Dr. Justin Balko and graduate student Brandie Taylor challenged each other to a pipette race while we asked them some questions about their research.
Interested in their research? Read more here:
Mechanisms of MHC-I Downregulation and Role in Immunotherapy Response - Frontiers in Immunology 2022
Video Transcript
Justin Balko: I think I was the best pipettor.
J: I'm Justin Balko. I am an associate professor of medicine, and pathology, microbiology, and immunology, and we do cancer research.
Brandie Taylor: I’m Brandie, I’m a third year PhD candidate.
Kaitlyn Browning: So today we’re doing a pipette race. If y’all want to take your marks. Grab your pipettors. Ready. Set. Go!
[Question: How would you explain your research to your grandma?]
J: I would say, grandma, I try to find the right way to figure out whether a patient will respond to a cancer drug or not. So, we save them from receiving drugs or therapies that don't work for them.
[Q: What makes your research unique?]
B: It's very translational. So, we can do things at the bench and then also apply it to the bedside. Things like getting patient data and applying it to what we can see in our mouse model.
Q: Favorite experiment to run?
B: My least favorite is cloning.
J: But you’re so good at it!
B: I’m awful at cloning. I can’t do it for the life of me. I’ll get it eventually.
J: Eventually.
J: I’m the lab PI, so I just tell them the experiments to do. I don't really ever, as you can tell from my pipetting skills right now, get back in the lab these days. I like to get like a big data type of experiments back. You know, we're gonna get all sorts of data from, like, one experiment we get to look at it in a million different ways. That's very fun and satisfying for me.
[End of round 1]
K: Time’s up, who won?
B: Did you win?
J: You missed that spot.
B: You took it out!
J: I’m over four.
B: I don’t know. E…E7
J: E2.
B: I won.
J: Fine. It was pretty close though. I told her I was going to be very ashamed of her if she didn't beat me, so yeah.
K: On your mark, get set, go.
[Q: What made you study breast cancer?]
J: I think that I always wanted to be a cancer researcher since I was a little kid, and I watched this show on 60 minutes about how like researchers thought that sharks couldn't get cancer. As like a little 5-year-old, I thought that was fascinating. My mom told me how bad cancer was, and so I always wanted to grow up to like, fix that problem, and I think I just kind of fell into breast cancer, to be honest. Became something that I became passionate about.
[Q: What’s one thing you wish you knew when you started grad school?]
B: Keep a very organized lab notebook and keep on track of your lab notebooks so you don't have to go back and redo everything.
[Q: What’s one thing you wish you knew when you started your lab?]
J: That I was going to have to learn to be a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a business manager, a CEO. And a Pilates instructor. Just kidding about the last thing.
[Q: What is your favorite part about your research?]
B: I like the lamb environment. I like going to a really good lab and like liking the people and liking what I do every day.
J: I would say I have always wanted the potential to actually see that I made an impact on patient care, right? That's my ultimate goal as a researcher.
[End of round 2]
K: Times up on the second round.
B: What did you get? F3? Oh, I have mine upside-down. A-B-C-D-E-F1. You won!
J: There we go, 1-1. I think I was the best pipettor. It is, it is certain, it is certain.
B: Oh no.
J: It's my Magic Eight Ball.
B: Yeah, but you're shaking it. I think it's, like rigged.