The highlight of my time in Explorers was the bioethics portion led by Dr. Jeanne Chowning. During this discussion, we talked about an article called “Black with Cancer: ‘It shouldn’t be different’.” I realized how patients are treated differently by healthcare workers just because of their race. There are negative stereotypes of people of color drug seeking or using the hospital as a hotel. This can play a role in them not getting treated equally and their symptoms being ignored or misdiagnosed. However, these connotations aren’t the reason people of color constantly get mistreated in the healthcare community, racism is.
Images from Scientific American and Fred Hutch News
We also talked about making research and medicine/medical treatments more equitable. This includes making people more comfortable with going to the hospital or a doctor. The article mentioned that “out of 12,100 practicing oncologists in the U.S., only 2.3% identified as Black or African American,” (paragraph 14.) If more POC were encouraged to pursue a career in the medical field, more people would go to doctors and get the help they need because they would be able to find someone that will listen to them. In addition, providing more language options would also get more people the help they need. Because the US is so diverse, there can sometimes be language barriers that make it hard for doctors and patients to communicate with each other. This causes people to not go to the doctor because they won’t be able to get the help they need if they do go.
The Hutch news article called “New computational method opens window into immune cell behavior” by Sabrina Richards, talks about how scientists from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 10X Genomics and the University of Southern California collaboratively made CoNGA. CoNGA interprets big and complex datasets of single-cell data from millions of cells. CoNGA is used to better understand complex groups of T cells. It can help give scientists working to improve CAR T cell immunotherapy a better understanding of what causes successful responses in patients, which can help design better versions of this treatment. T-cell receptors are specialized receptors of a type of immune cell and help regulate T cells’ activity and immune roles. CoNGA could help focus on the biological patterns that link T-cell receptor, TCR, gene sequences and the T cell functions that are hidden. The TCR is a specialized protein that is one of the parts that makes T cells a part of adaptive immunity. Adaptive immunity is what changes after you’ve had an infection. It does this by creating a memory that is carried in long-lived immune cells so when you encounter that infection again, there’s a quicker and more efficient reaction. CoNGA analyzes complex data collected from individual T cells to disclose new populations of T cells and uncover TRC characteristics that form T cell development. T cells use their TCRs to examine the cells in our bodies, trying to find infected or diseased cells. When a T cell’s TCR binds to another cell, it shows that something is wrong. There are many different types of T cells. Killer T cells use their TCRs to identify cells that should be killed. Others can produce antibodies and prevent damage to healthy tissue. The TCR is what determines the job of the T cell. The ability to match TCR sequences to the activities inside the T cell, as in which genes are on, can tell us the job of the cell and whether it’s currently active and working or not. The goal of CoNGA is to “take a T-cell receptor sequence and predict what the T cell is doing,” said the co-lead of the project, Dr. Phil Bradley. Bradley is a computational biologist at the Hutch who co-led this project with St. Jude immunologist Dr. Paul Thomas. They’re also working on applying CoNGA to B cells, an immune cell that makes antibodies. B cells, like T cells, have the B-cell receptor that manages their behavior, function, and development. CoNGA would help scientists, immunologists specifically, understand how these receptors are able to regulate and control the cell. I chose to read this article because I find it fascinating how we’re able to use computers and programs to help us understand so much about how our body works and then use that information to aid us in finding cures and fighting disease.