Danica Dy stepped out of her comfort zone to build new bioinformatic tools in the biopharmaceutical industry.
This summer Danica Dy made a bold but strategic move to enhance her skillset and prepare for her future career. She completed a bioinformatics internship focused on cancer research with IQVIA. Dy, a graduate student in Robert Wirka’s lab in the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, specializes in cardiovascular research. She investigates the molecular drivers of cardiovascular disease and mostly uses classic wet lab cell biology methods such as cell culture, protein overexpression, and histology.
“Coming into it, one of the concerns I had was, do I have enough of the bioinformatic background to be successful in this internship,” said Dy. The internship was organized through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Training Initiatives in Biomedical and Biological Sciences (TIBBS) ImPACT program, which offers graduate students an opportunity to complete a one-month full time or two-month part time internship in a career area of their choice. The program partners with a range of organizations in the biopharmaceutical, scientific communication, and higher education fields.
Most students who participate in the internship use it to explore careers that they already have some training in to transition into a full-time job after graduation. Dy saw it as an opportunity to enhance her skills in an area where she had limited experience. She reached out to IQVIA and interviewed. Ultimately her ability to dissect a problem and her enthusiasm to learn earned her the position.
Building something new using old skillsÂ
“The partnership worked out and I was able to actually leverage my background in cell biology in a bioinformatics context,” said Dy. At IQVIA, she was tasked with developing a bioinformatic program to filter large RNA datasets from patients with cancer and pull-out genes in hopes of identifying a pan housekeeping gene for all cancers. The challenge for Dy was slicing and organizing this real world data in a way that made sense biologically.
“For me, coming from the angle of having worked in molecular and cellular biology, I have an idea of what we know are housekeeping genes, what we should consider, and what are the important conditions for how genes are differentially expressed. Introducing that piece of how we approach building the program was what I brought to the internship,” said Dy.
Ultimately, Dy’s approach found a few genes that could potentially qualify as pan cancer housekeeping genes in solid tumor samples. Interestingly, some of the typical culprits that scientists tend to think about as reliable housekeeping genes such as GAPDH performed poorly. Instead, her program found different groups of more reliable housekeeping genes based on solid vs. liquid tumors and originating tissue type.
“Danica has gone above and beyond in giving her time and effort to wrap up the project and create a script that is ready to go for detecting housekeeping genes. She incorporated her own research and knowledge to the project, adding new perspective and value,” wrote Douglas Wilson, Dy’s manager at IQVIA.
Leaving an impactÂ
Next, the team at IQVIA will pass the Dy’s script to their assay development team. The plan is for the team to eventually feed RNA sequencing data from IQVIA clinical trials into the program to see what housekeeping genes it suggests for developing better, more robust assays.
“In academia, we focus on novelty, we’re often chasing our curiosity, which is great,” said Dy. Her manager at IQVIA explained that in industry the focus is more on optimizing and tool building. Dy also noted that industry research required more collaboration across departments and sectors to bring a tool or discovery to reality.
“Just having the exposure to an industry environment was immensely beneficial. It felt like a black box before having this internship because all I’ve known is lab academia,” said Dy. “It also helped me figure out that I have skills that are transferable. The way a PhD program teaches you how to think and approach a problem is the core of what you get out of it because I can take off my cardiovascular biology hat and switch over to cancer informatics. That was surprising, which was really great. I didn’t realize I could do that.”
Dy would encourage other students to apply for the ImPACT program. She believes that stepping out of the lab environment helps shift students’ focus and helps them execute tasks for their PhD research with a new set of eyes and a better idea of the future ahead.
“For students concerned about having a skill or knowledge gap, that’s healthy,” said Dy. “The reality is, and my manager said this too, you always want to use the next opportunity, whether it’s a job or an internship to fill a new skill or to learn something you don’t 100% know. It’s a learning experience. Just take the jump and trust that your skills will translate.”
Written by Tiffany Garbutt, PhD
This article was originally published on December 5, 2024 in the CBP In the Loop: Year in Review Newsletter.