Tony Yang

7th Period
October 3rd 2016
Mentor Reflection
I first met with my in school mentor Ms. Thompson before school started. We talked about the
basics of my research concerning things like my topic and what I would be focusing on as I
continued to do research. We discussed how I would approach my topics and what areas I could
potentially learn more about. We also went over things concerning the spring action plan as we
discussed what I would do for that. She suggested that she could help garner an audience for me
by making an announcement about it for extra credit. Although she didnt know too much about
immunotherapy and CRISPR, I discussed some basic background research about the
technologies with her. She also became very interested in my topic and said she would do some
more background research on the topic herself. Following the meeting I will now try to shrink
the scope of my topic as I realize it is still too broad in some aspects.
I met with my outside mentor at Barnes and Noble and he was very knowledgeable on the
subject as he works with both of the technologies I am researching on a daily basis. Firstly, I
cleared up many of the misconceptions or things that I was unsure about. He directed me to
another source for free academic articles called PubMed which is a very useful source for
seeing a timeline of research on subjects. We talked about the T-cell therapy using chimeric
antigen receptors and discussed modern day progression of the research. Currently the treatment
works well for liquid tumors like lymphomas and many clinical trials on humans have already
been done. On the flip side, there has been little success in using this method against solid
tumors. Currently scientists do not know why exactly this is the case but hypotheses include
hypoxia inside the tumor and the general toxic environment created by the clump of cancer cells.
We also talked about the limitations of immunotherapy through CAR which include the fact that
the treatment is very costly and difficult to accomplish when the patient has been sick for a long
time. This is due to the treatment being very specialized and requiring the use of the patients own
T-cells. Not only that, there is the problem of natural selection of antigens. Due to the fact that
cancer cells are continuously changing and mutating by the moment, the antigens they expressed
are most likely different as well. When CAR is used to wipe out a specific antigen, it may leave
certain subsets of cancer untouched resulting in their continued proliferation. Finally there is also
the problem of antigen escape. He also brought my attention to another type of therapy for
fighting cancer called TCR which stands for T-cell Receptor Therapy. This therapy works very
similar to CAR except it targets peptides in the membranes instead of antigens. The same
problems that persist for CAR also manifest themselves in TCR. As far as CRISPR is concerned,
we talked about the problems that the technology has. The biggest one centers on how to induce

the DNA into a cell. Due to a cell's natural defenses, it wont just allow for a foreign particle to
enter it. Current methods of inducing a cell to take in CRISPR include electroporation and
adenovirus. Electroporation works particularly effectively as it is cheap. Adenovirus presents the
problem of often only working once before a cell becomes immune to further invasions from it.
After my meeting with my outside mentor I have a much better idea where I want to focus future
research as he cleared many misconceptions and gave me a more clearer view of modern
circumstances surrounding it.