Rice undergrad is lead author on stem cell bone research in prestigious journal

An undergrad??!???? Wow, this is amazing. This will be on the front page of the Chronicle tomorrow.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3657242.html

Feb. 13, 2006, 11:54PM
A rare feat for young scientist
Rice undergrad is lead author on bone research in prestigious journal

By ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

A research team at Rice University has created turbocharged cells that produce up to 75 times more calcium than a standard bone cell, work that one day could become useful in treating broken and damaged bones.

Although significant — the research has been published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — perhaps more remarkable is the person who led the research.

Project leader Néha Datta, 21, is a senior in college.

"I am extremely proud of her," said Antonios Mikos, a professor of bioengineering and director of Rice's Center for Excellence in Tissue Engineering. "This is a notable personal achievement for Néha because PNAS is one of the top scientific journals in the country."

A spokesman for the journal, Oliver Yun, said it does not track the education level of its article authors.

"Just from my own experience, it doesn't seem all that rare to have undergrads as authors on papers," Yun said. "But I think it is somewhat rare to see college students as lead authors."

George Kuh, an Indiana University professor who surveys the habits of college students, said he thinks Datta's accomplishment is a rare feat. Being published in a top journal, he said, is a coup even for a well-established academic researcher.

At 21, Datta has a maturity that matches her academic publishing credentials. She said she recognizes the importance of a social life in college, and Datta and her friends regularly congregate at a nearby Diedrich Coffee. At the same time, she has sought academic experiences that "push my limits."

The article is her third published paper and her second as lead author.


Seeds planted at early age
This success is a product of a long-standing interest in research sparked by a sixth-grade science fair in her native Calgary, Alberta. Datta's entry was an experiment to learn whether ultraviolet radiation from standard fluorescent lights could cause skin cancer, as prolonged exposure to sunlight can.

They don't, she said. Then, glancing warily at the fluorescent lights overhead in her adviser's office at Rice, Datta added that she doesn't recommended working long hours in close proximity to them, say within 6 inches.

Raised by a teacher and a chemical engineer, Datta said she wound up at Rice because of its Century Scholars program, which matches select freshmen with a faculty mentor. It afforded her an opportunity to get into a research lab right away.

The Mikos lab focuses on tissue engineering, the science of harvesting stem cells from a patient's body and using them to grow new tissues that can be transplanted back into the patient without risk of rejection.

Calling bone cell research fascinating, Datta set a goal of finding more efficient ways to transform adult stem cells culled from human bone marrow — which can change into many types of cells — into bone cells.

After nearly three years of work, her research group succeeded beyond expectations, figuring out how to coax stem cells atop a small titanium disc into changing into bone cells. When the researchers added a second batch of adult stem cells to the disc, not only did they transform into bone cells, they quickly grew into the calcified deposits that give bone its structural strength.

Perhaps within the next decade, Mikos said, similarly pre-treated scaffolds could be implanted on broken bones or those damaged by the removal of a tumor. The biodegradable scaffolds would nurture the bone cells, allowing them to multiply, as well as give them proper form to replace the damaged bone.


Plotting her future
When Datta was in grade school, tissue engineering was science fiction. Now, Mikos said, cell-based therapies are considered the future for treating bone problems and a host of other medical ailments.

Datta is intent on plotting a professional life that makes such conjectures a reality.

One of the biggest hurdles of biomedical research is translating basic science breakthroughs into practical treatments for patients. Whole programs at research institutions such as the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center have sprung up to foster so-called translational investigators.

"My goal is to become a surgeon who can bring the bench to the bedside," Datta said. "It doesn't do any good to have the research in a lab if it doesn't get out."

She has not been accepted into medical school but expects to hear soon. And she's glad to have the application process overwith. Writing essays is far more tedious than writing and rewriting academic papers, she said.

Despite being published ahead of most of her classmates, Datta says she has been able to manage the burdens of classwork and a social life with lab work, which runs from 20 to 60 hours a week. It's not an entirely leisurely life, but there are benefits. Last year, she presented preliminary research at an international biomaterials conference — in Sydney, Australia.

And was she self-conscious being the only undergraduate student at a conference where most of the audience were older men? Not really, she said. The field is accepting of all who share those research interests.

In her free time, Datta said, she enjoys writing piano music — she calls her compositions a fusion of classical and romantic — playing the drums and photography. The exterior of the nearby Houston Museum of Natural Science, she added, is a great place to find extraordinary images of the everyday life of people and nature.

"I think what's important to do is to be able to balance your life," she said. "I wouldn't say that research has taken away anything from my life. If anything, it's complemented my life."

 

Ok, so the "horrors of shopping at Wal-Mart" thread gets over 75 replies and my thread on a breakthrough in bone research by an undergrad gets zero. Well at least the board has its priorities straight.

 

I'm going to have to ask you to turn that frown upside-down.

 

Excuse me? Are you saying the faculty isn't competent? Did you go there? That wasn't my experience at all, and I had more than 50 professors during my 4 years there.

 

deleted by bigtexxx