  {"id":45166,"date":"2022-09-02T10:19:59","date_gmt":"2022-09-02T14:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/?p=45166"},"modified":"2022-09-02T10:21:09","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T14:21:09","slug":"student-spotlight-emily-irvine-senior-in-molecular-and-biomedical-sciences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/2022\/09\/02\/student-spotlight-emily-irvine-senior-in-molecular-and-biomedical-sciences\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Spotlight: Emily Irvine, Senior in Molecular and Biomedical Sciences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-45173 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/483\/2022\/09\/unnamed-1-300x230.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"230\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yaseen Balkhi, Ph.D., is an Institute of Medicine\u00a0\u00a0external affiliate, instructor at 91¸£Àû with\u00a0additional appointment as an assistant professor from Tufts University School of Medicine who serves as scientific director of IT Bio, a Boston-based firm he co-founded.\u00a0 He shared\u00a0that\u00a0Emily Irvine, a senior in Molecular and Biomedical Sciences is doing capstone 491-Molecular and Microbiology Research\u00a0at IT Bio LLC (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.itbiollc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=http:\/\/www.itbiollc.com&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1662211682196000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1RNcMZnsrLIa2at46qNzKM\">www.itbiollc.com<\/a>), Cambridge MA. IT Bio\u00a0designs new anti-exhaustion therapies for cancer and chronic viral infection treatment.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black\">___________________________________________________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Emily talked about her experience:\u00a0 Due to COVID, I hadn\u2019t been able to get much lab experience so when the Spring 2022 semester started I decided to look into options. Dr. Mumtaz Yaseen-Balkhi was my professor for both Molecular Genetics and Immunology at 91¸£Àû. He had published research on COVID, and my interests lie heavily in immunology, so I reached out to him to see if he had room for me in his lab. My advisor at 91¸£Àû suggested I inquire about interning for the summer at Immune Therapy Bio Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts and so I did. Dr. Mumtaz Balkhi and his colleagues were excited to welcome me.<\/p>\n<p>My role for these two months of training under 491-Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology Research consists of studying T cell exhaustion in cancer. I am learning methods to induce CAR-T functional exhaustion as well as interventions to reverse it. Furthermore, this opportunity helps improve my tissue culture techniques, learn flow cytometry, plasmid preparation, and conduct ELISAs. I\u2019m in the lab 4 to 5 days a week and attend weekly meetings, so I get to experience the inner workings behind a career in research. This is all incredibly useful since I\u2019m interested in becoming a medical researcher and I\u2019m grateful for this opportunity which will help me stand out when applying to grad schools this fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yaseen Balkhi, Ph.D., is an Institute of Medicine\u00a0\u00a0external affiliate, instructor at 91¸£Àû with\u00a0additional appointment as an assistant professor from Tufts University School of Medicine who serves as scientific director of IT Bio, a Boston-based firm he co-founded.\u00a0 He shared\u00a0that\u00a0Emily Irvine, a senior in Molecular and Biomedical Sciences is doing capstone 491-Molecular and Microbiology Research\u00a0at IT [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"8","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[7,10,9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-news","category-research","category-student"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":7,"label":"Education"},{"value":10,"label":"News"},{"value":9,"label":"Research"},{"value":8,"label":"Student"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"","author_link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/author\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":7,"name":"Education","slug":"education","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":7,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":62,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":7,"category_count":62,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Education","category_nicename":"education","category_parent":0},{"term_id":10,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":10,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":66,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":10,"category_count":66,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0},{"term_id":9,"name":"Research","slug":"research","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":9,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":63,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":9,"category_count":63,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Research","category_nicename":"research","category_parent":0},{"term_id":8,"name":"Student","slug":"student","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":8,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":38,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":8,"category_count":38,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Student","category_nicename":"student","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45166"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46620,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45166\/revisions\/46620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}