"My name is Pierre-Jacques Hamard, but everyone calls me PJ here, so I can go by PJ It's fine.
I'm a research scientist working in Dr. Nimer's lab and working on, mainly on leukemia, which
is a kind of blood cancer, and my research involves trying to decipher the molecular
mechanisms that maintain the leukemia cells proliferating and trying to understand why
normal cells become leukemia cells.
I went to college, took a major in biology because, mostly because my high school teacher
in biology was amazing, so I don't know if it's a good reason, but that's how I ended
up working in biology and then I decided to move on and do a PhD in molecular biology.
The more we dig, the more we find things, and new things, new mechanisms, new molecules,
new phenomenons that we had no idea were existing before, and the more we found these things,
the more we also found new ways to tackle cancer, so I think it's, that's where it fascinates
me the most.
I was born in France, in the northwest of France, in a region that we call the Loire
Valley and I then moved to Strasbourg in the East of France to do my PhD and I eventually
came to the United States to do my post-doc training in New York City.
I like to think that I was a serious student, but I had my share of craziness, I guess,
going out, and I was playing in a rock band with some friends, and I think it's very important
also, especially for young scientists, or young students who will become scientists.
I think it's important to have a good balance between your work and your personal life.
You can be in front of your experiment and you realize that it worked and you have the
result that you were expecting, and you're probably the only person in the world who
knows about this, at the moment you discover this result, and that's priceless.
I think this is what's the most rewarding in this job, for sure.
I hope that my research is going to be beneficial for cancer patients, especially leukemia patients.
We are in need of new targets and new therapies for these patients, and I hope that my work
here is going to enable the discovery of new targets and new therapies for these patients,
and hopefully save lives.
This is actually great.
This is pure NT5.
This is H2A.
That's my indeterminate information assay.
I'm still waiting for my big discovery.
I have time, but I think that the project I'm working on right now could be that big
discovery I'm waiting for.
It's true, finally, and this is real.
Yeah, I hope that more young people would be inspired by doing this and by people like
me, hopefully, and would take on the journey because I think it's a great journey and you
won't regret it, for sure."