Jack Reid '15 Presents Research at SciX Conference

The Rivers Summer Science Internship program is designed to provide students with research opportunities in a medical or corporate setting. Jack Reid ’15 spent his summer at Bruker Daltronics in Billerica, Mass. gaining that valuable experience, but after the internship’s conclusion he was invited to present his research at The SciX Conference in Reno, Nevada.
 
Bruker is a company that makes and sells machines called mass spectrometers that are used to identify the amount and type of chemicals present in a sample. Jack’s research focused on the PEGylation of proteins and whether or not the machines could determine how much of the protein was PEGylated.
 
PEG, or PolyEthylene Glycol, is used to improve therapeutic proteins in drugs by increasing its half-life, water solubility, and generally making the protein it attaches to more efficient. One issue with PEG is that it is polydisperse, meaning that it is not homogeneous and when mixed with a protein for PEGylation it sometimes fails to mix completely with the protein.
 
“It was my job to test how well the PEGylation happened using the instrument to see how much PEGylated protein there was in relation to the un-PEGylated protein,” Reid said. “The machine produces a graph and based on the shapes in the graph – proteins make one little spike while PEGylated proteins make an arch – you can tell what’s what.”
 
Through his work with the instrument, Jack found that the mass spectrometer was able to effectively gauge how much of a protein was PEGylated. This information is valuable to companies that work with therapeutic proteins, so Jack was invited to present his research at the annual SciX Conference to members of the science community.
 
Jack flew out to Reno on Wednesday, October 1 and spent the better part of the following day standing by his poster and answering questions from interested members of professional community.
 
“It was a very unique experience, to be able to go to a professional conference as a high school student – not a lot of people get a chance to do something like that,” Jack said. “It was really interesting to converse with people who knew what they were talking about and were willing to help me grow as a scientist.”
 
After returning home, Jack was informed that his research had earned him a FACSS Student Poster Awards and a $200 prize. Of the 14 students recognized, only Jack still in high school. 
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