Jasmine Kung is a junior concentrating in Molecular and Cellular Biology, with secondary in Economics. Jasmine worked under the mentorship of Dr. Emma-Jayne Minihane (direct mentor) and Dr. Anthony Letai (Principal Investigator) at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Jasmine helped optimize drug panel for dynamic BH3 profiling of Acute Myelogenous Leukemia Cells during the summer of 2021.
Student’s perspective:
For the Summer of 2021, I was fortunate enough to conduct research in the Letai Lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute under the mentorship of postdoctoral fellow Dr. Emma-Jayne Minihane. My project focused on creating a drug panel that would be optimal for the dynamic BH3 profiling of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) cells. Dynamic BH3 profiling (DBP) is an assay that measures how primed certain cells are for cell death after treatment with various drugs at different concentrations. Because DBP has not yet been optimized for AML, I focused on perfecting a list of drugs and their respective concentrations that would work best in DBP for this cell type. My data is actually directly supporting an upcoming clinical trial that aims to apply DBP in a clinical setting to predict treatment for AML patients who have relapsed post-treatment.
Throughout this experience, I have truly developed an interest and passion for this project and for AML research. Thankfully, this semester, I am able to continue this project under the support of the Harvard College Research Program Term-Time funding. As a Molecular and Cellular Biology concentrator, I hope for this project to eventually expand and grow into my senior thesis. Moreover, as an aspiring physician-scientist with an interest in oncology, this research experience has also definitely solidified my passion for biomedical research. In the future, I hope to not only become a practicing physician, but I also wish to continue my research career and to aid in the effort of finding better treatment for cancer.