Hi, I'm Shang Song, and I'm a third year graduate student in the bio-engineering joint program
between the UC Berkeley and UCSF.
Currently I'm working in Professor Shuvo Roy's lab, and I'm working on the bio-artificial
pancreas project.
So, I was born and raised in China, and but then, I moved to Guam while I was in high
school and afterwards I came to the states and I studied at Brown University on the East
coast.
At first I was really into organic chemistry, so making things.
Then later on, like I took more engineering classes, particularly like some teacher engineer
classes.
Then I thought, oh how about you combine like living, living like organism with like a type
of material and you can see how they interact.
The problem that I'm studying right now is the Type 1 diabetes, because the Medicare
costs like, is, is very high, it's $16 billion, direct costs and also there's four million
people in the US who have been diagnosed Type 1 diabetes.
The patients, they can not produce insulin themselves.
That's critical, if you don't produce insulin, you pretty much die.
Like you don't give yourself, like, like regular, like regular doses.
And the challenge is that, for patients like that, it's really hard to control their glucose
level.
For my artificial pancreas project it's basically like keeping cells alive in some kind of bio-materials.
The idea is that when you transplant like a, you know, just a cell it's not gonna bother
you.
Those cells are not gonna stay, you know, the naked cells they don't stay very long.
They just gonna be attacked by your immune, your immune cells, your immune component.
Like T cells or the factors, like cytokine that's secreted by the T cells.
So those cells, you know, whatever and get into implanted by the cells, you know, would
be dead, like instantly.
Unless you have immune suppressant to suppress your whole immune response to keep those alive.
And then, you know, people talk about like transplant and other like devices, for like,
first of all we know about transplant.
We don't have enough organs, like donated organs for, for transplant in the first place.
I mean, that's the situation right now.
So I have to find other alternatives to solve this problem.
Once, if they get a transplant they are be on immunosuppressant, that's a life long commitment
and can come up with other like, maybe other, other side effects as well.
Their immune system will be pretty much damaged, if there's bacterial infection or any sort
like that, your body can not really [hone] like an immune response to it.
So, all those problems lead us to think about, how can we make things easier like, why people
have to go through all this, like, you know, things.
Don't be hesitate.
I think a lot, I think I have to stress this many, many times especially for high school
kids or other, you know, people who want to get into, get involved with research.
Don't be hesitate, and don't feel shy about it.
You have to, you know, move the first step out, by contacting either the PI or lab manager
or the other students in the lab, expressing your interest and about why you want to, you
know, join this project or, or work in their labs.
Especially at UCSF, we're very interesting in getting young people, like younger generations
get involved in our projects.
That's the, that's the future of, of you know, of our, our society and we ought to get more
education, more people educated about what we do, and teach the younger generation as
well.