Last summer—and with support from a Meg Page’74 Fellowship grant—I was fortunate enough to have spent seven weeks as a summer student and intern in the lab of Dr. Stephania Libreros of Yale University’s Vascular Biology and Therapeutics Program. I came into the lab each morning around nine completely ecstatic (an emotion that never seemed to wear off) and left around five or six in the evening with enough energy to summarize all of the day’s events to my mom on the car ride home.

I have always been passionate about the life sciences, and last year I was looking for an opportunity to shadow and learn from scientists in a research lab. I was especially excited by the prospect of studying the immune system and the different mechanisms through which it operates. Dr. Libreros’ lab was local and their research was suited to my interests, so I contacted her in hopes of joining for a summer.

The Libreros Lab investigates the biochemical, immunological, and molecular mechanisms behind the resolution of inflammation, the process during which tissue returns to homeostasis. I was able to observe, learn, and assist with the work of a postgraduate research associate named Ziyu Yang, whose project during the time that I was in the lab was to screen for receptors of a class of pro-resolving lipid mediators called resolvins.

Dr. Libreros was involved in the discovery of resolvins when she was a postdoc, and her lab has already determined their roles in resolution – like regulating neutrophil migration and promoting phagocytosis in macrophages – but they don’t yet know the receptors for these molecules. Knowing their receptors has salient implications for pharmacology: drugs can modulate receptors by acting as agonists or antagonists that bind to them to exert their effects. Dr. Libreros uses the drug montelukast as an example since it binds to a lipid mediator G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) (just like resolvins!) and is a 450-billion-dollar industry that successfully reduces inflammation, asthma, and allergic reactions. One day, there could be resolvin receptor agonist drugs that control resolution for people who suffer from chronic inflammation.

Ziyu taught me an assay called PRESTO-Tango, which involves the transfection of GPCRs of the lab’s choosing and subsequent treatment with molecules (in our case, resolvins). The receptors contain a vector that, when activated, promotes the proportional expression of a luciferase reporter gene, producing a luminescent enzyme exactly like the one that fireflies have. After you add its substrate, you can read the luminescent output and determine whether the resolvins are binding to the GPCRs.

Ziyu trusted me to work alongside him on his experiments; assist in the cell culture room and mouse facility; and I learned the ELISA, Tango, and G-subunit assays from beginning to end. Other members of the lab taught me how their experiments worked, too, so I was able to see how mouse blood samples were prepared for the mass spectrometer and analyzed, how mice were prepared for intravital imaging under the confocal microscope, and how the flow cytometer determined cell populations in real time. When I wasn’t working at the bench or under the hood, I was staying busy by reading papers and articles in journals and taking notes on textbooks that Dr. Libreros provided me with to further understand the lab’s research.

Outside of the lab, I also attended weekly immunology seminars as well as every lab and department meeting, and my seven weeks culminated with me presenting my work at one of these meetings.

This internship confirmed my love for medicine and science with clinical applications, and my fascination with the immune system’s incredible capabilities. I am very lucky to be so young and to already have gained some experience working in a biology lab and seeing how it operates. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Libreros Lab for teaching me everything I learned this summer, and to the donors behind the Page Grant for making this experience possible for me and for inspiring me to pursue a passion for – and hopefully a career in – research and medicine.

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Meg Page ’74 Fellowships honor Meg’s commitment to compassionate healthcare. They are awarded annually to students who wish to explore an experience or course of study devoted to the provision of better health care in areas such as public health, family planning, medical research, mental health, and non-Western practices of healing.