Only The Young

In this episode, Joanna and Sue interview Emma Lewis and Morgan McCrea, first-year PhD students in the Developmental and Regenerative Sciences program at UTSA. They discuss their research in neuroscience, particularly focusing on Alzheimer's disease, and share their personal motivations for pursuing this field. The conversation covers the challenges of funding in research, innovative techniques being used in studies, and their aspirations for the future of Alzheimer's treatments. The episode highlights the importance of research in understanding and potentially preventing neurodegenerative diseases.

Thanks For Listening!
Joanna Anderson & Sue Nicolaidis

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Researchers and Their Work
• 10:53 Personal Motivations Behind Neuroscience Research
• 13:51 Understanding Developmental and Regenerative Biology
• 13:55 Research Funding Challenges in Alzheimer's Studies
• 19:55 Exploring Alzheimer's Disease: Prevention and Treatment
• 24:38 Future Directions in Alzheimer's Research
• 29:53 The Role of Stem Cells in Future Medicine
• 34:46 Career Aspirations and Future Goals

Transcript

You Forgot (00:01)
Hi Joanna. What? Happy Monday. It's St. Patrick's Day today, right?

Jojo (00:02)
Bye! Happy Monday!

It is. I should be more knowledgeable about that since I'm like 75 % Irish.

You Forgot (00:15)
So am I. My maiden name was Dunn. D-U-N-N. Yeah, we're very Irish. I think I need to put on my shirt though. I have my dad's shirt from a bar called Irish Bobs from Youngstown. It's a classic. I bet I could get some cash for that. I mean, I never. It's priceless to me, but... I gotta put that on today.

Jojo (00:18)
Yeah, and Sloan.

Yep, but I'm not doing anything today.

No, never.

I'm not even wearing green, I'm fake.

You Forgot (00:45)
Did.

Well, you go to, did McKinney have a parade or?

Jojo (00:53)
Not a parade, but we went to, we always go to the farmer's market on Saturday mornings. And when we were walking through the square, they were having like a beer walk. So they had all these stands set up and all the restaurants and pubs were like getting their green beer ready. It was so cute. Everyone was wearing green. It's like ideal. It's like living in a Hallmark movie down here.

You Forgot (01:20)
Someone just, it was Jen. She was like, I kind of want to live where Joanna lives. It sounds so great. And I go, yeah, it really is. And she's like, but what about like, do you see the same people? And I go, no, they have like their downtown friends. then you have cocktails, eat some food, and then you go home. It's like, you go out, you see your friends. like, yeah, I'm like, it's.

Jojo (01:37)
We do.

Like last night, we

walked to dinner, to Cadillac Pizza, met some friends, walked back home. Was home before it was dark. Great.

You Forgot (01:56)
I'm gonna move to the square.

Jojo (01:57)
Jen needs to come visit. She would love it.

You Forgot (02:01)
Yeah, she's due for a visit, honestly. She said she misses Cher, my dog. She loves that dog. You either love Cher or you think she is a rat. I love her.

Jojo (02:15)
I her. I've never

seen any bad behavior from Shannon.

You Forgot (02:21)
Well, if I brought her around your dogs, you would see her eat them. So we're not going to do that. Yeah, she's really bad with like other dogs. It's not every dog. She's just like really unpredictable.

Jojo (02:35)
Well, aren't we all?

You Forgot (02:37)
Yes, she's a woman.

Jojo (02:39)
She's a woman. I meant to talk to you about this earlier, but I am obsessed with the new Chaperone song. Giver? Yeah, the country song? I love it.

You Forgot (02:47)
yeah, the one she did on SNL, The Giver.

Yeah, it's great.

I wonder if she's going have new music coming out within... I feel like... because that record was like 2023, honestly, right? At least... Maybe it's all country. Maybe she's going to pull a Beyonce.

Jojo (03:04)
Yeah, like two years old. I bet she is.

Ooh, I would love it.

You Forgot (03:13)
She said I've been seeing some interviews that she just grew up with that. Like her parents were like big George Strait fans and she's from Missouri, know, like Ozarks. Yeah. So it just makes sense. I mean, I don't think that you get stuck in a genre just because you might perform pop music. It doesn't mean you don't listen and are inspired by everything else.

Jojo (03:20)
Yes, Zuri, 100 % she grew up with that, yeah.

Well, like Lady Gaga, she did all kinds of different styles of music and now she's back to pop.

You Forgot (03:47)
Yeah, I haven't listened to that whole new record yet. Yeah. it's good.

Jojo (03:49)
Mayhem, I'm obsessed. I love it.

Yeah, I like it. It's really good. Someone said, is she reheating nachos? Like, you know, sometimes if you reheat nachos, they're not great. I'm like, no, she's not reheating nachos. It's good.

You Forgot (04:07)
rude. I'd like to see them put out a pop record.

Jojo (04:08)
I know.

Right.

You Forgot (04:13)
Well, I'll listen to it today and then we can talk all about it. What did you do? I don't know. We already talked about our weekend. I have one thing to say before we introduce the episode. I need to, rescind my recommendation for Dr. Odyssey and my love of all network shows this season. Dr. Odyssey is in its first season and jumped the shark already and

Jojo (04:42)
Already?

You Forgot (04:43)
Yes. And it's ironic that that's a, what is that? Like a phrase that, you know, means the series is, yeah, trope. But it was about sharks. No. And I am just, and it was just, I guess they're going for high drama, high intensity. And like, that's not what we want. We want the drag crews and we want the swingers crews and all the fun.

Jojo (04:53)
Like a trope.

Stop.

You Forgot (05:12)
things that they were doing before the weddings. It was two episodes. Did not finish the second. I'm not.

Jojo (05:21)
I have to say,

I didn't even start it.

You Forgot (05:25)
you'd like the first few episodes is great but anyway for all those people that take me up on my recommendations forget i said it

Jojo (05:28)
Okay.

Doctor Odyssey.

Okay. All right, so I'm super excited about our episode today.

You Forgot (05:43)
Yes, coming up we have an interview we did with Emma Lewis and Morgan McCree. They are first year students at the UT San Antonio Developmental and Regenerative Sciences PhD program. And they filled us in on all the research that they're doing there at their university in Alzheimer's.

Jojo (06:05)
I mean, super honored to have them on. They are extremely intelligent, ambitious, young. I just loved everything about this interview.

You Forgot (06:17)
Yep, they were incredible young women and I just sat there in awe of everything they were saying. mean, first of all, this is like my favorite age group, right? They're about the same age as my kids. And every time I spend time with my kids and their friends, you just think about how bright our future is going to be because they're going to be in charge of it. And it was just really exciting.

Jojo (06:42)
100%.

Well, we learned a lot. And I'm just so excited that they're conducting this research, because honestly, you and I might benefit from it in like 40 years.

You Forgot (06:55)
Yeah, and they did discuss how there have been budget cuts and how it's affecting them. So it's great. These girls are great. I hope we do more with them. I'd love to see them again. I told them we were going to do a field trip and come down to their lab.

Jojo (07:03)
Correct.

We're joking, we're doing that. I'm gonna make it happen.

You Forgot (07:17)
Yeah, like next week, before school lets out, you know?

Jojo (07:22)
Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, totally.

You Forgot (07:26)
Very impressive young ladies and you're gonna wanna listen to the rest of this.

Jojo (07:32)
Yep. Okay. I'll talk to you later. Bye.

You Forgot (07:36)
Okay, bye.

Jojo (07:46)
Okay, today on the podcast, we are honored to have Emma Lewis and Morgan McCree, first year students in the UTSA developmental and regenerative sciences PhD program. They're here to shed some light on the research being done right now in Alzheimer's world. Hi, Emma. Hi, Morgan. Welcome to the show.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (08:03)
Hi.

Hi, thank you. Thanks so much for having us. So excited to be here.

Jojo (08:09)
We're so excited and honored to have you. So to just jump right into it, can you give us a brief overview of your research and what you're studying in your PhD program?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (08:21)
Yeah, for sure. I could start us off. The PH program, as you said, is the Developmental and Regenerative Sciences program, but it really encompasses a lot more than just that. It's very similar to what students classically study is more like cell and molecular biology. And specifically in our program, it's within the umbrella of like the Neuroscience, Developmental and Regenerative Biology department. So there's actually a ton of neuroscience in our program.

as well as like a big group of scientists in our program with the Brain Health Consortium. So there's a lot of, there's a ton of different kinds of things that, you know, in general we study in our program, like disease, fundamental biology, neuroscience, et cetera. Yeah. And then a lot of our department also does stem cell research, looking at male fertility, different organoid models for

brain development and brain diseases. So that's all really interesting stuff. And it's a really cool overlap of different research topics under one big umbrella department of neuroscience, developmental and regenerative biology, which traditionally seem kind of different topics in the scientific world, but it's nice to be able to combine them a bit more translationally. Yeah.

Jojo (09:47)
Wow, mean, wow, okay. I mean, it's really impressive.

You Forgot (09:50)
I know.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (09:51)
Yeah, I mean,

we are.

Thank you. So we're still in our first year. that the first year of our PhD program looks a little bit different from what the rest of our research trajectory will look like since we're still so much in the learning and training phase. So for our first year, you have three laboratory rotations, almost like kind of semesters, kind of, but for your lab work instead of classes.

So you get to have a different experience with different principal investigators, other students and different techniques and areas of research that they're interested in. So it's a really nice way to get a widespread first experience when you might not know exactly, you don't even know what you don't know yet. And so it's kind of nice to have some experience like that. For sure.

Jojo (10:53)
That's great. How did you become interested in neuroscience and specifically in developmental and regenerative biology?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (11:01)
So for me, I became interested in neuroscience, honestly, for personal reasons. When I was a teenager, one of my grandmothers was diagnosed with ALS and very shortly after, my other grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And they both lived about one mile from me and I was used to seeing them every single day. And before that, they were perfectly healthy.

full of life and just to see them deteriorate so quickly and in completely almost opposite manners was obviously shocking and hard as anyone who knows anyone with any sort of neurodegenerative disease can understand. So that just really triggered all of these questions for me.

couldn't wrap my mind around how this could happen and how it could happen so drastically, so quickly and how many people are affected. And so I just could never really stop thinking about it. So that was for me what, and I was always fairly curious, but that was what really set me off on this path. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's been a little different. You know, I've already told you guys like,

Morgan and I are both here because she does very specifically neurodegenerative disease research and is interested in Alzheimer's disease. For me, I started off interested in Alzheimer's disease because also for personal reasons, I wanted to learn more about it because both of my grandmothers have also passed away from Alzheimer's disease. And that's something we've been dealing with like this year and last year a lot. It's very new for me. But then I got more interested in

more fundamental biology and development, just definitely more of the developmental and regenerative sciences portion of things. But it's really, really cool to see how it all connects and to be in this community with everyone. Even right now, like I think what Steven mentioned to you, like in my lab I'm working in now, is working a little bit with Alzheimer's disease patient cells. So, you know, it's always, always relevant, you know, and it's a big part of my life. So.

Jojo (13:19)
you say Alzheimer's patient cells, you mean like people that are still alive.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (13:24)
I'm actually not sure. think it's probably a little bit of both because you can culture. It's essentially stem cells with human induced pluripotent stem cells. So you can take them from blood samples. I think that's what typically blood or skin. But if you have blood samples from Alzheimer's disease patients, their protocols, I'm not totally familiar with how it's done in the lab, but you can...

Jojo (13:26)
Is that true?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (13:51)
them into like stem cells you can culture forever and ever and work with those. There's, we'll get into it more, but there's a lot you can do with the stem cell technology that we have available.

Jojo (14:03)
fascinating.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (14:05)
Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah, I've just, I think I was telling him like it feels a little surreal sometimes to just have like Alzheimer's disease patient cells in the palm of my hand. You know, it's like, you know, this is real stuff. And when I was younger and my grandmothers were sick, they both participated in clinical trials. And I didn't really know that at the time or necessarily know what that meant really. But as I got more involved in wanting to become

a scientist myself, my parents told me and they were like, hey, you know, your grandmother's both participated in some of the stuff that I think that you're wanting to do yourself. So that made it even more special to me to know that they participated in this kind of thing as well. And I don't know, there weren't great records kept of the, my parents didn't keep great records of the trials that they participated in.

So I don't know what they were. So I don't know more details than that. But just knowing in general that they were involved is really special to me and makes my own personal research matter a little more, you know.

Jojo (15:19)
Absolutely. Absolutely. What do you think, Sue?

You Forgot (15:23)
I think this is incredible. I think you guys are amazing and I'm really blown away by the two of you. We often find when we interview people that they are, whether we haven't met anyone like you two yet, researchers and scientists, but even lawyers, speech therapists that we've talked to, they're helping out the senior citizens and the Alzheimer's patients because they were personally affected.

Jojo (15:25)
I

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (15:27)
Thanks.

You Forgot (15:53)
And you guys going through that too and that hardship. But now look at you guys. I it's really incredible. Really, you should be really proud of yourself.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (16:03)
Thank you.

Thank you very much.

You Forgot (16:06)
Yeah. Gosh, I don't even know what to These questions are crazy, Joe. They really broke.

Jojo (16:13)
Well, okay, let's

just, for those of us who are not in the science world, even though I did teach science for 15 years, can you explain what developmental and regenerative biology means and how it relates to the brain?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (16:21)
for us.

Okay, I think I can do this one. We'll tag team. I think in this case with researching developmental and regenerative sciences in the brain, it's we when we say that we're wanting to understand how like a single cell embryo becomes a multicellular organism, you know, when you're developing like in your growth from like conception, you know, and you have all of these

stem cells that can become all kinds of different cell types. And it's important to understand how a cell decides to become a brain cell. And there's a lot that goes into that. And then additionally, in development, are studies. It's important to understand how neurodevelopmental disorders come about, disorders after birth.

And then that really ties into regenerative biology because being able to understand how, because again, we work with a lot of stem cells, which just are cells that could become all kinds of different kinds of tissue and cells. Sky's kind of a limit. If you understand how to generate a certain type of neuron from a stem cell, you can actually recapitulate that in a dish. And that's how we have neurons in culture. And then with that, you can study regenerative medicine.

again, like it's a ways off, but you you can, you know, generate these new neurons from stem cells, you can come up with, you know, transplantation therapies and stuff like that. can study, you know, manipulate them to study disease and study healthy cells. Like it's just, I don't know, it's a big question. It's a world of science you can do there. And both of us are interested really in like, and we'll talk about this more like causal, like I guess like more fundamental, like where the disease comes from, how

You know, you have, we're talking about like prevention, you know. Yeah.

Jojo (18:28)
That's

what we're really interested in as well. mean, obviously Sue's, both of her parents had Alzheimer's and dementia or your dad had dementia. My mom currently has Alzheimer's. She's in a memory care facility here in the area. So yeah, we're really interested in what causes it. We're trying to like prevent it by doing all the things. So we really like, you guys are really like, I know it seems like you're just researchers or whatever, but you actually are really changing lives. Like it's incredible.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (18:58)
means so much. One day at a time. One day. Thank you. It's a process, but I was really excited to start with this PhD program because specifically because of the regenerative biology aspect. Since my interests are specifically degenerative diseases, I wanted to look at the flip side and

So we're able to regenerate some cells, some tissues. What could we possibly do to apply the features of those cells to cell types that might need a little extra help? Because neurons also in general, they don't regenerate like a lot of other cell types do. Like you get new skin cells all the time. You don't get new neurons. And so

even a healthy neuron doesn't normally regenerate the same well other cells, other cell types would. So I find it interesting to study the potential factors with other cell types that make them regenerate. So potentially we could apply them to healthy neurons and then in the long run, even the unhealthy neurons. And so I was really interested to come look at the neurodegenerative diseases from a regenerative perspective.

So that's where I kind of came into this exact field and it was really cool to find a program that really specifically so overlapped the regenerative biology aspect with neuroscience specifically. So I was really excited about that.

Jojo (20:44)
It's great. Your school's doing really great things, which begs the question, how is your research funded? And is your funding affected by the recent efficiency protocols of our administration?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (20:50)
What?

Yes, is. Immediate answer is...

It's looking that way. A lot of our funding comes from the NIH and with indirect research costs being cut, those are the costs that keep the lights on the buildings, routine maintenance that's required for super expensive and elaborate lab equipment. And so even though these cuts are in

quote unquote, indirect and not necessarily, they're not actually cutting the Alzheimer's disease research, but by cutting the funding to the building where you do the Alzheimer's disease research, it makes it a lot harder to do that. So we're hoping that with all of these judge orders to halt the freezing of everything, hopefully.

Damage can be kept at a minimum, but absolutely. Even research that is not considered DEI or any of the other flagged, quote, whatever they're calling the flagged research, even that research, that's not all that's being affected. Everything's being affected. Alzheimer's disease, biomedical research, genetic diseases, everything is being affected. Yeah, exactly.

Jojo (22:27)
Yeah.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (22:27)
We're like not, we're in an okay position right now as first year students in the program funded by the department. It'll be a problem in the future and it's really a big problem right now. They're rescinding offers for incoming first year students left and right. And faculty hiring is more difficult. Incoming students are left with nothing. because they're like significantly cutting the number of students that are being admitted into these programs. like, I mean, there's an immediate

consequences of like just the amount of research going on being reduced because of training like it's impacting trainees and you know, we could talk about like international trainees as well. That's oh, yeah, there's a whole it's a whole rabbit hole. Yeah, the supplemental funding so like diversity funds for like undergraduates and trainees in the labs are just being cut out of grants because you can have like extra money tacked onto a grant for

other just like workforce, hires, undergraduates and stuff that are just getting like cut off. It's yeah. It's a we're at the mercy of

Jojo (23:32)
It's a mess. you know,

we're being told it's an indirect cut. Alzheimer's research is not being cut, but it is effectively right? Is that what you're telling us?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (23:45)
It affects everybody. being affected. What they're saying is technically true. No, they're not cutting the Alzheimer's disease research, but they are cutting all of the indirect costs, therefore hindering the ability to conduct Alzheimer's research. So essentially, yes, it's being affected for sure, 100%. Yeah.

It's just, I'm not super informed on all of the legal aspects of everything. Me as Technically, none of it is legal. And that's what I'm hoping that the judge, I'm seeing more orders for them to have to halt what they're doing. So I'm just hoping that they keep the damage at a minimum because so much of it is illegal. So I hope that I'm choosing to be optimistic. Yeah. I mean, what can we do? Yeah.

Jojo (24:38)
Love it. mean, yeah, what else can we do? Okay, so let's get into like the crux of Alzheimer's. Are you studying how to prevent it, how to slow it down, or maybe even reverse some of the damage? Like, what do you know about that? Or what can you speak?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (24:53)
So

we're kind of doing different things right now. So that could be, that's honestly great because we kind of cover a couple of bases. So I'm wanting to look at some of the causation aspects and therefore possible preventative measures as well. So that's something that I've found really interesting. Again, I'm still kind of just getting my feet wet.

with my own research, but it's really been exciting to start doing that and I can talk a little bit more about the details of that in a second, but Emma's doing a different avenue, so I'll let her give a little intro with that. Sure. Yeah, there's a couple things. What I specifically am working on is more like a technical methodology for silencing genes that are more highly expressed in Alzheimer's patients. And what's that mean exactly?

Yeah. It's just in disease there are often, I guess, I don't know, that might be the best I can do. Like, there are just certain aspects and traits that like really stand out in these diseases and there's ways to like basically silence them and then see what happens. And there's are just very like molecular ways that you can identify like a disease versus a healthy cell. Like the phenotypes. Yeah.

Phenotypes, yeah. Lymeth? Yeah, yes. So it's more like this.

Jojo (26:24)
Wait, some

of us that are not in the know explain what a phenotype is.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (26:29)
See, that's what I'm saying. Like now I have to explain what a phenotype is. I was trying not to say phenotype. there's like your genes and then the way that they express, you know, like your hair color, your eye color, your phenotype. It's what you can see, like what is the physical, like the way it's, yeah. So things like that. Like what I'm really doing is more like a technical, like CRISPR editing and stuff, but that's like a whole other avenue. There's another project going on.

with a neuroscience PhD student in my lab, which is super interesting. It's more of the stem cell stuff, except skipping the stem cell step. And how can I explain that? Like he's trying to make like human, like wound healing cells, like into directly into a type of neuron, skipping. You can go from a like skin cell to a stem cell to a neuron.

But when you go to the stem cell intermediate, it wipes out all of these essential aspects of the cell. so he's trying to skip that. Essential markers of aging, actually. It kind of renews the cell to its youth. And if you can skip that step, you can have neurons where you can actually study age, aging markers. And so he's working real hard on that. And it's more of a modeling.

situation where there's a lot of research going on here where people are trying to model disease in a dish or have a good representation like that and then study it later. So that's kind of like what I'm doing. And the modeling in the dish can just give an easier environment to manipulate and study exactly what the cellular and molecular aspects of the disease are doing that aren't easy to do in a body.

So yeah, just gives multiple avenues.

Jojo (28:31)
And then Morgan, you're doing something a little different, correct?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (28:36)
So I am wanting to study what's causing Alzheimer's disease and so what I'm looking at is a metabolic and energy component. And so the kind of hypothesis idea that I'm pursuing is that there is a breakdown in the metabolic pathways

You Forgot (28:46)
you

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (29:04)
of some sort that basically damage the powerhouse, the mitochondria of cell, and then that causes all sorts of problems and that's what I think is, I think that's a good avenue of,

of study, especially based on current research that I've seen over the past few years, looking at the importance of respiratory health and cardio in Alzheimer's prevention and they're finding it to be so linked to brain inflammation. It's been really interesting to pursue a different aspect than what has previously been looked at because that's

something that the field has realized in the past few years, we're starting to look into some other avenues of research than what has historically been mostly focused on. So there are a lot of new ideas that have been popping up, which has been really exciting to start investigating.

Jojo (30:09)
Do you feel like your research will result in any sort of treatments for Alzheimer's, say, in me and Sue's lifetime?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (30:18)
It's hard to say because things can happen so slowly or so quickly. It really depends on what we find. If something is found to be very correlated, then it's really exciting and that's an area that's gonna be a lot more quickly pursued. if...

we find less results, it's going to take a little longer to keep working. So I think it really varies. And I think the next few years will be very telling to see where, especially the regenerative medicine field goes, because it's still a fairly new field in science. And there's a lot of ethical ramifications they're working through still. So we'll see. I could see it going either way. We'll see. I hope so. Yeah.

Jojo (31:14)
So too, and my follow up was gonna be, do you think that will involve stem cells?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (31:14)
or

think a lot of future medicine will... In one way or another, because there's a lot of things you can do. We've actually recently... We learned about this in class. Yeah. You can take somebody's... There's different avenues. So not just like what you think of... I think when people think of stem cells, they think of like taking damaged cells in someone's body and like growing the back or like making a new arm or stuff like that. But you can... Kind of like how I explained, you can take like a sample of someone's blood.

and that has that individual's genome. Like their genes are in those cells in their serum. And what? And why blood? Why can we take blood? Because the blood cells can be turned into stem cells. Because, their lineage that they're a part of is very adaptable and malleable. Malleable, that's a better word. So blood's an easy... It's easy to extract and it's a quick process to...

spin their blood cells, so it's a good option for... It's good for, yeah, what is it, like customized treatment. Because if you have those cells, can, yeah, take someone's blood cells, make them into stem cells, and then make them into like, what is like your favorite cell type, muscle cells or something. And then you can test drugs on them, you can understand like how the muscle develops with like the, you know, whatever genes are, you know, going wrong in their...

in their cells. There's just a lot of things you can do. There's like transplantation therapy as well, but that is, think the farthest off that is, cause it's just hard to, the problem there is that the cells, you need to have them nowhere to go. It's really that simple. They basically needed GPS and we haven't really figured that out yet. So yeah, there are a lot of, and then there's also different.

Jojo (33:12)
Okay.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (33:15)
types of genome editing that's also a little bit far off just because of ethical ramifications because how do they know this gene really does only have one effect? So that's something else that I could see taking a while to get approved just because of the potential for off-target effects. Yeah, right now I think the only CRISPR therapy on

like available is for sickle cell anemia? For sickle cell anemia and then with patients, they still can't do anything on babies since they don't have a choice. So that's fair. It's tough. It's tough. So I think the field is advancing, but since this is all just so new, I think that there are a lot of things that have to be worked through.

to make sure everything's fully safe. But I'm hopeful. It's super exciting. It's exciting to see the progress of science in general, year to year, five years, 10 years. So whenever I get a little frustrated, I take a step back and look at the bigger picture. And I think about what we didn't know 10 years ago, know, so it gives me hope. So I think it's exciting to see the field progressing.

Jojo (34:39)
I love it. And that brings me to my last question. Where do you guys see yourselves in 10 years?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (34:46)
Cool. For me, 10 years. Yeah. I am in a place right now where I still want to do research forever. Me too. So, know, PhD hopefully will take like four years. Four years. It's helpful. They sometimes will take a lot longer than that. to seven years. Seven years is too long. Yeah. I want to be done sooner than that too. I...

I want to keep doing research. I want to do my PhD and then do a postdoc, which could be people do postdoc research, postdoctoral research. You just join a lab, know, do whatever you want. Basically, you can just get funded. Hopefully the funding situation is improved by then. Yeah. You know, and you can do that kind of research anywhere from like two to seven years. So I mean, in 10 years, my overall goal is to be a principal investigator myself, get a faculty position and run my own lab.

The thing is I just don't know exactly what direction I want to take yet. I'm actually, since joining this program, I'm notorious for changing my mind. I was really interested in neurodegenerative diseases and now I'm really interested in reproductive and fertility and development. So I mean, it could all come together someday. Maybe I'll study neurodevelopment, who knows? I just follow whatever interests me from day to day. Suddenly that's my favorite thing.

Hopefully that can work to my advantage. Yeah, leaves you with some open paths. I personally, I don't quite know exactly what my future will look like, but I also, like Emma, I for sure I still want to be doing research. I want to be a neuroscientist for life. But I do want that to change a little bit as I grow.

Which is one of the reasons I wanted to do a PhD fairly early in my career. I wanted to have the opportunity to develop as far as I see fit based on the experiences that I have. I would love to go into some sort of industry job for a little while to get, I don't know, think drug development would be really interesting, something I would really like to do, but I would also love to teach at some point.

I don't really know what order that would come in, but I know I want to do both at some point. So I'm just keeping my options open and I'm trying my best to look at what's out there and also know that things might open up in the next few years. And like Emma said, it will depend on the funding situation with that, what that all looks like. Everyone who wants to do research needs to have a Plan B. It's just everyone has a Plan B. Especially right faculty members have Plan Bs.

still like tenure faculty members still have a plan B.

Jojo (37:31)
I just.

That is actually so sad.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (37:36)
I

would agree. I it really has more to do with like how much work it is. Like it can be a very painful job to have. You have to be very like dedicated. Yes, but I also think that it's, yeah, yeah, I think there's, are a lot of things. I haven't been steered away yet.

Jojo (37:52)
Well, listen, girls, we

You Forgot (37:52)
You have to be.

Jojo (37:54)
just thank you so much for coming on, educating us for all the work that you are doing to really change lives. And Sue and I were just talking about how we just love your generation so much. You guys are our leaders.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (38:08)
Thank you. Thank you.

We're just doing our best out here. We're just surviving. Thank you. It really means a lot. It's been great. Yes.

You Forgot (38:23)
question. How did you

find this program? there a lot throughout the country that you know something that you really specifically wanted to focus on? Like how did you end up at this school in this program?

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (38:36)
So for me, I ended up at this school, at this program very, very specifically. During one of my college classes, we had a research assignment and I picked Alzheimer's disease since that was my interest. And I found this scientist who produced a lot of papers that were so interesting to me and a different.

Avenue of Alzheimer's research than I had previously been super familiar and it was focused on mitochondrial dysfunction and It blew my mind changed changed my world and I was just so fascinated and was like I have to work with the scientist and I found out he was in San Antonio And coming from UT Austin. I was like, well, that's really convenient. That's not far at all So that's how I ended up here. I wanted to work with one guy specifically

And here I am. So very lucky, very lucky. See, that's a great story. I don't have one of those. For me, it was definitely like looser. Like I was looking all over the place, but also like local in Texas. I did my undergrad at Texas State University and I just knew like my undergrad research was more like, it was also, it was a neuroblastoma like cancer treatment research. So with like that experience, I just knew I wanted to do some sort of like cell bio like disease research.

Jojo (39:34)
That's awesome.

You Forgot (39:34)
Hey!

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (40:01)
Avenue and I honestly just thought like the DRS program seemed like really cool and catchy and like the people seemed nice and so I applied. Like it was I had a really fun time like meeting all the faculty and interviewing and stuff and I was like yeah that's like that's the place I want to be. And like I appreciate still like there's a lot of different research going on this program and that has benefited me greatly because I've rotated in like three very different labs now. I've changed like I've had a lot of different interests already even

You Forgot (40:19)
Great.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (40:30)
within the first two semesters I've been here. it was good. Like something I definitely was looking for was a program that was pretty broad with like the areas of research available. And there's a lot of collaboration too, which is just really awesome. Yeah, it's really nice.

Jojo (40:48)
That's amazing. Sue, you have anything else? I don't either. I'm just so happy y'all came on to talk to us.

You Forgot (40:48)
I love it. I love it. No, I don't.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (40:55)
Yeah!

Thank you so much. It's been super fun. Thank you.

Jojo (41:00)
welcome and we want to keep up with you and see like how things are going so sorry we become like stalkers but that's what's good

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (41:03)
I

No!

You Forgot (41:07)
Can

we come to the lab? We want to come to the lab!

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (41:07)
No, I'd love it. I'd love it.

Yes, we

would love field trip. It would be so fun. It would be really fun. Well, and I really appreciate that you guys do this podcast and bring light to something that affects so many of us and is so personal and hard to talk about. So thank you guys for doing this podcast. And thank you for your interest in baby researchers like us. So really, really, really appreciate it.

Jojo (41:17)
Totally.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (41:40)
We were looking forward to this a lot and you guys are so awesome. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

You Forgot (41:46)
We've been looking forward to this. was

our favorite interview.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (41:51)
Oh my gosh,

bye guys, it's like my only interview. I know, it's been so amazing. I know, I love it. love it. you so much. Happy Friday.

You Forgot (41:58)
Now you guys are, it's exciting and.

Jojo (41:58)
All right, well, thank you guys so much,

and we'll talk to you soon.

You Forgot (42:02)
Thank you.

Jojo (42:06)
Happy Friday!

You Forgot (42:06)
Happy Friday.

Okay, I'm hit end and then.

Emma Lewis And Morgan McCrea (42:10)
Okay. Okay.