Splash Biography
BLAKE SMITH, Yale sophomore fascinated with biology
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Major: MCDB College/Employer: Yale Year of Graduation: 2016 |
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Brief Biographical Sketch:
Blake is currently a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College planning to major in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. He has worked on cancers of the lung, pancreas, and blood since his sophomore year in high school. His research involved designing oligonucleotides to correct genetic abnormalities that occur in cancer, as well as discovering novel therapeutic drugs to be used in the treatment of the disease. Blake hopes that students will leave his Sprout seminar enlightened and invigorated by the prospect of doing their own research on this fatal disease in the future! Past Classes(Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)S675: Signal Transduction in the Context of Cancer Biology in Splash Fall 13 (Nov. 09, 2013)
This class will seek to cover the state of modern understanding of the primary signal transduction pathways that promote cancer growth in humans. Notably, pathways implicated in lung and breast cancer will be of heavy emphasis, as they are examples of some of the best characterized mitogenic signaling pathways to date. While this class will give an introduction to the cellular biology of signal transduction through discussion of kinases, phosphatases, and reversible phosphorylation as a means of signaling, we will spend some time talking through rational drug design, targeted therapies, and resistance to small molecule intervention. Lastly, we will briefly discuss my own research on drug development in the contexts of lung cancer and leukemia and discover, together, whether or not the concepts from one histological disease can be applied for the treatment of another. This class is intended to be engaging and will ask participants to come with open minds!
S541: Cancer: An Interminable Disease in Sprout Fall 13 (Oct. 05 - 19, 2013)
This class will seek to cover the state of cancer research in the present day from a historical and a molecular approach. It will go over primitive cancer theories dating back to 160 AD, as well as answer essential questions like, "What is cancer?" or "How can we treat it?" We will focus on the causes of cancer - from overactive oncogenes to failure in tumor suppressor genes - disruption of important signal transduction pathways, as well as resistance to current therapies. Lastly, we will briefly discuss the intersection between cancer research and modern healthcare systems to determine, together, whether or not the two are compatible. This class is intended to be engaging and will ask participants to come with open minds!
S395: Cancer: An Interminable Disease in Splash Spring 13 (Apr. 06, 2013)
This class will seek to cover the state of cancer research in the present day from a historical and a molecular approach. It will go over primitive cancer theories dating back to 160 AD, as well as answer essential questions like, "What is cancer?" or "How can we treat it?" We will focus on the causes of cancer - from overactive oncogenes to failure in tumor suppressor genes - disruption of important signal transduction pathways, as well as resistance to current therapies. Lastly, we will briefly discuss the intersection between cancer research and modern healthcare systems to determine, together, whether or not the two are compatible. This class is intended to be engaging and will ask participants to come with open minds!
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