Skill builder
Amgen Scholars faculty mentor Suzie Pun steers students to success

Fresh out of graduate school at the California Institute of Technology in 2000, Suzie Pun joined her PhD adviser Mark Davis in his brand new biotechnology start-up, Insert Therapeutics, in Pasadena, Calif. She spent her first week in the empty space, assembling and arranging equipment and fixing an ant infestation.

She and the few other research colleagues then got to work—days, nights and weekends— synthesizing and testing polymers for drug delivery that had shown some promise in cell culture experiments. Every single experiment was important. “For me it was not only intense time-wise, but also pressure wise,” she recalls. “We knew we had just a certain amount of funding and we had to get results.”

Although she eventually decided she missed academic science, and returned three years later, Pun is always drawing on her experience in industry. "I am really glad I got [the start-up experience]," she says. "It helps me in the way I do my research now because I often think about whether the questions we are asking are important for clinical translation." Working in small teams that include students and postdocs with varied skill sets, her lab group at the University of Washington in Seattle develops materials and biochemical methods to remedy barriers to drug delivery. Inspired by how much she learned as an undergraduate, she signed up to become a mentor for Amgen Scholars in 2007. Her current and former mentees are now reaping the rewards.

Mentor mindset:

Pun expects a lot from her undergraduates, but in return she gives them every opportunity to build their skills for careers in industry and academia. And her students are proud of her: In 2008, she received University of Washington’s Undergraduate Mentoring Award.

Pun's goal for students is to have them doing their own independent research — for example, knowing how to design and conduct experiments using the right controls — by the time they leave the group. About half of the students end up co-authoring publications based on these projects. Most of them go on to do research, whether in a non-profit research institute or at a university.

Kathy Wei, a first-year graduate student at Stanford University, is one of these students. Wei started in Pun's lab shortly before getting an Amgen Scholars fellowship in 2007.

In her summer with the Amgen Scholars Program, Wei worked in Pun’s lab with a graduate student to develop new gene therapy methods that don't rely on viruses to deliver genes into cells. Researchers working in this area are hoping to treat diseases by replacing missing or abnormal genes with good copies. The problem with viruses—which are expert at delivering genetic material into cells—is that they can spur immune responses in the body, and can even insert unwanted bases into the DNA. Non-viral delivery methods could be safer, Pun theorizes.

Wei and her graduate student mentor were testing DNA attached to a polymer that was modified with a particular peptide. In initial screens, the peptide looked like it might help DNA and polymer complex get from the cell's membrane to its nucleus, where the complex is processed.  

To see whether the added peptide would improve delivery of polymer-DNA complex into the cell, Wei bound the polymer to a piece of DNA that encodes a luminescent protein. Once delivered to the appropriate place, the cell gives off light. She then cultured cells with her polymer-DNA and measured the light produced by the cells. Compared to polymers lacking the peptide, the peptide-modified system was found inside a greater number of cells. Although the group was ultimately not able to reproduce the finding, Pun has had success with some of her other systems and is testing these in mouse models, in collaboration with Philip Horner, professor of neurological surgery.

Sentiments of success:

Pun regularly set aside time for Wei and other students to come into her office. Wei used the time to ask quick questions about her experiments and for feedback on her senior project proposal. "As an undergrad, it's really intimidating to go talk to a professor unless you have a really good reason," Wei says. "When she gave people the opportunity to sign themselves up, it made it easier to have conversations with her."

Former postdoc Justin Saul, an assistant professor in biomedical engineering at Wake Forest University Health Sciences Medical Center, echoes this sentiment. "I can remember that even undergraduates could get as much access to her as the fellows," he says. "That says a lot about how involved she is."

Wei stayed until the end of her senior year, for a total of two and a half years. When she started, she had never done cell culture, never worked with DNA and didn't know how to use a pipette.

Not only did Wei learn these molecular techniques, but she learned to present data and converse with graduate students and postdocs in the lab. And in 2008, she won a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, one of the most prestigious awards for undergraduate researchers that grants up to $7,500 in an academic year.

Pun goes out of her way to help undergraduates succeed, says Christopher Mount, now a junior in bioengineering who also stayed on in her lab after his summer with the Amgen Scholars in 2009. When he was preparing his application for a 2010 Goldwater Scholarship—which he later won—Pun ensured that the group would have a manuscript ready on Mount’s research so that he could include it in his application resume. “I couldn't ask for a more supportive mentor who places such a high value in her undergraduates, myself included,” he says.