PROFESSIONAL SCIENCE MASTERS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER students are doing a fabulous job! DECEMBER 2014  ISSUE #3 Program Updates by Jennifer Dever, Director Happy Holidays! The Fall semester has gone by so fast. Here are some highlights: Class updates: Advanced Research Methods: Several students worked side-byside with distributed bio CSO Jacob Glanville to create and test a new human antibody phage display library with unprecedented diversity. Others in the class worked on self directed projects using siRNA or CRISPER-Cas9 to select and target genes. Several techniques were used to characterize cell lines including qPCR, flow cytometry and confocal microscopy. Bioinformatics: Students participated on data analysis for on real-world projects. They partnered directly with several bay area companies such as: BioMarin, Buck Institute on Aging, and BSRI. They presented their final posters at the 13th Annual CS night (David Louis seen below). comfortable meeting industry people such as the Changing the Face of Biotech Leadership event at Mission Bay and the QB3 Quick Pitch. We also were able to meet with Ryan Bethencourt, Program Director and Venture Partner at Indi Bio to learn all about his work with biohacking and venture capitol. Rosemary Clark networking with Genentech Oncology Strategic Analysit Rich Price. Spring 2015 Internship Companies AcertaPharma, Bayer, BioMarin, BSRI, distributed bio, LakePharma, Plexxikon and Natera Internship Seminar: Students worked on cover letters, resumes and interviewing skills. Several networking activities helped students become more PROFESSIONAL SCIENCE MASTERS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER | Issue # 3 Nikola Kondov and Walt (Matt) Wong get a paper in PNAS: USF PSM people presenting and publishing Moira Gunn gives a TED Talk at the TEDxPurdueU 2014: Professor Gunn who teaches several MBA core classes in the program- spoke about the “innovation cascade”: https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=flhnslllBnI Working with Terry Ng at BSRI (Blood Systems Research Institute) Nikola and Matt were able to be on the paper: Preservation of viral genomes in 700y-old caribou feces from a subarctic ice patch, published in PNAS in October. The work was featured in the Discovery News, LA Times, and New Scientist. They characterized one complete DNA and one partial RNA genome. They found that cryogenically preserved materials can store ancient viruses which may be regenerated. 2 FAST FACT: $2.8 B Sales of Gilead Sciences blockbuster Sovaldi in just the 3 rd quarter. The Hepatitis C treatment costs $84,000 for a 12 week course. Sales made up 47% of Gilead’s total revenue in the third quarter. Is this cost too high? Their new drug Hep C Harvoni is about to hit the market with an even higher price tag. Jennifer Dever and Hai Nguyen’s work was recently accepted in Copeia: Comparing DNA sequence from both mitochondrial and nuclear regions of several southeast Asian frogs, Dever, Nguyen and Wilkinson were able to rediscover and redescribe a frog from Myanmar (Burma) not observed since 1888. Theloderma phrynoderma (the bug-eyed tree frog, shown on right) was collected by members of the California Academy of Sciences. Pub Night! Hai Nguyen and Dr. Tzagarakis-Foster taking a selfie at the Embarcadero! Students and Professors Lai and Tzagarakis-Foster hanging out at Kezar Pub to kick off the new semester.