Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2013 - (Page 8)

Bridging S everal years ago, my family and I committed ourselves to accelerating translational research—which turns scientific advances from university labs into practical medical treatments—although at the time we didn’t know that’s what we were agreeing to. I was 12 years old when our family decided to find a charitable cause that we would work on together. My grandmother had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, so we chose to focus on accelerating a cure for Parkinson’s. My uncle helped found the Michael J. Fox Foundation, my mother joined its board of directors, and my father investigated and sponsored some early stem cell work in neuroscience at a major research university. Then, by chance, at a friend’s New Year’s Eve party in 2009, we met the founding chairman of the New York Stem Cell Foundation. We were enthusiastic about their idea of using stem cells to accelerate drug discovery, and NYSCF became a family mission. In 2010, my parents sponsored the NYSCF-Golub Stem Cell Initiative for Parkinson’s Disease, the goal of which is to help advance cures and treatments for Parkinson’s Disease using stem cell lines made from the cells of Parkinson’s Disease patients. In the summer of 2011, wanting both to support this cause and to learn about the potential of stem cells, I did an internship at NYSCF. Over the course of eight weeks, I saw the power that an independent, entrepreneurial organization can bring to accelerating medical treatments. My experience at NYSCF taught me that translational research is critical—and that it requires more than science to succeed. Science First During her internship, under the guidance of Dr. Andrew Sproul, Lucy took photos of neurons from Alzheimer’s patients. NYSCF focuses on the disease-in-a-dish model for Parkinson’s as well as Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and other diseases. The lab is creating a stem cell array—a fully automated system that produces standardized stem cell lines from skin biopsies from affected individuals. These stem cell lines offer a way to create disease models with the exact genetic code of each patient. Scientists can investigate the causes of the disease with living cells from actual patients, and the cells can be

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2013

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2013
Contents
Bridging the Gap
The War on Cancer
Teen Researchers on the Forefront of Medicine
Ancient Medicine Meets Modern Technology
Innovations in Medicine
Wherever Help Is Needed
Summer in the Lab
Our Second Genome
The Defi nition of Determination

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2013