Nuhamin K.

The Fred Hutch Explorers Research Program was one of the most precious opportunities I have got to experience in my rising to sophomore year summer. My time at Fred Hutch helped me answer big questions I carried when I first stepped into the program, such as how a cancer cell spreads throughout our body from its original location, whether something in our genetic structure helps cancer cells continuously divide, why our immune system is not enough to fight off cancer cells, and why different types of cancer are distinguished more in specific racialized populations. All these wonders were answered through the different lectures we attended in our curious class. I was able to feed my curiosity by learning about metastasis, which is a complex process where cancer cells break off the original tumor and move through the body to form tumors at a new location. To begin this process, an individual cell must break away from the tumor and invade nearby vessels by crawling along the surface of other cells and the fibrous, stringy structures surrounding them to force its way in. On our second day, we were introduced to the Hallmarks of Cancer, which was fascinating because I learned that cancer cells gain a set of traits that help them survive by blocking the anti-cancer defense mechanisms naturally programmed into our cells and immune systems. I was also glad to find out that several types of cancer are rooted in certain populations because those groups share a higher prevalence of specific inherited gene mutations due to historical isolation. All these questions were answered for me through the opportunity I got at this institution, which was the first to discover bone marrow transplantation.

Me pipetting during the dye lab!

When it comes to the activities that we have done in our program, that means you are reading the best part of this blog. We did a lot of lovely labs that words cannot even express, just being there made you feel different. We extracted DNA from strawberries, practiced how to pipet by making memorable color wheels with my lab partner Nidi, performed a dye lab to see whether the dye migrated toward a positive or negative charge, and ran a cool PCR in the lab to make millions to billions of exact copies of a specific DNA segment from a very small initial sample. When it comes to the different tours we went on, it was fantastic because I got to see which lab fits me best and where my interests lie. My favorite tour was the Zebrafish Lab, where researchers use zebrafish as a model organism to study basic science because they share 70 percent of their genes with humans. We saw the cool techniques the lab uses to get the zebrafish to reproduce, where males and females are placed in the same tank the night before separated by a plastic divider, and when the lights turn on the next morning, the researcher pulls the divider out to trigger instant mating.

 Agarose gel electrophoresis!

There was one more thing that brought me closer to the research world, which was hearing from our guest speakers. I learned so much from the background stories they shared, showing that failure is what makes a scientist push forward to succeed, and that it happens to all of them. Before I attended this program, I had a mindset that if I failed in one of my classes, I would never see success again and should just give up. Hearing the background story of Dr. Raabya really made me keep going, continue learning about research, and look back at problem-solving within my own community.

Finally, the Fred Hutch Explorers Research Program was a great networking world that I found on my educational journey. The cohort that I was in was more than just networking—it was having fun, being eager to learn, playing Mafia, riding public transportation together, and connecting beyond the lab in ways that will stay with me for a long time.

Thank you so much Dr. G, Dustin, Ariana, Eden and kat for who were our Ta’s for this cohort.