Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Aliso Viejo News - July 20, 2006
Spencer Kornhaber
Lee, a Laguna Niguel resident who graduated from Aliso Niguel High School in June, is one of 14 Orange County students selected to take part in the Youth Science Research Fellowship Program, sponsored by the American Cancer Society and the Cancer Research Institute at the UC Irvine. Through Aug. 4, Lee will spend 30 hours a week at UCI doing her "dream job": medical research on HIV/AIDS.
"We can already say that Carrie has talent in science," said Dr. David Camerini, whose lab Lee has worked in for two weeks. "She has shown a lot of enthusiasm in working and also shown a lot of intelligence."
Lee will study biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall. Growing up, she wanted to be a pediatrician or a family doctor. But she decided to pursue medical research two years ago after attending a youth leadership conference and hearing the stories of three women whose lives had been affected by HIV/ AIDS.
"That deeply moved me, so that my life's purpose has basically become to find a cure, a vaccine for AIDS," Lee said.
Admission to the Youth Science Research Fellowship Program is competitive, with an application that requires a teacher's nomination, high school coursework in chemistry and a summary of lab experience. Started in 1988, the program usually places high school students in laboratories researching treatments for cancer. But UCI and the American Cancer Society accommodated Lee's interests by having her work under Camerini, whose lab specializes in HIV/AIDS.
"What we're doing with the program is giving these kids a chance to work, hands on, on research," said Jennifer Horspool, director of marketing communications for the American Cancer Society Orange County Region. "[Lee researching AIDS] basically does fulfill our same need."
For six hours a day, Monday through Friday, Lee works on her own project under the supervision of Camerini and post-doctoral researcher Vicky Sung. Lee's project attempts to confirm a hypothesis that one strain of HIV (called the R5 virus) is more able to infect normal human blood cells than another strain (the X4 virus). To do that, she grows cell cultures and incubates them with harmless "lentiviral vectors" bearing R5 or X4 virus coat proteins. She then observes which vector more readily transfers a marker gene to the human blood cells.
"The whole point of all this is to find a vaccine," Lee said, "because if we do find that the R5 strand has an advantage, we want to find which part of the cell gives it that advantage. Then if we can determine that, and try to block that, we can essentially create a vaccine."
Lee doesn't get paid for her work, but she does get something else û a head start on her life's goal of doing research. She also "absolutely loves" what she's doing, even if that means she has less time for her other hobbies û singing, soccer and figure skating. "This is exactly how I wanted my summer to go," said Lee. "There's nothing that I would rather be doing."
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