The Fred Hutch Explorers program has been an eye opening and exciting new experience. I feel so fortunate and grateful to be able to hear from so many amazing guest speakers and dive deep into new topics. The opportunities and activities we got to do were incredible and these past two weeks, I’ve been more and more excited each day to come to meetings. I was lucky enough to hear from Alicia Morales, who gave two wonderful presentations, one on immunology and one on imposter syndrome. Her presentation on imposter syndrome really stood out to me because she is really the only adult in my life who has shared about it, and almost everyone in our group could relate to what she was speaking about. I thought it was crazy that most of us were feeling imposter syndrome, yet no one had really ever spoken about it to us. Alicia Morales spoke about how imposter syndrome is a psychological phenomenon which reflects a belief of feeling inadequate despite certain evidence that shows you are actually successful. Alicia Morales then went on to share the five different types of this syndrome: the perfectionist; always feeling like they could have done better, the expert; fearing that they will never know enough, the natural genius; believing that something that causes too much effort means they are not good enough, the superhuman; pushing themselves to be better than others, and the soloist; feeling like asking for help was wrong. 70% of our cohort had characteristics or thoughts that made them fall into the intense imposter syndrome category and that is a very scary high number for a group of teenagers. The consequences of feeling impostorism can have large negative effects on mental health and it's important to speak more of this issue so we can stay healthier mentally. Alicia Morales asked us to do an exercise where we drew what we thought our imposter syndrome felt like and some amazing students felt comfortable sharing their drawings with me.
[One student], a rising junior and a fellow Fred Hutch Explorer, drew the photo on top. When I asked her if she could describe what her drawing was about, she said, “I go to a predominately white school and…I’m often reminded of the ways that I’m different from those around me as a black individual. The large figure in the middle represents me and the color green portrays capability and belonging. I tend to adopt the assumption that those around me are more deserving than me. Through this activity, I’ve learned how to dispel these feelings through healthy coping mechanisms and I’m super glad to be a part of this amazing program!” When [this student] shared her drawing during our meeting, I was in awe of the way she was able to put her thoughts into the drawing and I am tremendously glad that she and all of us were able to use the strategies that Alicia Morales gave us. On the right, is the drawing that [another student] drew, another fellow explorer. She has a love for many activities, but she shared that sometimes she feels overwhelmed. She shared, “There’s so much expected of me or that I expect of myself because of the people I compare myself to.” Her drawing showcases these thoughts in little text messages or in thought bubbles and even in a Venn diagram. Most of the students in our cohort experience similar thoughts and I’m forever grateful for the strategies and the opportunity to talk that Alicia Morales gave us.
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During our two-week program, we spoke a lot about immunology and immunotherapy, so of course, I had to go look for new science regarding these topics. Dr. Paul Ngheim of the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center was a senior investigator in a trial for an immunotherapy drug that became the first therapy approved by FDA for rare skin cancer. The Phase 2 of this trial had 88 patients who had metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer that patients only have a 5% chance of surviving without disease progression 1 year after starting chemo. The trial is called JAVELIN Merkel 200 and it is led by Dr. Kaufman. The therapy works by patients receiving an infusion of a drug called Avelumab which works by blocking a certain molecule on cancer cells called PD-L1 which triggers an off-switch on the patient’s immune cells. When the molecule does that, the immune cells cannot kill the cancer cell, so it continues to grow rapidly and create tumors. By blocking the PD-L1 with Avelumab, the immune system can start to kill off tumors again. 28 of 88 patients’ tumors responded to the drug and shrank by 30% and 8 of these patients’ tumors disappeared. Because of this positive data, Avelumab became the first systematic therapy approved by the FDA for MCC and patients that had few to no other options are overjoyed.