PCC students Selma Cuya and Russell Lund remove vials of
cryopreserved mouse stem cells from a liquid nitrogen tank.

Caltech, PCC’s Biotech Bridge

This fall, up to 10 Pasadena City College students will work with stem cells at Caltech, thanks to a $1.7 million grant and the leadership of a former Caltech postdoc. Others will follow in 2010 and 2011. Upon completing the program, they will be fully prepped to work on the frontiers of biomedicine as stem-cell lab techs. PCC is the only two-year college among 11 institutions statewide to win one of these “Bridges to Stem Cell Research” grants from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, established in 2005 after the passage of Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative.

“It’s such an incredible opportunity for PCC to partner with Caltech,” says professor Pamela Eversole-Cire, director of the biotechnology program at PCC. “We’re very excited.” It’s a homecoming of sorts, as Eversole will once again be working with Shirley Pease, director of Genetically Engineered Mouse services (GEMs) at Caltech, with whom she’d collaborated while a postdoc of Mel Simon, Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences, Emeritus, and former chair of Caltech’s biology department.

Eversole’s lab at PCC was once a stockroom. With support from division dean Dave Douglass, equipment donations from private industry, and technical advice from Pease, she turned it into a cell-culture facility. The students grow mouse embryonic stem cells under industry-standard conditions, in incubators heated to body temperature and containing a 5 percent carbon-dioxide atmosphere with 90 percent humidity. The cell cultures are processed in three laminar-flow hoods, and a few strides away are a centrifuge, water baths, and a hemocytometer for counting cells. The genetically altered cells are studied under a microscope, and students share their results on an electronic “smart board” contributed by the LA/OC Biotechnology Center. Most of the equipment was donated by biotech companies such as Amgen, Invitrogen, Biogen-Idec, Cell Biolabs, and Biocatalytics. “Without donations,” said Eversole, “this probably would not be possible. The infrastructure is expensive.”

Students design their own experimental protocols, prepare solutions, maintain lab equipment, plan research schedules, adapt to schedule changes, and give presentations. They keep meticulous daily notebooks that meet industry standards. When students ask how much detail to include, Eversole replies, “If I can give that notebook to a new student and they can reproduce the experiments in it, then it’s properly recorded. If they have questions, it’s not.” Students even negotiate for their final grades—an exercise intended to prepare them for real-world negotiations, for instance, during annual performance reviews.

At Caltech, interns can work in any of several stem-cell labs, including the GEMs core facility, where Pease has designed a curriculum in advanced stem-cell manipulation techniques for them. The internships are being coordinated by Paul Patterson, the Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences, who also helped Eversole write the grant proposal. PCC’s other “Bridges” partners include USC and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

Intern Mark Starbird, 28, earned a biotechnology certificate at PCC four years ago, then got his BS at Cal State Long Beach. Now he’s back at PCC taking courses that weren’t available then. He hopes to pursue a career in biomedical research. “I’m intrigued and enthusiastic about this,” he says, “because you can’t find this anywhere else. With my earlier training in cell culture at PCC, I’m already ahead of the curve. Now PCC has a stem-cell culture program to go along with it.” The biotechnology program was established by Wendie Johnston, Eversole’s predecessor, 10 years ago in response to industry requests.

Eversole enjoys the diversity of her students. Many are career professionals seeking to upgrade their skills. Some are mothers returning to the workforce. One is a 17-year-old high-school student whose mother drives him to night classes from South Pasadena. Another is a 30-year-old electrical engineer changing careers.

And the biotech graduates do well. One is employed by Pease and another is working at USC. One is doing graduate work at Cal State Los Angeles. Two have transferred to Berkeley, where both landed undergrad research positions in their first term. Says Eversole, “We tell students, ‘You can do more than you think.’ And they do it.” —LD