Future Researchers Spend Summer in Lab : Science: College-bound teens get firsthand experience in biomedical experimentation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
Wearing a white lab coat and darting from counter to counter, Nikhil Chanani used a dropper to transfer a clear, radioactive fluid from a large glass jar over a protective partition into a long tube.
A small radio played classical music, but Chanani, 18, the valedictorian in June at West High School in Torrance, pointed out: “Mostly, I listen to KROQ, but this is easy to work to.”
The Stanford-bound Chanani has spent the last two months working as a research fellow at the Harbor-UCLA Research and Education Institute, a nonprofit corporation that conducts medical research and administers research and education grants. With help from his mentor, Dr. Pamela Cohen, Chanani has been studying the effect of a specific hormone on neuroblastoma, a malignant tumor sometimes found in babies and small children.
Over the last 15 years, more than 130 of the South Bay’s top high school graduates have spent the summer before college working with leading scientists in biomedical research at the institute, which is at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a county hospital near Carson. The program permits students to gain firsthand experience in research and helps them decide what field of medical science to enter.
More than 115 high school students from throughout the South Bay and surrounding region from Long Beach to South-Central Los Angeles applied for the 18 summer research fellowships at Harbor-UCLA. Ten of this year’s fellows were valedictorians. The fellows all carried a 4.0 grade point average and are headed for highly ranked colleges, including Cornell, Yale, UC Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“These kids are the creme de la creme, “ Cohen said.
The fellowship program is funded by UCLA, the National Institutes of Health and corporate sponsorships. Research conducted at Harbor-UCLA ranges from medical genetics and new vaccines to AIDS and male contraceptives.
Doctors at the center serve as mentors for the students, who are paid $1,800 during the eight-week program. In their application, students had to list the field of medical research they would like to pursue during the summer.
Once the students learned the basics of the research and how to work in a medical lab, the mentors treated them like partners.
“I was expecting to spend the summer washing the dishes,” Chanani said. “But the mentor let me probe on my own. That showed a lot of trust on her part.”
Cohen said the students are also learning about the reality of research during the age of the money crunch in academia.
“This program is good, because he sees firsthand how difficult it is, how much research costs, how much time I spend writing grants,” she said.
An interest in genetic engineering led Rene Oda, 18, a graduate of Torrance High School, to study the role of hormones in the progression of atherosclerosis (blockage of the arteries).
“The doctor and I are looking at how cholesterol interacts with cells to release a hormone” that contributes to the development of atherosclerosis, Oda said.
Then, with all the confidence of a seasoned medical researcher combined with the enthusiasm of a novice, Oda discusses the factors--age, high cholesterol diet, diabetes, being male--that increase one’s chances of arterial blockage.
Oda’s mentor, Dr. Tripathi Rajavashisth, is a molecular biologist who specializes in genetics. Oda said he was interested in genetic research and thinks the future of medicine lies in genetics.
“That’s why I chose MIT,” he said. “MIT is famous for its research.”
Rajavashisth, who has participated as a mentor in the summer program for the last three years, thinks Oda is “the best of the best.”
The student, said the doctor, contributed significantly to his atherosclerosis research. Yet Rajavashisth said that when they get together and just talk, they sometimes find unexpected clues to the puzzles of medicine’s future.
“One day (Oda) was showing me a computer game, where you can create the organism . . . of your choice. The idea is, if you can imagine combining two animals together, like the trunk of the snake and the face of a frog,” Rajavashisth said. “This same thing can be accomplished by splicing genes together. In 50 years, if the technology improves, it can be done.”
Oda and Chanani said that working in Harbor-UCLA’s well-equipped lab while studying with doctors who have extensive research experience has helped them focus on long-range goals.
“I knew I’d be doing research, but this is cutting-edge type stuff,” Oda said. “This is real research.”
Over the years, said Harbor-UCLA spokeswoman Jean Edmond, mentors have found funding to bring back a former student fellow to assist in further research. This year, four summer residents at Harbor-UCLA were past summer fellows.
The program ends Thursday, but Chanani said he will continue to work with Cohen a few more weeks. Chanani received a $20,000 scholarship from Southern California Edison Co. to attend Stanford, where he will study economics and biology while making time to play intramural soccer and tennis. Said Chanani: “It’s good to be well-rounded.”
He is thinking about applying to medical school and ultimately plans to earn a Ph.D. Yet he is not going to become an ivory-tower scientist.
“I’m thinking about doing research, but I would also like to practice. The ones who stay in the lab sometimes lose touch. Anyway, America is facing a shortage of general practitioners, so I want to strike the balance and practice,” he said.
