Meet Hannah W. Song, PhD, biologist in product development in the Center for Cellular Engineering at the NIH Clinical Center.
I have a PhD in chemical and biological engineering. My job title is biologist in product development in the Center for Cellular Engineering at the NIH Clinical Center. We make novel cell therapies for new medical treatments. If an investigator has a new therapy and it involves editing genes or engineering cells outside the body, then they can partner with us.
My task is to design the process of making that new therapy. One example is CAR T cell immunotherapy, which leverages a patient's immune system to fight cancer. We take a patient's T cells from a blood sample in the lab. We isolate those cells and put in a gene to better target the cancer. Then we reinfuse those cells into the patient, sending the T cells to destroy the cancer cells. Figuring out the actual process to engineer those T cells isn't easy. How do we put the gene in there? How do we activate them? What's the best process to handle those cells? A cell therapy, it's alive. Every step of the process really matters. You can't isolate them into powder form like a traditional drug and put them into a pill.
In my own research, I study how certain tools that we use may affect cells in unexpected ways. Recently, we found that the oxygen level T cells are exposed to in the lab seems to play a role in how effective they will be inside the body.
I love working with cells. Their ability to sense and respond to their microenvironment and to perform very fine-tuned functions is just incredible. When I learned about cell therapy in my postdoc, that's when I first understood that this is the field that I wanted to be in.
What's amazing about the NIH is the number of researchers who are working on groundbreaking therapies. It's incredible, these world experts who are translating first in human studies. My colleagues and I get to help make that a reality. I love coming to work every day and collaborating with all the amazing scientists here. They are full of new ideas and never give up on finding a cure. The science is now there to be able to edit cells and provide curative therapies. Instead of treating the symptoms, we can actually cure the disease.
- Sean Markey