From the very beginning of her college career, Ellen Dwyer has been amazed at the beauty of the body's immune system in battling disease. But not long after her fascination began, Dwyer found herself in a battle of her own-a fight against the autoimmune disease known as Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease.
So it is only fitting that Dwyer would spend her summer in the prestigious Amgen Scholars program, looking for a cure to the most notorious immune disorder of all-HIV. Dwyer, a Park Ridge native, was one of three LAS students picked by the biotechnology leader, Amgen, to be part of its summer scholars program. She spent the summer of 2007 working in the labs at the University of California-San Diego.
Dwyer started getting symptoms of Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease (UCTD) as a freshman at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., which she attended before transferring to the University of Illinois for her sophomore year. She went from one misdiagnosis to another until a skilled rheumatologist finally pinpointed UCTD. Like any autoimmune disease, her immune system is attacking herself, striking connective tissue in the joints, cartilage, muscles, and skin.
"When I have a trauma, it can cause major swelling," says Dwyer, who is now a senior at the U of I in molecular and cellular biology. But Dwyer says that since her diagnosis, immunosuppressants have done the job in keeping her healthy.
Although her interest in immunology did not stem from her own experience with an autoimmune disease, Dwyer says it does help her relate to the people who may someday be on the receiving end of the research she did in San Diego.
UC-San Diego is one of 10 host universities across the nation in the Amgen Scholars Program. At each school, 15 undergraduates are picked from the host university and another 15 students are selected from other universities across the country. Dwyer and fellow LAS student Ryan Jones were among the 15 picked at UC-San Diego. A third LAS student, Gina Kim, was chosen at UC-San Francisco. All three of these molecular and cellular biology majors were given a chance to do intensive research in world-class laboratories.
In Dwyer's case, she spent the summer on the front lines of some of the country's most respected HIV research. She says researchers at UC-San Diego are looking for more than another treatment for HIV; they are searching for a cure because many of the drugs used to suppress the virus eventually lose their potency because of resistance.
"HIV can hide in certain areas in your body where the drugs can't get to," Dwyer says. So they're exploring techniques that force the provirus to pop out of hiding. When that happens, the drugs can hit it hard, killing the virus and potentially curing the patient of HIV.
Dwyer's job this summer was testing siRNA, or small inhibitory RNA, on healthy donor blood. The idea is to insert siRNA into T cells, where it binds with the HDAC gene, forcing the provirus out of hiding.
Conducting such high-level research is nothing new for Dwyer, who is one of several undergraduates working with U of I chemistry professor Paul Hergenrother. The Hergenrother lab has been making a name for itself in developing anti-cancer treatments, such as an "executioner enzyme" that can cause cancer cells to self-destruct.
"They give me a lot of responsibility in Dr. Hergenrother's lab. It's not just washing equipment," Dwyer says.
In addition to working in San Diego this summer, Dwyer says Amgen sent all of the students to a symposium at Lake Tahoe, where she learned how Amgen is testing an existing drug with other, rarer autoimmune diseases. She was also excited to see how industry and academia interact.
Dwyer is not yet sure whether she wants to go into industry or academia, but for the near future her focus is on selecting a graduate school. She hopes to eventually work in genetics or on hereditary immune diseases such as lupus or UCTD.
Whatever her future might hold, she says, "I definitely like what I'm doing now. The biomedical research I'm doing can impact lives, and that's what really interests me."
