Human Biology Newsletter The Program in Human Biology | Stanford University Spring 2007 Undergraduate Research on Stem Cells A Human Biology student looks for stem cell involvement in lung cancer With Stanford becoming a regional center for cancer and stem cell research, there are more opportunities than ever for undergraduate students to acquire hands-on experience in these areas. Through the Honors Program in Human Biology, Trini Solis (HB ’07) is working in Alejandro Sweet Cordero’s lab to better understand the complex steps that have to occur for normally replicating cells to be- come cancerous ones. One hypothesis on why tumors recur is that per- haps some proportion of tumor cells have stem-cell-like properties that let them divide without limit. Solis’s project is focused on determining if cancerous lung tumors contain such cells. Discovering stem cell in- volvement in this lung cancer would be an important step in figuring out how to develop effective therapies. continued on page 2 These are exciting times in Human Biology, with many in- novations underway! First, I’m delighted to welcome Carlos Seligo as our new Academic Technology Specialist. Carlos comes to us from Freshman and Sophomore Programs at Stanford. He is helping us incor- porate new computer technology tools in our teaching program, including interactive data presentations, the use of Google Earth to track Darwin’s travels, and new website tools. These tools will truly broaden the classroom experience for our students. On a different front, the University Senate has reauthorized our interdisciplinary program. Jeff Wine, Shirley Feldman and the Human Biology staff did yeoman’s work last year on our self-study, which was the first stage of the process. Many of you helped by responding to our student and alumni survey. We very much appreciate your input! Some of the infor- mation you provided can be found throughout this newsletter. We can all be proud of this accomplish- ment and look forward to an even more productive and exciting future. § 1 What’s Inside ................................................. STEM CELLS 2 .................................. CANCER, HONORS 3 .......................................... ALUMNI NEWS 4 ......................................... FACULTY NEWS 5 ................. STUDENT AWARDS, BOOKS 6 ........................... STOREY HOUSE NEWS 7 ................................. TRIVIA CHALLENGE 8 Carol Boggs DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE [Photo: A human blastocyst, the source of embryonic stem cells. Colorized EM photo by Mark Ong.]
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Human Biology Newsletter
The Program in Human Biology | Stanford University Spring 2007
Undergraduate Research on Stem CellsA Human Biology student looks for stem cell involvement in lung cancer
With Stanford becoming a regional center for cancer and stem cell research, there are more opportunities than ever for undergraduate students to acquire hands-on experience in these areas.
Through the Honors Program in Human Biology, Trini Solis (HB ’07) is working in Alejandro Sweet Cordero’s lab to better understand the complex steps that have to occur for normally replicating cells to be-come cancerous ones. One hypothesis on why tumors recur is that per-haps some proportion of tumor cells have stem-cell-like properties that let them divide without limit. Solis’s project is focused on determining if cancerous lung tumors contain such cells. Discovering stem cell in-volvement in this lung cancer would be an important step in figuring out how to develop effective therapies.
continued on page 2
These are exciting times in Human Biology, with many in-novations underway! First, I’m delighted to welcome Carlos Seligo as our new Academic Technology Specialist. Carlos comes to us from Freshman and Sophomore Programs at Stanford. He is helping us incor-porate new computer technology tools in our teaching program, including interactive data presentations, the use of Google Earth to track Darwin’s travels, and new website tools. These tools will truly broaden the classroom experience for our students.
On a different front, the University Senate has reauthorized our interdisciplinary program. Jeff Wine, Shirley Feldman and the Human Biology staff did yeoman’s work last year on our self-study, which was the first stage of the process. Many of you helped by responding to our student and alumni survey. We very much appreciate your input! Some of the infor-mation you provided can be found throughout this newsletter. We can all be proud of this accomplish-ment and look forward to an even more productive and exciting future. §
The Program in Human Biology | Stanford University
The Stem Cell Science, Medicine, Ethics and Policy (HB 157)The Program in Human Biology has added a new stem cell course to its curriculum, educating and inspiring students on the potential of stem cells in medicine. This year’s course coincided with a March 16 announcement that Stanford will receive $15 million in embryonic stem cell research grants from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. As Stanford continues to attract the best and brightest stem cell researchers to its campus, there will be more opportunities for Human Biol-ogy students to participate in research that may someday lead to better treatments for such diseases as diabetes, can-cer, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Coordinated this year by Roel Nusse, the Chair of De-velopmental Biology and Christopher Thomas Scott, director of Stanford’s Program in Stem Cells and Society, HB 157 teaches students the science behind the stem cell revolution, including the fundamental principles of devel-opmental biology and embryology, the landmark discovery of human embryonic stem cells, and the latest preclinical and clinical research. Lecturers include some of the most preeminent stem cell experts, including Irving Weissman, director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and Robert Blelloch, from UCSF’s Developmental and Stem Cell Biology depart-ment. Weissman's work has led to new treatments for leu-kemia and lymphoma, and in a recent HB 157 lecture, Weissman explained how stem cells work and described their role in the development and upkeep of the human body.
Frontier science often provokes a redefinition of ethical standards, and stem cells have reignited the debate about moral status. In this class, the ar-guments for and against the use of embryonic stem cells are pre-sented, leaving the rhetoric of both sides behind. Instructors lead students in discussions at the heart of the debate: How, as a society, do we balance our responsibilities to the unborn and the sick?
Scott is also the author of “Stem Cell Now: From the Experiment That Shook the World to the New Politics of
Life.” In coordinating this class, he draws on research to explain the ethics, law, and politics of stem cells. This class reinforces a key philosophy in Human Biology—that progress in the human condition doesn’t happen in a scien-tific vacuum; in order to move forward, there needs to be an integrated understanding of the sociological, political, and policy aspects of any new discovery. §
Stem Cells in Lung Cancercontinued from page 1
Solis’s project involves a complex series of experiments using mice that are genetically engineered to develop lung cancer that is similar to the human version of the disease. Solis first injects the mice with a DNA marker, then she measures the dissipation of that marker due to cell replica-tion, through samples taken during regular time intervals. Because stem cells divide at slower rates than normal cells, they are expected to retain their DNA label longer. By comparing the rates at which the label is retained at the different time increments, she can calculate if the tumors might have stem cells within them.
Though it’s too soon to draw any conclusions from her data, Solis feels that this hands-on research has significantly enriched her classroom learning.
“I really enjoy being able to work on a project whose results have the potential to save many lives,” said Solis.
In addition to her Human Biology course load, Solis works 10 to 15 hours a week in the lab. And she feels privileged to be one of two undergraduates working in the Sweet-Cordero lab. She also volunteers her time as a Spanish interpreter at Stanford’s Arbor Free Clinic for un-derserved communities, and she is an officer in the Stan-ford CHE (Chicanos/Latinos in Health Education). Her eagerness to continue learning and her desire to help others has sparked Trini's interest in pursuing medicine. §
Wine Elected as an AAAS FellowJeffrey Wine, last year’s Human Biology director, was among 449 newly elected fellows of the American Asso-ciation for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest organization of scientists. Wine was honored for his research on cystic fibrosis. §
The Program in Human Biology | Stanford University
Mining the SEER Cancer DatabaseWhen Amelia Hausauer (’07) began her undergraduate research on estrogen-fueled cancer tumors, she had no idea that her project would dovetail into one of biggest medical stories of the year: Scientists at the University of Texas discovered that the first dramatic decrease in breast cancer in 70 years was most likely due to the reduction of hor-mone replacement therapy among post-menopausal women. While the group that made this original discovery focused on analyzing data on breast cancer in Caucasian women, Hausauer’s research is centered on analyzing breast cancer subtypes among minority populations.
Both Hausauer and UT mined the same data source to look for patterns and causes of breast cancer. Called SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results), this cancer patient database, which is managed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), has been collecting cancer incident, sur-vival, and demographic data since 1973.
Hausauer has two advisors from Northern California Cancer Center (NCCC) supervising her research and the-sis: Christina Clarke, an epidemiology, surveillance re-search scientist, and Dee West, the Chief Scientific Officer. She also works closely with her Human Biology academic advisor, Paul Fisher, M.D., working as teaching assistant in his Cancer Epidemiology class. Her goal is to turn this senior thesis into a research paper that will be published in a medical journal.
Hausauer is enthusiastic about the easy-to-use statistical tools available SEER website. And because SEER tracks cancer rates for different populations and tumor types, she thinks it’s a cost-effective tool for flagging potential causes of new outbreaks.
“For example, by analyzing SEER information, phar-maceutical companies can monitor cancer rates among high-risk groups taking drugs with possible carcinogenic
side-effects,” said Hausauer. “It’s amazing to think that before 2001, hormone replacement drugs were the top sell-ing prescription drug. Because of the SEER database, we now know that the use of these hormones resulted in a se-rious rise in estrogen-fueled tumors.”
Originally from Berkeley, California, Hausauer is cur-rently finishing up her research and her HumBio Honors thesis and is in the process of applying to medical school. In 2006, Hausauer won the Kirsten Frohnmayer Research Prize, given to a Human Biology junior who exhibits aca-demic excellence, altruism and the potential to make a dif-ference. This endowed prize honors the life of Human Bi-ology graduate Kirsten Frohnmayer, who died at 24 of Fanconi anemia. §
Honors Programs in HumBioThe Honors Program in Human Biology affords stu-dents the opportunity to work closely with faculty on research projects and to write an undergraduate honors thesis. Students may select honors research topics based on Core or upper-division courses, internship experiences, or collaborations with faculty. Students with a GPA of 3.2 or higher may apply to the Honors Program once they have completed the Human Biology Core, along with the other requirements detailed in the Honors Handbook. Once a student is accepted into the Honors Program, they may also enroll in Bing Summer Honors College (SHC), an undergraduate research immersion program that provides room-and-board for two weeks prior to the Autumn quarter of senior year, while they work closely with HumBio mentors to jump-start their theses. They also attend workshops on writing, data analysis and research software. Students learn how to set up an experiment, collect valid data, interpret re-sults, and write an honors thesis. The work accom-plished during SHC is ultimately presented to a group of fellow SHC students and mentors, who provide feedback on the content and delivery. Students accepted into this two-week program live in a special Honors college campus residence that fosters an atmosphere of intellectual community and shared purpose. Last year ten Human Biology students participated in this pro-gram. Dale Kaiser, an Honors College advisor and a Core professor, is impressed with the practical tools that the students walk away with. “They learn about statistical analysis, nuances of PubMed article searches, special resources available in the medical library, and how to put together effective posters and presentations. It’s unusual for undergraduates to be able to participate in research at this level,” said Kaiser, “The students really get into the spirit of their investigations, learning how to take ownership of a project.” §
The Program in Human Biology | Stanford University
Alumni Survey As part of our reauthorization, we asked recent alumni what they did after graduation. We’re happy to report that well over half the graduates went on to pursue graduate degrees, a testimony to the rigors of the program. Human Biology remains one of the largest and most popular un-dergraduate major options. Here’s the breakdown of the 329 respondents by graduation year:
• 30% from 1998-2000• 42% from 2001-2003• 28% from 2004-2005 §
Inside the Core: On the Importance of CAsThe Human Biology Core wouldn’t be nearly as effective without the help of Course Associates, or CAs, as they are commonly called. Hand-picked from recent Core students, the faculty selects eight CAs per year, based on a rigorous recruitment and selection process.
CAs hold paid full-time university teaching positions, and besides helping with the logistics of the Core, which
involves approximately 280 students, they’re tasked with preparing weekly problem sets and integrating these into discussion sections. They teach four sections per week and hold student office hours. In addition, CAs are expected to attend two to three weekly meetings with the faculty coor-dinators and core lecturer in order to plan sections, create problem sets and review exam questions. All in all, CAs receive excellent training for a career in teaching.
Stephanie Mika, the B-Side Head CA and a 2006 Fire-stone winner (see page 6), thinks that the most important service that CAs provide is an approachable resource to help students succeed.
“While the faculty for each of the six Core courses are different, the CAs provide consistency across all three quarters of the Core, helping students see connections
across disciplines. As recent students, we have a clear un-derstanding of the pressures facing students, which makes us easy to approach.”
Mika also offers students assistance on research pro-jects, the Honors program, and career choices. Mika, who in interested in Child and Adolescent Development, plans to eventually enroll in a graduate degree program in Pub-lic Health. §
Hobbs Elected to the Academy
The National Academy of Sci-ences elected Helen Haskell Hobbs M.D., (HB ’74) director of the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Develop-ment at UT Southwestern Medical Center and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute in-vestigator, to membership. Dr. Hobbs’ research focuses on identifying genetic factors that contribute to variations in the levels of cholesterol in the blood, especially LDL cholesterol. High levels of LDL cholesterol in the blood increase the risk of a heart attack.
The Program in Human Biology | Stanford University
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ALUMNI NEWS
Helen Haskell Hobbs, MD
Fish can determine their social rank by observation alone, study finds
By Mark Shwartz
A male fish can size up poten-tial rivals, and even rank them from strongest to weakest, simply by watching how they perform in territorial fights with other males, according to a new study out of Russell Fernald’s Lab. The researchers say their discovery provides the first direct evidence that fish, like people, can use logical reasoning to figure out their place in the pecking order.
The study, published in the Jan. 25 edition of the journal Nature, is based on a unique experiment with cichlids (SIK-lids), small territorial fish from Africa.
The Nature experiment was designed by lead author Logan Grosenick, a graduate student in sta-
tistics at Stanford, and Tricia S. Clement, a former postdoctoral fel-low. Their goal was to determine whether territorial fish use a type of reasoning called “transitive infer-
ence,” in which known relationships serve as the basis for understanding unfamiliar ones.
In the experiment, the Stanford team used a popu-lar laboratory fish called Astatotilapia burtoni, one of many cichlid species that inhabit Lake Tanganyika in eastern Africa. A. burtoni males are extremely terri-torial and regularly engage in aggressive fights, the outcome of which determines who gets access to food and mates.
“Males that repeatedly lose fights are unable to hold territories and consequently descend in social
FACULTY NEWSstatus,” the authors wrote. “Success in aggressive bouts is therefore crucial to male reproductive fit-ness, and the ability to infer the relative strength of rivals before engaging them in potentially costly fights should be highly adaptive.”
When A. burtoni males fight, it's easy to spot the winner. Mature males have a menacing black stripe, or eye bar, on their face. After a fight, the winner re-tains his showy appearance, but the loser's eyebar temporarily disap-pears as he tries to flee his more aggres-sive opponent.
The Stanford team took advantage of this reversible transforma-tion by staging a se-ries of short fights between male cichlids. During one-on-one combat, the fish whose eyebar disappeared was de-clared the loser.
After each bout, the loser was separated from his opponent and put back in his original tank. Within minutes, his eyebar returned, and he looked like all the other dominant males again.
“These results show that fish do, in fact, use tran-sitive inference to figure out where they rank in the social order,” Fernald said. “Our experiment shows that male cichlids can actually figure out their odds of success by observation alone. From an evolution-ary standpoint, transitive inference saves them valuable time and energy.”
The results raise the possibility that fish brains might contain the rudimentary neuronal circuitry for transitive inference that appeared later in birds and mammals. § [Courtesy of Stanford News Service]
When he’s not working in his lab, Russell Fernald teaches the Spring Core unit, HB 4A “The Human Organism.”
The Program in Human Biology | Stanford University
Fohner Awarded a FulbrightBen Fohner (HB ’06) is one of 12 Americans granted a Fulbright Postgraduate Schol-arship for Australia in 2007. During his stay, he’ll study the commercialization of Austra-lian biotech innovations at Monash University’s Graduate School of Business and the Monash Asia-Pacific Center for Science and Wealth Creation. Fohner plans to complete a research project analyzing current barriers to innovation and commercialization in biotechnology, as well as obtain a Masters of Business in Commercializing Science and Technology (CST).
The Fulbright Scholarship allows recent college gradu-ates the chance to gain meaningful international experi-ence. This program has provided more than 230,000 par-ticipants, chosen for their leadership potential, with the opportunity to exchange ideas and embark on joint ven-tures of importance to the general welfare of the world.
After studying innovation management and completing his research, Fohner plans to attend both medical and busi-ness school, developing an expertise in the commercializa-tion of health technology to benefit the poor.
Fohner also won the Kirsten Frohnmayer research prize in Human Biology in 2005 and completed an Honors the-sis in 2006. He adds, “ My decision to attend that first class of the HumBio Core sophomore year was one of the best decisions I made at Stanford.”
Gong Wins Rotary ScholarshipLauren Gong (HB ’06) was awarded a Rotary Ambassa-dorial Scholarship, allowing her to spend the 2007-8 aca-demic year working with Zimbabwe AIDS Prevention Program (ZAPP). (The program was co-founded by Stan-ford professor David Katzenstein.) Gong will help enroll HIV-positive pregnant women in an anti-retroviral treat-ment program and assess the efficacy of the program.
The Rotary Foundation’s Ambassadorial Scholarship program aims to further international understanding among people of different countries, and it is the world’s largest privately funded international scholarships program. §
Firestone Medal WinnersThree Human Biology students were among the 40 students awarded a 2006 Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for honors projects in engineering and the social, physical and natural sciences.
Stephanie Mika “Seeking a Referent or Fleeing a Mismatch: How Should We Interpret Children's Eye Movements in a Preferential Looking Procedure?” (Faculty sponsors: Anne Fernald and Virginia Marchman, psychology)
Felipe Perez “Rhythmic Regulation of Retina Pro-genitor Cell Production by Clock Gene Through Prolifera-tion of Cellular Nuclear Antigen.” (Faculty sponsors: Rus-sell Fernald and Sheng Zhao, biological sciences)
Krista Rappahahn: “Identification of Novel and Re-current Exonic Deletions in the CFTR Gene of Hispanic Cystic Fibrosis Patients.” (Faculty sponsors: Iris Schrijver, pathology, and Paul Fisher, neurology and neurological sciences, pediatrics.) §
The Program in Human Biology | Stanford University
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HumBio Reading List: Recommendations from Faculty and Students
Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an
Imperfect Scienceby Atul Gawande
Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the
Meaning of Life by Nick Lane
Mountains beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man
Who Would Cure the Worldby Tracy Kidder
STUDENT AWARDS
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Storey House Residents Dine with “Stiff” AuthorThe rules of polite dinner conversa-tion don’t apply at Storey House, the Stanford “theme house” where many Human Biology students live during the academic year. And in fact, dis-cussions of rigor mortis and maggots were highly encouraged when jour-nalist Mary Roach, the author of “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” joined the residents for dinner one evening. With her wicked sense of humor and unassuming manner, Roach thoroughly enter-tained the students with stories of how cadavers are used in transplanta-tion, forensic experiments, plastic surgery, and more.
Located on the prestigious “Row,” next to the Braun Music Building, Storey House is where students with a shared passion for HumBio sleep, study, hang out, and dine. As part of this total immersion experience, resi-dents vote on a house theme, then organize in-house seminars around it. Past sessions have covered stem cell research, Romanian gypsies, African exploration, and forensics. In addi-tion, students must deliver at least one academic theme presentation to their housemates.
During the 2005-2006 school year, the HumBio theme was “Interdisci-plinary Approaches to HIV/AIDS.” Activities included lectures, student presentations, author visits, and meals with professors.
The HIV/AIDS lectures covered various aspects of this humanitarian crisis, including economics, politics, culture and society, social class, epi-demiology, and health care. Students watched several documentaries on HIV/AIDS, and learned about various ways to get involved with AIDS-focused non-profit foundations.
One group who visited the resi-dents was FACE AIDS, a foundation started by a Human Biology student and two Stanford classmates. Juniors Jonny Dorsey, Lauren Young, and Katie Bollbach felt compelled to start this student-focused organization after returning from a Stanford-sponsored service trip to Zambia. The trio’s ongoing goal is to raise $1 mil-lion and get 200 schools involved in their program selling pins to raise money and awareness in their effort to mobilize students in the fight against the disease in Africa. (You can listen to Dr. Paul Farmer’s FACE AIDS talk from the new Stanford iTunes webpage:. http://itunes.stanford.edu/)
Storey House residents also have assigned readings on the house theme, and they sometimes get the chance to dine with the books’ authors. Last year Nalani Grace’s (HB ’06) favorite theme book was “We Are All the Same: A Story of a Boy’s Courage and a Mother’s Love.” In this book, Jim Wooten, an ABC news correspondent, wrote a moving account about a courageous South African boy's battle with AIDS.
“What I liked about this book was that it put a human face on this dis-ease.” said Grace, “It brought HIV/AIDS into a larger framework, ex-
plaining how the political environ-ment and Apartheid have made the epidemic much worse in Africa.”
During the 2007 Spring semester, Storey House residents will explore the definition of “epidemic” from both a scientific and a social perspec-tive. They’ll examine the biological underpinnings and societal origins of epidemics in a series of lectures/field trips over diverse topics such as smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza, HIV/AIDs, obesity, diabetes, mental illness, drug addiction, and domestic abuse. They’ll also cover exotic dis-eases, such as Ebola, Mad Cow, and SARS. Companion reading will in-clude the book “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell. Topics will range in scale from the local to the international and will involve discussions of how society might prevent and control epidemics of today and tomorrow. §
Dinner with Schlosser:
(Hide the Fries!)In 2003, Storey residents met with Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation,” who spoke about the dangers of America’s fast food culture. You can watch a video of this presentation on the Stanford’s Human Biology web page:http://www.stanford.edu/dept/humbio/storey.html §
The Program in Human Biology | Stanford University
Join the HumBio Alumni-StudentTrivia Challenge!Please join your classmates and cur-rent HumBio students for a rousing game of HumBio Trivia during Stanford Homecoming 2007. Impress former classmates and col-leagues with your absolute mastery of esoteric and obscure HumBio knowledge.
Mark Your Calendars!Homecoming Trivia EventSaturday, October 13Time: 4:30 p.m.
And please send us trivia questions!
Sample Trivia Question:
What’s this? See the Kaiser Lab website for the answer to this trivia question:http://cmgm.stanford.edu/devbio/kaiserlab/
DonorsHuman Biology extends its sincere appreciation to the generous contributions of our supporters.
StaffDirector: Carol BoggsAssociate Director: Shirley FeldmanProgram Administrator: Linda BarghiProgram Secretary: Robyn DubyProgram Support: Marie LeStudent Services: Lia CacciariAcademic Technology Specialist: Carlos SeligoTechnology Specialist: Larry SpackmanNewsletter: Kris Newby §
This newsletter is available online: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/humbio/alumni.html
The Program in Human Biology | Stanford University
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We’d Like to Hear from You: Our alumni, students and faculty are a community focused on making a difference in the world. You can strengthen this community by staying in touch and sharing your stories. Please send us news about your achievements, or ideas for this newsletter. (And please email us more HumBio trivia questions!)
Contact Information:Program in Human BiologyAttn: Robyn Duby Stanford University, Bldg 80Stanford, CA 94305-2160Phone: (650) [email protected]
