PHILADELPHIA, Penn. -- Su-jean Seo, a native of Corbin, Kentucky, has been awarded the Lupus Foundation of America's Gina Finzi Memorial Student Summer Fellowship for a research project she is conducting at The Wistar Institute.
The fellowship was designed to encourage young scientists to participate in lupus related research under the supervision of an established scientific investigator. It will support Ms. Seo's work in Dr. Jan Erikson's laboratory in Wistar's Tumor Immunology Program.
Ms. Seo graduated cum laude from Yale University with a B.S. degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. During her junior and senior years, she worked as a research assistant in the Section of Neurobiology at Yale University's School of Medicine. Her specific project was on the "generation of a monoclonal antibody against a breast adenocarcinoma specific antigen."
Ms. Seo is currently enrolled in a joint Ph.D./M.D. degree program at the University of Pennsylvania. She is doing her graduate rotation at Wistar, where her research focuses on antigens targeted in autoimmune diseases such as lupus erythematosus.
Following her graduation, Ms. Seo hopes to combine clinical practice with research in immunology.
The Wistar Institute, established in 1892, was the first independent medical research facility in the country. For more than 100 years, Wistar scientists have been making history and improving world health through their development of vaccines for diseases that include rabies, German measles, infantile gastroenteritis (rotavirus), and cytomegalovirus; discovery of molecules like interleukin-12, which are helping the immune system fight bacteria, parasites, viruses and cancer; and location of genes that contribute to the development of diseases like breast, lung and prostate cancer. Wistar is a National Cancer Institute Cancer Center.
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Contact: Diana Cutshall
dcutshall@wista.wistar.upenn.edu
(215) 898-3716
The Wistar Institute
7-Jul-1998