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It was her childhood peanut allergy that sparked Ayesha Ng’s fascination with the human body. “Seeing this severe reaction happening in my body and not knowing what was going on – it made me much more curious about biology and living systems,” says Ng.
She didn’t exactly plan it that way. But during his three-and-a-half years at MIT, Ng, a double major in Biology and Cognitive and Brain Sciences from the Los Angeles, Calif., Area, conducted research and took courses examining just about every level of human health – from cellular to societal.
Most recently, her passion for medicine and health equity led her to the National Foundation for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where, this summer, she worked on developing guidelines. guidelines to combat health disparities on Covid from states and local health jurisdictions. -19 data dashboards. Now, as an aspiring doctor in the midst of the medical school application process, Ng gets a feel for how microbiological, physiological, and social systems interact to affect a person’s health.
Start small
Throughout his freshman year at MIT, Ng studied health biology at the cellular level. Specifically, she studied the effects of fasting and aging on the regeneration of intestinal stem cells, which are located in human intestinal crypts and continually divide and reproduce. Understanding these metabolic mechanisms is crucial, as their deregulation can lead to age-related diseases such as cancer.
“This experience allowed me to broaden my technical skills, getting used to so many types of molecular biology techniques straight away, which I really enjoyed,” says Ng of his time at the Whitehead Institute. for Biomedical Research in the laboratory of Professor David Sabatini.
“After a while, I realized that I also wanted to study science on a broader, more macro level, instead of just the microbiology and molecular biology that we were studying in Course 7,” says Ng of his major. in biology.
In addition to studying the biology of cancer, Ng had developed a curiosity about the human brain and how it works. “I was really interested in this because my grandfather has dementia,” says Ng.
Seeing her grandfather’s cognitive decline, she was inspired to get involved with MIT BrainTrust, a student organization that provides a social support network to people in the Boston, Massachusetts area who have brain damage. “We have these meetings, where I’m one of the only students creating a safe space where we can bring all these people with brain damage together,” says Ng of the peer support aspect of the program. . “They can really share their challenges and experiences with each other.”
Investigate the brain
To pursue her interest in brain research and the societal impact of head trauma, Ng visited the University of Hong Kong last summer after her first year as a Chinese MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives Fellow. (MISTI). Together with Professor Raymond Chang, she began to examine neurodegenerative diseases and used tissue-cleaning techniques to visualize brain structures of mice in 3D at cellular resolution. “It was personally meaningful for me to research this and learn more about dementia,” says Ng.
Back at MIT in her sophomore year, Ng was sure she wanted to continue studying the brain. She began working on Alzheimer’s disease research at MIT Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in the lab of Professor Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT. Most of the existing research on Alzheimer’s disease has been conducted at the bulk tissue level, focusing on the role of neurons in neurodegeneration associated with aging.
Ng’s work with Tsai considers the complexity of alterations between genes and less abundant cell types, such as microglia, astrocytes, and other supporting glial cells that become deregulated in the brains of patients with D’s disease. ‘Alzheimer’s. Considering the interplay between and within cell types during neurodegeneration is very intriguing to her. While some molecular processes are protective, other destructive ones occur simultaneously and can exist even in the same type of cell. This complexity has made the mechanistic basis of Alzheimer’s progression and research much more elusive.
“It’s really interesting to see how heterogeneous and complex the responses are in the brain of Alzheimer’s disease,” says Ng of the research program with Tsai, founding director of the Aging Brain Initiative at MIT. “I really think about these new potential drug targets to improve the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease in the future because I have seen, with my grandfather in particular, how much treatment is really lacking in the field. of neurodegeneration. No treatment has been able to stop or even slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
His research project at Tsai Lab relies on a technology called single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq), which extracts genomic information contained in individual cells. This is followed by computational dimension reduction and clustering algorithms to examine how Alzheimer’s disease differently affects specific genes and cell types.
“With this project, we were able to use single-core RNA sequencing to really examine the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease,” says Ng. “And with single cell technology, we are able to observe brain tissue at a much higher resolution, which allows us to see that there is so much heterogeneity in the brain.
After conducting over a year of research on Alzheimer’s disease, then taking a course in human physiology in his third year, Ng decided to add a second major in brain and cognitive sciences to better understand specifically the functioning of the nervous system in the body.
“This course really made me realize that I really love organ systems and wanted to study by looking at more physiological mechanisms,” says Ng. “It was really great at the end of my college career to get more into a very specific system.
Medicine and society
Having gained a perspective on cellular and microbiological systems and human organs, Ng decided to zoom out, doing an internship last summer at the National Foundation for the CDC. She found the opportunity through MIT’s PKG Center, applied as one of 60 applicants, and was selected for a team of four. There, as a member of the CDC Foundation’s Health Equity Strike Team, she examined how to increase the transparency of publicly available Covid-19 data on health disparities and how the rhetoric related to health equity can be changed in public health messages. This involved tapping into data on the demographics of those most affected during Covid-19 – including how infection and death rates differ greatly based on social factors, including housing conditions, socioeconomic status , race and ethnicity.
“Thinking through all of these factors, we have compiled a set of best practices on how to present data on Covid-19, what data should be collected, and tried to push them to help jurisdictions as best recommendations. practices, ”says Ng. “It really increased my interest in health equity and made me realize how important public health is too.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Ng is spending the first semester of his senior year at home with his family in the Los Angeles area. “I really miss people and not being able to interact with not only other students and peers but also professors,” she says. “I really wanted to hang out with friends and just explore MIT more, which I haven’t always had the chance to do in recent years.”
Still, she continues to participate in both BrainTrust and MIT’s Asian dance team, remotely, through weekly practices on Zoom.
“I think dancing is one of the biggest stress relievers for me; I had never done dance before going to college. Meeting this team and joining this community allowed me not only to connect to my Asian cultural roots, but also to expose myself to this new art form where I could really learn to express myself on stage ”, explains Ng . “And it really was a source of relief for me to just release all the worries I have, and increased my sense of self-awareness and self-confidence.
Based on the many experiences she has had at MIT, both inside and outside the classroom, Ng plans to continue studying both medicine and public health. She is excited to explore different potential specialties and is currently the most intrigued by the surgery. No matter what specialty she chooses, she is determined to include health equity and cultural sensitivity in her practice.
“Seeing surgeons, I personally think that being able to physically heal a patient with my own hands would be the most rewarding feeling,” says Ng. “I will strive, as a physician, to use the platform I own to advocate for patients and to truly empower health care systems to overcome disparities.
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