PinnedCOVID-19 and the vaccine renaissanceThis pandemic is a historic use case for nucleic acid vaccines — Quarantine has become so normal in most of our day-to-day lives now that my friends nostalgically remember early 2020 like it was decades ago. …Covid-1911 min readCovid-1911 min read
Aug 4, 2020The Builder Era of BiologyLife science degrees are like CS degrees in the '70s — One of the most common existential crises of incoming life sciences students can be summed up in one big question: Is this degree useless if I don’t get into medical school? Now if you have a genuine passion for working with patients and practicing medicine- go for it! COVID-19 has…Biology7 min readBiology7 min read
May 20, 2020Advice for ambitious 1st-year undergraduatesI entered university like someone who just held hands with their crush for the first time- naively thrilled and extremely nervous. …University7 min readUniversity7 min read
Jul 26, 2019Expanding the Cancer Therapy of the FutureHow can we get CAR-T Cell Therapy Working in Solid Tumors? — Finding a cure to cancer- it seems promising yet really idealistic at the same time. This awesome moment will likely come in the coming decades, but it won’t be in the form of a magical silver bullet pill which can kill any tumor cell while leaving healthy cells alone. Rather…Cancer10 min readCancer10 min read
Jun 29, 2019Engineering your Body to Kill CancerHow does CAR-T Cell Therapy work, and what’s next? — We may be in the midst of a major inflection point right now in cancer therapy. The field of cancer immunotherapy asks how can we use the tools our immune system deploys to fight infections, and see how we can re-engineer them in the fight against cancer. In our lifetime…Cancer10 min readCancer10 min read
Published inGood Audience·Mar 11, 2019The Ctrl+F of Cancer Testing (Featuring A.I.)How Cancer Diagnosis is Being Made Preventative, and Scalable. — When we get sick, we rely on our symptoms to give us an idea of what’s up inside our bodies. Fevers, coughing, shivers, they all do an alright job of giving us a good guess of what we’ve come down with. With cancer, there is no cough, no runny nose…AI9 min readAI9 min read
Feb 11, 2019When Humans Create Life: Synthetic BiologyLeveraging Cells to Do What we Want, and Expanding the DNA Alphabet to 6 Letters — 3.5 Billion years ago, the first known traces of life emerged on our planet. Simple amino acids came together through complex reactions, to form genetic information in the form of Ribonucleic Acid (RNA). Somewhere after this point, the RNA gave way to the first single celled organism, a prokaryote. Fast…Science10 min readScience10 min read
Nov 8, 2018dCas9: A New Identity for Cas9 in Cancer EpigeneticsHow can we manipulate our genes, without changing the genome? — Humans have been pursuing a scientific solution to cancer, birth-defects, and biological radiation damage since the discovery of DNA in the 1950’s. This means that we’ve been undertaking genetics for less than 0.004% of mankind’s 200,000 year time on Earth. In this minuscule amount of time we’ve discovered the instructions…Science7 min readScience7 min read
Oct 29, 2018Growing Up In-Between: Living with 2 IdentitiesI sat in the back of the room of my seventh grade class, everyday. Beside me sat a familiar face and skin: a skinny, black-haired boy named Qian. I knew the guy vaguely since first grade, but that year when he was in my class, I drew myself to him…Race7 min readRace7 min read
Oct 22, 2018Genomic Radiation Damage Protection with Tardigrades!Radiation is loose energy that traverses everywhere in our universe, and it’s very prevalent on Earth. For decades, we have liked numerous types of radiation and adverse effects of exposure to be visibly damaging to our genetic material. Radiation and the Tardigrade From helping prevent cancer and other genetic diseases, to allowing humans to…Health8 min readHealth8 min read
