POE Research Internship Experience with Natalie Rawlings 

"This summer, I was a Pediatric Oncology Education (POE) Student at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The POE program is an 11-week long research internship that offers students the ability to perform translational research of their interest, shadow physicians, scientists, and St. Jude Faculty and attend daily lectures on recent advances in pediatric cancer research. I performed research in the Leggas Lab, which focuses on characterizing Ewing sarcoma, a solid tumor cancer of the bone, along with optimizing and testing small molecule inhibitors that target the unique genome of Ewing sarcoma. My work focused on characterizing the differences in metabolic activity between Ewing sarcoma and similar aggressive cancers using metabolomics. I identified unique metabolites specific to certain Ewing sarcoma cell lines as well as metabolites directly related to drug treatments administered to the cancer cells. Another focus of my work was exploring the potential synergistic or additive effects of combination therapies that target the fusion oncoprotein that is the primary driver of Ewing sarcoma. It was such a privilege to have access to so much cutting-edge technology that is specifically tailored to curing pediatric cancers as well as being able to experience the epitome of translational research - patients receive care in the same building that research is done! This experience has opened my eyes to the insidious challenges of pediatric cancer as well as the phenomenal work being done on all fronts to overcome these challenges." ~ Natalie.