"So my name is Sandy Liu.
We are in UCLA at Dr. Garraway's lab and we are studying prostate cancer.
So the natural course of prostate cancer is actually pretty long and indolent.
However there are a group of people that get really aggressive type of prostate cancer
and we are mainly interested in studying those specific populations.
What I do is growing up megakaryocytes and seeing how they interact with prostate cancer
cells in the lab.
And also in the hospital, I do bone marrow biopsies of patients who have prostate cancer
and looking at the cells from the bone marrow biopsy.
I am from Diamond Bar which is about 30 minutes east of Los Angeles.
I grew up here and I went to medical school in the East Coast in Washington DC, George
Washington.
And then I decided to come back after medical school.
During my internship year of residency, I took care of a lot of cancer patients and
I have developed such a huge rapport and bond with them that I knew that this is, in my
heart that this is what I wanted to do.
I couldn't see myself doing anything else.
It was just the patients just were extremely vulnerable and they just, they help and they
looked up to the physicians that help them and it was just, I was moved by that and I
think it challenged me and very rewarding in the end even though sometimes we couldn't
help everyone.
But now the research is so exciting that there's new immunotherapies coming on and it's a very
exciting field right now to be in.
What I am particularly studying at is looking at the spread of prostate cancer to bones
and how we can prevent that from happening.
We are creating models to study that so specifically looking at one of the cells called megakaryocytes.
So those are a type of cells in the bone marrow.
They're immature cells that could ultimately go on to produce platelets.
We believe megakaryocytes have a role in facilitating prostate cancer spread to the bones.
[Speaker 2]: We've got a chunk full of [INAUDIBLE]
[Speaker 1]: Oh wow, yeah, this is, I can see a lot of different cells.
[Speaker 2]: So those are the things we are going to be punching.
[Speaker 1]: Oh really?
[Speaker 2]: Yeah.
Like this is more like...
I am a scientist because I genuinely care about helping people and really finding a
cure to help prevent these patients from dying.
I think it's intellectually challenging and I think that there is no boundaries and there
is so much to be learned and so much to be discovered and I want to be a part of that
exciting journey.
Lab life is so fun.
I love my coworkers in the lab.
We are having a lot of fun.
Some of the times we're like are we actually doing work because it seems like it's, like
time goes by really fast and we enjoy each other and we all help each other out.
It's a very relaxed environment.
I really hope I can be a great cancer doctor.
I really want to do my own research and I want to focus on prostate cancer like Dr.
Garraway and have a lot of collaborations and run a lot of clinical trials in the future
and just try to help as many people as I can.
I can't imagine doing anything else.
It's just so much fun.
It really is what you make out of it and if you put in the time and if you're interested
I think it's amazing.
It's a great field, yeah, I really like it."