Kenny Vo

Experience with the Explorers Program

Over the two weeks of participating in the Fred Hitch Explorers program, I learned about cancer research through fun and engaging ways. The program taught me much of what cancer was, how it was being treated, and doing some lab activities that an actual researcher would do. One of the largest experiences which I took part in was being able to see how researchers study cancer and observe various research labs that are studying cancer. An example of this was that we were able to explore a fly lab and the researchers were studying cancer through flies. They were specifically studying how flies would heal their skin and could apply to humans since flies genes has the same gene as humans for disease. By being able to see these research labs and talking to the researchers showed me how broad research labs can be to study cancer and help me decide what I want to do in the future. 

Exploring one of the many labs we got to see.

During this program I was able to do a various amount of lab activities and hear talks about various research or ethical subjects. The one that interested me the most was a gene editing tool called CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). CRISPR function is that it will specifically cut a part of DNA and then the cell will use its own DNA repair machinery to add or delete genetic material. This tool could potentially disable a disease and be cured of it. Fred Hutch is currently using it to understand diseases better and research how to apply CRISPR to humans as a way to treat cancer. During the program I myself was able to use CRISPR. We did a lab that by the end of it, would have cut DNA. It took a couple days to finish it, so we went in-depth about how CRISPR works and how each component of our lab would get our final product.

The Explorers program at Fred Hutch has helped me understand cancer research and what researchers would do on a daily basis. I would recommend doing this if you are interested in cancer, learning about research, or interested in biology-related jobs that you may do one day.

DNA in a gel to see if CRISPR cut