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My name is Nicholas Popp. We;re currently at
the National Eye Institute at the 
National Institutes of Health in
Bethesda Maryland.
I'm working on a disease called
age-related macular degeneration which
is an eye disease that affects about five
percent of the population.
What we're doing right now is trying to
figure out why people get it and
what we can do to treat it.  I'm
originally from rural southern
Illinois 
basically in the cornfields; and there's
not much science going on around there.
I didn't really get any sort of
introduction to it until I went to
college. So, I went to the
University of Chicago
and when I was there,
during my second year I got introduced
to a basic research experience to summer
program
and I fell in love with it. My
boss the
very first day took out a model of a
protein and he
basically fit in two halves any he pulled it
apart
and turned it about 30 degrees and
snapped it back together;
and he said when the protein does this
the cell dies.
And that small movement;
literally like 30 degrees, was
absolutely fascinating to me
because it meant that something as
small
as a twist could determine the cell fate
and how that would happen in humans
later on you know if you have a lot of cells
then they die.
That can lead to a lot of different
problems like the disease we're studying
here. With people who have AMD it could
mean all the way to complete blindness.
Typically what we see though is you
start losing your central vision
right where I would be looking at your
face and not so much on your periphery of
things that you detected motion.
What will happen is as your eyes start
to deteriorate more and more that will
actually begin to expand
and so you'll start losing more and more
vision sort of centrally radiating
outward.
In terms of the 
disease genetics we're trying to figure
out which ones have it. If we can get one of
those and get one of those published
then we have something that can actually
be quickly moved into the
clinic and be used as a diagnostic in
the future. On most day-to-day basis I'm
actually in here
doing a lot of things like looking at
different histology slides of 
samples that we've taken
from eyes is, or we have some
patient samples that will come in as well.
Other times I'm actually trying to
validate this and other ways
so we're using to test and test the same
drug on the human cell line to
sort of give us some more pre-clinical
data, and I do that over in the cell
culture lab. There's lots of pi petting and lots of taking care of cells in the incubator,
very typical basic lab stuff. We
do have some really great
images that are fluorescently labeled so you can see like
how the cells look based on where
different proteins are expressed 
 
in in the cell.
So right here I have a set of
what are called  (RPE) cells
retinal pigmented epithelia.
So you can see that they're really,
really dark. 
So these are from actually from a human
patient that came in a few months
back
and so when I do is I basically just
have to change the media on these and sort of 
just this is basic
what you do with a cell culture stuff,
you just keep them alive and so I'm just
gonna be changing the media's so they
don't get sick and die. Everything in
here has to be extremely steril so
anything that goes in has to be weighed
down with ethanol anything that comes
out
has to be and takin care this is a
special media that mean
bed I'm wanna buyer one to the other
labs in the National Eye Institute has
and developer the cells to make sure
that they don't go bad
cell I can tell you most what's in it
because
it's a lot a chemical but it's nice and
bright red I'd
I actually have a rare disease and so
that's been a big motivating factor
and so for me looking forward
being able to get this experience here
and been able to do some
basic drug trials is really and
fascinating has really kept me going on
that happened
sort of solidified that that's when do
going forward
there it's actually a lot of
collaboration in this lab to just to be
in
the injections this morning right but
like ceramic the 21st
that public good and you're talking
about this on the phone
yes we're talking about the fund a scope
so we'll take pictures at the
the right now and see if it any in the
lesions have changed we get samples from
all over the world not just from you
know locally
and last week we had some samples coming
from Italy I am
and so we we look at those we analyze
them when we get back to the doctors we
say here this is what's going on with
your patient we can tell because I this
we also have projects going on the
people out in Kansas City
out or again all like all over the world
so it's it's really a collaborative
environments been pretty great for me
here and honestly what makes me so
excited about it because
I can do so many things with research
and at the cutting edge
what is happening and what is known and
if somebody comes in
with a rare disease the NIH I can be one
of the first people to look at it and
say
you know we see this and this is what
that means for this patient
take some time to explore science I'm
if you're really interested in it there
are so many different things that you
can do
and so many different ways you can sort of look at
how things work or how the body works or
what can go
wrong that there's something you'll find
in there that you'll
like.
 
 
 
 
