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Billing Specialist for an International company
 
I am a Graphic Artist and Printing Press operator, soon to be a full time student (at 45!)

Cost Analyst for Hawaiian Tropic (which was recently purchased by Playtex, which was more recenlty purchased by Energizer)

I just make sure our products cost less than what we sell them for. :)

Man,
Ron Rice sold out, huh?


erie

(Mainland Class of '81)
 
Well, I'll try to explain in the simplest way possible.

Most chronic disease states are the result of genetic malfunctions. By "genetic" I mean dealing with genes, not strictly "inherited" (the two aren't synonyms). They occur because a particular gene (or sometimes a set of genes) is not working properly. The gene could be damaged, for example. Or the disease could be what's called epigenetic, which basically means that genes are turned on or off when they're not supposed to be. This results in all kinds of things going wrong...cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, cancer, muscular dystrophy, the list goes on and on and on.

So ideally what we'd like to be able to do is to replace broken genes with normal ones. Or if a gene is turned off when it's supposed to be turned on, or vice versa, we'd like to fix that.

But in order to do this, we have to answer two fundamental questions:
1) How do you get the normal copies of the genes into the cells?
2) How do you make sure they're getting into the right cells?

So what we do where I work is build viruses that go around infecting cells with normal copies of genes.

We're in pre-clinical and clinical trials for cures for a number of diseases right now.
 
Well, I'll try to explain in the simplest way possible.

...

Quite impressive- wasn't what I first thought, but what part of all that do you play?
 
Quite impressive- wasn't what I first thought, but what part of all that do you play?

Well I do a little bit of everything. Right now I'm focusing on process development.

It goes a little something like this. Someone in the lab comes up with a tweak to the virus' structure, or something new they want the virus to insert into cells.

In essence, I get handed a three circular pieces of DNA that code for the virus's structure, replication, and inserting the gene of interest.

But you can't just make a virus out of thin air. You have to get cells to make it for you.

I work on developing and tweaking the cells lines, the media that the cells grow in, how we get those pieces of DNA into the cells, the production of the virus by the cells, the purification of the virus, separation of full viruses from empty ones (that don't contain the stuff we want), and infectivity. I also have to develop ways to do all that, that are scalable for clinical-size production.

In short, it's sort of everything between concept and production. I get handed a rough product and have to come up with a way to grow lots of cells that are really easy to get the DNA into, which in turn makes lots of virus that's really infectious and really pure, all the while doing it in a way that could be scaled up to a production size that's suitable for a human clinical trial.

I may go back to basics after a while of doing process development, and get more into the design of the virus itself and what we put inside. In some respects we let nature do the work for us. Search for "directed evolution" on Google Scholar and you'll see a lot of our papers.
 
Well I do a little bit of everything. Right now ...

This stuff intrigues the hell outa me. What kind of education does something like this require? I mean, do you just like fill out an application, or, well, ... seriously?
 
This stuff intrigues the hell outa me. What kind of education does something like this require? I mean, do you just like fill out an application, or, well, ... seriously?

Well, I actually have a BA in political science. Of course I still love it and find it equally fascinating in many ways and have done a significant amount of ground-up research, but that's another story for another day. I took a year off from undergrad between my sophomore and junior years, and decided during that time that I wanted to go to med school. So when I got back, in addition to completing the poly sci major, I also went through the gamut of pre-med courses. I joined a biochemistry research team, and ended up getting an undergrad research fellowship from the AAAS & Merck to do a cross-disciplinary study in what you might call evolutionary biochemistry. I worked in between two labs, one being my biochem group and the other being a biology team that studied evolution and development. We were trying to uncover what we believe(d) is the world's oldest conserved network of gene interactions, studying genes that code mostly for eye development which appeared in marine sponges. I later discovered that one of the sponges also possesses the gene that codes for the formation of lenses in our eyes. Anyway, the normal pre-med schedule is to get most of the classes done your first two years, take the MCAT your junior year, and apply to med school your senior year. But since I basically started two years late, I only finished the courses by the time I graduated and then took the MCAT this summer (I graduated in May). That left me with some time on my hands before I could go into med school. I decided to continue doing research, this time hopefully in a more clinically oriented setting. So I applied to a number of jobs at the local universities with teaching hospitals, and ended up getting hired by the gene therapy center. I'll be doing this most likely for two years and then hopefully going onto med school at the same place I'm working. Initially I'd considered surgical and ER residencies down the line, and I may reconsider, but I think it would be really significant to go into a specialty where I could continue gene therapy work and actually apply it clinically. Of course everyone in the lab is trying to convince me to apply for the PhD program. As much as I love the research I'm doing, I don't want to do it all day every day for the rest of my life. More to the point I'd like to play both sides. But I'll never get into the MD/PhD program. So my long term goal at the moment is hopefully to go to med school here, and apply for a grant from the HHMI to continue doing research while I'm in med school, without doing an entire PhD.
 
Well, I actually have a ...
...
... to continue doing research while I'm in med school, without doing an entire PhD.

Pretty cool, I had to ask, 'cause it sounded something like my little brother said he was doing when I walked into the bathroom and caught him masterbating- He was vectoring genes all over the place.

So when you said,

... I build viral vectors for gene therapy.

I just thought it was something you did before you took a nap.

;)
 
One more for Aircraft Mechanic.
Cool. What type of aircraft do you work (or inspect, per your profile)?

I'm working gov't stuff now (135's - I'm not really sure how much more than that I'm allowed to say... (even though almost everything I'm privy to can be found pretty easily on the internet)), I have a lot more experience on the civilian side (mostly business jets - BBJs, Falcons, Airbuses - that kind of stuff; rich people's toys).
 

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