Learner Profile
Sally Yuan
Employer
Janssen Pharmaceuticals
HMX Course
As a senior associate scientist at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Sally Yuan contributes to a variety of immuno-oncology research projects, and recognized a need to understand more about the nuances of her work. She recently completed the HMX Immunology course, and plans to continue her study in pharmacology and biochemistry.
Why were you looking for a course like this?
All of my work experience has been in immunology, but I’ve never really had any formal training. I took an undergrad immunology course seven years ago, but my first couple of jobs were actually focused more on T cell immunology, in the HIV realm. So I wasn’t really exposed to B cells or any other types.
At Janssen I’m in the immuno-oncology group, which focuses on all of the types, so I do a lot of myeloid experiments in my current position. Not having a lot of that scientific background, it was kind of a learning curve for me, and to also have it apply in the drug discovery realm, and talking to other groups. I work with antibodies, seeing how they apply to the myeloid populations, but I didn’t really understand how antibodies were made, or the full concept of class switching. One of my coworkers actually found the course online and sent it to me and from the description I thought it’d be great; it’s great for fundamentals for sure, and that’s definitely what I got out of it.
What was your experience in HMX Immunology?
What I liked about the course was it focused a lot on the disease areas and the applications of the biology. I thought that was really good. It was kind of a refresher for all of it. A lot of the T cell stuff, just from working I knew most of it, so that was good. [For example] I knew about checkpoint inhibitors, but from [the HMX] course I learned more about it – where things are located, versus just what CTLA-4 is and what it does, I learned like, ‘oh, it’s targeted more on the lymph nodes.’ So little nuances like that were very helpful for me, because I know the general concept of it but the little details were good. I definitely had very little B cell experience – even so it was still easy to follow, and not too difficult.
You’re taking biochemistry and pharmacology in the fall – what made you want to follow on with those?
I’m very new to drug development and why targets are picked. My boss just told me, this is what we’re working on. So I thought that pharmacology would be very helpful with that. And biochemistry…I’m working on more small molecule stuff, which is not as immunology-based, it’s more where this drug is coming from, so I wanted to know more about how the drugs are made, and what goes into things like that. So that’s why I wanted to take both of them together, and the fact that I thought it was a good flow and not too taxing, and I thought I got good knowledge out of the immunology course.
How will you apply what you’ve learned in your day-to-day work?
There are definitely a few things that resonated with me…I think that with the stuff I’ve done for work, I learn it at the endpoint, or the names that we call things – like the B7 receptor, we only refer to it as CD80, CD86…I just assumed that was the name for it, but the other name for it, I learned that. I think just understanding why some of the things are named what they are, or why certain things happen, definitely will make it easier for me at work. I will kind of understand it more when people are saying they’re interested in upregulation of [a certain] gene. I will think ‘this is why, because it’s at this part of the body and needs to go to this part,’ or something like that. I definitely think it should help me with my everyday work. And especially when I work on programs that require antibodies, I’ll at least understand what that other team does to get me the therapeutic agent that they’ve given me.
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