fixed budget! The key here is to move to a different location and to socialize with others. I’m sure you’ve all felt that mid-afternoon slump in your desire to get anything done and this is a great way to combat that.

And if that wasn’t enough to convince you, eating away from your desk may actually result in you eating less. This is due to a phenomenon known as “distracted eating”. Your brain needs about 20 minutes from the start of your meal to receive signals from your stomach saying, “Hey, I’m full!” If your attention is focused on something else, making a presentation for example, your brain may not release the signal until sometime after you should have stopped eating.

So there you have it. Take the time to sit outside or in your cafeteria, socialize with your colleagues, and get ready for a more productive you. The science is on your side!

GREs, Cells, and cappuccinos

Happy Monday and MLK day internet, I hope you had a fantastic weekend!

I’ve spent the last few days trying to brush up on my knowledge for the GRE, a superfluous standardized test that society has deemed necessary for entering graduate school. Want a Master’s degree in Philosophy? GRE. Want a Ph.D in astrophysics? GRE. If you’ve taken the SAT, think of it as the same thing except with an extra dose of “Haven’t I proved myself enough already in undergrad” sprinkled on top.

If you’re a graduate school admissions representative reading this, I am totally a fan of making sure applicants aren’t incompetent – I’m just waiting for the day when we have a better test of that than the GRE! Also, please accept me.

The only thing that gets me through studying for such a thing are the copious amounts of cappuccinos and pour over coffees that I’ve been imbibing at my local coffee shop, Northside Social. When your blood content is 40% caffeine and milk foam, who can stand in your way? Certainly not my stem cells, who have been happily growing along in my incubator at work.

I must say, coming in every day to take care of the little guys seems like it would be a huge pain in the behind, but I actually do enjoy making sure everyone is fed and growing steadily. It’s like having kids, right? Children are made of cells, so it must be the same thing…

And if I’m going to come in to work everyday, it might as well be for something important! As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I received a new project about a month ago regarding Wolman disease. Wolman disease is a pretty rare genetic disorder (1 in 500,000 live births) that affects the cell’s ability to digest certain fats. It’s fatal in infants, so you retain a strong sense of purpose when you’re working away in the cell culture room.

I’m beginning to differentiate the stem cells from a patient into various tissue types that I need for my experiments. I’ll spare you the details (hopefully because you’ll be able to read it in a publication some day), but know that life in the lab is coming along swimmingly!

I hope you all have a great week. Mine is certainly off to a good start!

Leap seconds??

One of the things that I love the most about science is that we are constantly seeking to improve on the status quo. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” assumes that the object in question is already perfect, and we all know that that isn’t necessarily the case!

Once upon a time, before the 1950’s, we based the passage of time on the rotation of our planet. This was about 1/86,400th of the average solar day. If this seems totally arbitrary to you, you’d be correct! It seemed like a good idea at the time – a day should always take the same amount of time to pass, right? It turns out we were wrong; due to the Moon’s gravitational pull, the Earth’s rotation is slowing down at a rate of about 1.7 milliseconds per century.

In the post 1950’s era, time is now based on the atomic clock, which defines a second as “the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom“. We don’t need to get into the nitty gritty details about what this means, but know that this is a way more precise means of measuring time. However, because we were on the old method for so long, we’ve been behind the true time for many years now. To correct this, we occasionally add a “leap second” to the year to make up for this difference.

Figure 1: FOCS1, a swiss atomic clock

So in the end, who the hell cares? Assuming our species exists in the universe for many millennia, we would eventually lag behind significantly in time in comparison to the “true” time, so we might as well fix it now. Hyper accurate time is also important in having accurate electronics and other devices that base their calculations and actions on time. Fixing these time differences can be a lot trickier than what I’ve described here, so for more information check out this wonderful post by The Conversation.

So on June 30th of this year, rejoice! You’ll get a brand new, shiny second to enjoy. What will YOU do with your second?

Science and the Social Media Revolution

Whether we like it or not, humans born from around 1982 to the year 2000 will forever be labeled as millennials, myself included. When you think of a millennial, I’m sure there are a myriad of different stereotypes that pop into your head! For example, author David Burstein notes that we carry our own brand of unique idealism and are very conscious of causes for social justice. Others say we are a pretty optimistic bunch of folks compared to our parents. But the most pervasive commentary on my generation is that we are population of narcissistic individuals, driven largely in part by what has been known as the social media revolution.

Figure 1. Social media and science are a match made in heaven!

I’ll freely admit that I fall under the category of “social media obsessed twenty something”. I’ve got it all: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google +, Ello, WordPress, and so on and so forth. To those who choose not to plug in to social networks, spending time looking at your friend’s vacation photos or pinning cool ways to reuse old shoes on Pintrest may seem like a total waste of time, and it indeed does seem to really put a damper on our work productivity. Just think about it: for every minute that goes by, over a hundred hours of content has been uploaded on YouTube. Over 350 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day, and Twitter users worldwide send half a billion tweets per day. Who has time for all of that content?

While this may seem like an energy sink, you’ve got to admit that there is significant power in the social network. It has heavily influenced everything from political elections to armed uprisings around the globe, and it seems like it has reached its tendrils into every facet of human existence. This is no different for science, and I think that we are witnessing a beautiful collision between the two seemingly different worlds.

I’ve spoken before about how important it is that science communication be a part of our everyday lives. Scientists will never bring down the ivory towers surrounding their fields until the flow of information from academic to laymen is so fluid that the line between them ceases to exist. With the advent of social media, we possess the immense ability to easily reach out to huge groups of people (such as you, dear reader!) simultaneously. We can share our ideas, explain our research, and show the whole world what we are doing to make it better.

Most importantly, we have the ability to start conversations. I don’t think science should ever possess a “I say, you listen” mentality. The greatest exchanges of understanding and of knowledge often come moments of disagreement, and while these disagreements can often come in the form of distasteful comments on YouTube videos, I do think that we would be doing the right thing if we embraced social media with open arms. This is certainly easier said than done – the majority of scientists don’t use common social networks to promote a great understanding of their science. With new kids on the block such as yours truly coming onto the scene, we will hopefully see that shift significantly in the coming decade.

If you have a science background, I challenge you to explore the different ways that you can use social media to talk about your research with the world. Engage with others and facilitate discussions. Most importantly, remember that science is easily distilled but should never be diluted. Practice communicating your message in a clear, concise way without losing the core ideas that you’re trying to convey. It’s not easy, but practice definitely makes perfect! If you don’t have a science background, I challenge you to go follow a few science oriented accounts on Twitter (I hear @ATPandMe is a great one), like some pages on Facebook, and make an honest effort to learn something new and have a little fun. The more you integrate the sciences into your personal social media machine, the more routine our conversations about the world around us will be.

Consider this blog my attempt at using these incredible technologies to further those conversations, #NoFilter needed!

We’re on Facebook!

Just a quick note to let you all know that I’ve started a Facebook page for this blog at http://www.facebook.com/kitchentablescience. I’ll start posting new content here and there tomorrow. In the mean time, please feel free to give it a like and share it with your friends! Have a great Tuesday!

And to those of you in the DMV area, stay safe!

New Year, New Content, New Science

Happy 2015, internet! My name is Francis, and I think science is pretty cool.

If you’ve been following my blog since it’s inception in August, I owe you a sincere thank you. I started this little portion of the internet as an experiment – it was a great way to put my thoughts to paper (sort of?) and I am thrilled to continue doing so for the rest of the new year. If you’re new to the blog, welcome! I’m so glad you could make it!

This year, I’m going to experiment again with the content of this blog. It’s still going to be a great place to check out the latest discoveries in science and see what horizons are emerging as scientists toil away in laboratories all around the world. This time around, I’m going to start adding a little more content related to myself. Good days, bad days, the lot! This may seem a little odd, but I want to take all of you on my journey as a budding scientist, figuring out . It’ll have twists and turns, as life tends to do, and I want to have you all there every step of the way.

I hope you all had an amazing holiday and are ready to take the new year by the horns. I know I certainly am! So once again, welcome back! My name is Francis, and I think science is pretty cool.

A little vaccine update

Last week, I received a booster dose of the VSV-EBOV Ebola vaccine that I’ve blogged about before, and I’m happy to report that I had no symptoms this go around. This is a pretty stark contrast from when I got my first dose…a 101.6 degreefever and terrible joint pain make for a pretty miserable evening!

Figure 1: A picture of the vaccine, isn’t it cute?

Since starting the trial, a few bits of news regarding this particular vaccine have come out. An article from NPR a few weeks ago noted that a vaccine trial in Switzerland using the same vaccine noted increased joint pain in their patients, leading them to stop the trial. I also had pretty significant joint pain, but our trial here at the NIH is trucking along pretty nicely. Huzzah!

NewLink Genetics, the company that produces the vaccine, was also awarded a $30 million grant today from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to manufacture and develop the vaccine in collaboration with pharmaceutical giant Merck. The NIH also announced that they will initiate further phases of the clinical trial next year. Keep your eyes and ears out for updates on how this story evolves!

This is important, Dr. Oz

Happy Saturday!

As a scientist, I’m trained to have a healthy balance of skepticism and open-mindedness. It seems like my skepticism proved to be correct about a certain television physician, who I’ve considered a bizarre mouthpiece for pseudoscience for some time now. When I would first catch Dr. Oz on TV, I was optimistic. An educated, eloquent physician discussing important health topics to millions of Americans – what could go wrong? This seemed like the perfect medium to communicate real information on real health issues.

Unfortunately, I was mistaken. From promoting “faith healing” as a means for curing miracle ailments to peddling strange energy practices such as Reiki, Dr. Oz has a track record of spreading misinformation. My feelings were confirmed by a paper published in the British Medical Journal (which, you know, has actual scientific information) that determined that almost half (46%) of the claims on Dr. Oz’s show over the course of 40 episodes were shown to be either refuted by modern medical science or completely baseless.

This is a huge shame – I would like to think that Dr. Oz is a good person and genuinely cares for his viewers. I always assume the best in people, I suppose. All I’m asking is that the team behind the Dr. Oz Show fully examine the scientific claims they are making or disclose that many of the supplements on their show have not been proven to have any health efficacy.

Full disclosure: if you believe in things like psychic communication and dream interpretation, more power to you! This is a free country, and you should be able to believe in what you want to believe in. But when you begin claiming that these things have clear medical benefits when they have been proven to be useless, that’s when things can get dangerous. The power to influence medical decisions is immense and, in my opinion, should only be used when the science is sound.

So the lesson for today is to always critically examine all claims. Just because someone has a fancy background and speaks well doesn’t mean what they’re saying is the truth!

Case and point: