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ISCRM research fellow Chardai Thomas was born and raised in Seattle, and has lived in Columbia City most of her life. This year, she is a senior at UW Bothell, majoring in Biology with a minor in Health Studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While she\u2019s always been interested in science, Thomas focused on political science in high school. And when she arrived at UW Bothell, she declared as a history major, hoping to delve deeper into her passion for early civilizations and early humans. Then, about three years ago, Thomas\u2019 mother fell ill with cancer \u2014 a difficult experience that also reignited Thomas\u2019 passion for science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt kind of got me thinking about biology and cancer and things like that, so I thought I wanted to do nursing but then I went down a pre-med path,\u201d said Thomas. \u201cThen, I took the class Stem Cells which is kind of where everything all clicked.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other UW Bothell students in the fellowship, Aluri and Orta\u00e7, say they have been passionate about stem cells since they were young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scientists in the making<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Aluri, who lived in the Midwest before relocating to Seattle six years ago, is in his third year at UW Bothell as a math major. As a child, Aluri can remember reading about stem cell research, along with other advancements in science, and said he was in \u201cawe about how stem cells had the potential to fundamentally alter how we thought about and developed medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He never lost interest in stem cells and what they could achieve, so when he learned about this fellowship, he jumped at it. \u201cMy inspiration for applying to the ISCRM summer research fellowship was purely to enhance my educational opportunity in college and broaden my perspective in science,\u201d Aluri said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly, Orta\u00e7 has been \u201cin love with biology\u201d since the 5th grade and found stem cell research and regenerative medicine as she looked for a way to fuse her love of science with her desire to make a positive impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Orta\u00e7, now a junior, was born in the Dominican Republic and has also lived in Azerbaijan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. \u201cAs an international student, research opportunities are hard to come by as most are only offered to citizens or green card holders, not students on visas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis fellowship was the first time I had come across a research opportunity that accepted applications from international students, so I was extremely excited,\u201d Orta\u00e7 said. \u201cI had never done upper-level research before, so I was really looking forward to learning what professional research is like and exploring it as a possible career route.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before being invited into the ISCRM fellowship, each of the applicants went through a rigorous application process that included interviews, details about their academic qualifications and a series of essays outlining future interests, current passions and previous work that exemplify the values the institute and fellowship represent. Once accepted, the three fellows were assigned to different research projects, each with it own individual focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since early summer, Thomas has been studying Polycystic Kidney Disease, a genetic disorder that affects about 1 in 500,000 people and can lead to renal failure. Some individuals have a genetic makeup that makes them prone to these cysts, and Thomas wanted to learn more about why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt happens when you have a gene \u2014 the polycystin gene \u2014 that encodes for these cysts\u2019 malfunction. If you knock out both of those genes, you start to develop these cysts on your kidneys. If you have both of those genes working functional, you won\u2019t get PKD and you won\u2019t grow the cysts,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cSo my question was, \u2018What happens if you have one functional and one non-functional?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thomas has ventured to answer that question by replicating normal and mutated copies of the gene with stem cells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for Aluri, he has been a part of the Musculoskeletal Systems Biology Lab that focuses on new ways to treat osteoporosis, a disease in which the tissue in bones breaks down at a higher rate than normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe research I did involved investigating genetic determinants of osteoporosis and related traits in zebrafish, using Crispr-Cas9 genetic editing and computational analysis based on advanced imaging techniques,\u201d Aluri. \u201cThe broader goal of this project was to elucidate how genetics influence bone mineral density and other osteoporosis-related traits to identify new drug targets for osteoporosis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Orta\u00e7 worked in the Davis Lab, which is focused on understanding the role of a protein called MBNL1 in regulating heart development and response to injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are using novel genetic mouse models to study how modulating MBNL1 impacts heart cell growth and proliferation,\u201d she said. \u201cWe hope our findings aid in finding a way to drive heart regeneration in adults who\u2019ve suffered from a myocardial infarction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fellowship is technically over, but Thomas\u2019 PKD research is ongoing. She recently completed her first experiment, which she says rendered some interesting results she hopes to eventually publish in a scientific journal. Still, she hesitates to share the results until she\u2019s conducted further testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And while her research is not yet complete, the fellowship has led to other impactful results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thomas plans to be a researcher, which requires her to both get a doctorate and go to medical school, so she was thrilled to be paired with a student in the process of becoming an M.D.-Ph.D. herself. \u201cPh.D.s are so individualized \u2014 they\u2019re so different \u2014 that I knew nothing about the path to get it combined with an M.D., so it was helpful to work with a student who was in the program,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said the fellowship also boosted her confidence in a lab setting, especially having missed lab time when UW Bothell moved to remote operations because of the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Friedman Lab is a well-funded lab \u2014 I\u2019ve never been in one like it. I had access to what I think are some of the best tools to do this research. Without this fellowship I feel like my project wouldn\u2019t be as good as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s more, Thomas got permission from the leader of her lab to continue working on research happening at the lab, which she is funding through another fellowship she recently received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other two fellows have also seen interesting results from their research and fellowship experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Orta\u00e7\u2019s research has helped heart regeneration researchers \u201cfind north\u201d on the compass, she said, adding that she plans to keep working on the project until she graduates in 2023. As with Thomas\u2019 project, one end-goal is publishing her results in an academic journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe found data that supports our hypothesis that muscleblind-like protein 1 impacts cardiomyocyte proliferation and growth, which gives us a place to start in terms of understanding how to move forward with heart regeneration,\u201d Orta\u00e7 said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She also noted that the fellowship was impactful for her because she developed hands-on knowledge she hadn\u2019t had the chance to get previously \u2014 and developed several new mentor relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aluri reports that his research is still underway. And while preliminary results have been promising, particularly in revealing a direction the project can be taken, there is \u201ca long way to go before anything substantive can be concluded from the project.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, like the others, Aluri raved about the ISCRM fellowship and everything he\u2019s already gained from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of my goals was to better integrate myself into research and develop the mindset and thought process that are needed to approach knowledge at this level within the field of scientific research,\u201d he said. \u201cThis experience allowed me to take a significant step toward being able to get there someday.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three UW Bothell undergraduates were awarded fellowships — usually bestowed just to graduate and post-doctoral students — to research heart development, kidney disease and osteoporosis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_is_archived":false,"_archived_contact_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[202,229,204],"tags":[],"school":[421],"class_list":["post-21301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus-news","category-faculty","category-students","school-school-of-stem"],"acf":{"related_links":{"toggle_visibility":false,"link_1":"","link_2":"","link_3":"","link_4":"","link_5":""},"highlight_box":{"toggle_visibility":false,"title":"","content":"","button":"","button_style":"angled-purple-button","button_screen_reader_text":""},"contact_type_1":{"toggle_visibility":true,"contact_title":"Contact Us","email":"test@uwb.edu","phone":"(206) 999-1234","box":"Box 358500","address_line_1":"18115 Campus Way NE","address_line_2":"Bothell, WA 98011-8246","location":""},"contact_type_2":{"toggle_visibility":false,"contact_title":"","email":"","phone":"","box":"","address_line_1":"","address_line_2":"","location":""},"social_media":{"toggle_visibility":false,"facebook_url":"","instagram_url":"","linkedin_url":"","twitter_url":"","youtube_url":""},"blog_archive_sidebar_visibility":false},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.uwb.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2023\/05\/Aluri-Prabhat-1.jpg\")
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Transformative research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Promising experiences<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Continuing the research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n