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“НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, БЕРЕЗЕНЬ 2009 27 Natalie’s Quest Natalie O. Karpinich Natalie O. Karpinich was born and raised in Wilkes - Barre, Pennsylvania, with a more or less typical immersion into hromada life. Typical in the sense that she attended Saturday Ukrainian school and was a member of Plast; atypical in the sense that her involvement in these activities meant a very long - dista nce commute from Wilkes - Barre to the suburbs of Philadelphia to attend classes and scout meetings. There were additional long commutes to summer Plast camps and a summer abroad sojourn at Kyiv’s Mohyla Academy, with courses in Ukrainian language and histor y and dorm life with native Ukrainian students as well as other diaspora young people. Raised in this milieu, Dr. Karpinich is also a product of the broader American landscape and it s educational system. During a telephone interview, she stated that she f irst became interested in the world of science as a child, an interest that may have been partly fed by her scouting experience in Plast, but was rather more likely an extension of science courses in the elementary school and high school experiences that l ed to a B.S. in Biology from Wilkes University (1998), a Ph.D. in Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia (2004), and her current position as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Genetics at the University o f North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Karpinich explained the nature and substance of her work as a research scientist during a two - hour telephone interview, which I approached with some initial agita, convinced that my liberal arts/humanities background w ould make it im - possible for me to grasp the essence of her work and its complexities. It was rather surprising and gratifying, therefore, to find that the things she discussed with such passion and enthusiasm were presented in a manner that was both fasc inating and lucid — an unexpectedly easy journey into a mysterious realm of scientific research on cell behavior, tumors, pharmacology, surgery, the quest for better patient care, and the quest for cure. The story of her work began with an explanation of ce ll apoptosis (in layman’s terms, cell suicide), which was the subject of her doctoral thesis. Apoptosis, she explained, is a natural process in living organisms when cells shut down in environments and circumstances that make it “not worth it to live.” The explanation included, as well, the contrastive behavior of cancer cells, which do not die in such environments and circumstances but instead, continue growing and can ultimately result in tumor development. It is on this aberrant behavior that the young r esearcher has focused her attention — specifically on studying cells as a component of human diseases and examining “when things go wrong and why things go wrong.” In her work at the University of North Carolina’s genetics laboratory, Dr. Karpinich is curren tly conducting mouse - model research as a basis for studying human cancers and how loss of particular tumor suppressor genes makes cancer cells infiltrate normal tissue. Cancer cells, she explained, are highly invasive. In brain tumors, for example, surger y can remove large masses, but it cannot remove residual tumor cells, which often migrate to other parts of the brain. Because there is no truly effective arsenal of drugs that can prevent such activity, the thrust of the research she is engaged in is dire cted at understanding how and why these cells mutate, how and why such muta - tions affect cell invasion, and how and why they grow uncontrollably. Currently, Dr. Karpinich has focused all of these “how and why” questions on brain tumors. Using mice that h ave been genetically engineered to harbor the three most common mutations found in humans allows her to investigate which pathways are required for tumor maintenance and “bad cell” behavior like infiltration into normal surrounding
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