Ivan Pires: Developing a career in R&D
Blood
Our lives depend upon it. Trauma victims, surgery patients, injured soldiers, those with cancer and many other people count on lifesaving blood donations every day. Yet voluntary, unpaid blood donations must increase rapidly in more than half the world’s countries in order to ensure a reliable supply, says the World Health Organization.
Here in the U.S., where thousands of people from across the country have responded to the emergency request for blood and platelet donations issued by the Red Cross last month, a critical blood shortage remains.
How can chemical engineers help?
Creating artificial blood
Ivan Pires, who worked in the laboratory of Professor Andre Palmer this summer, is one of the researchers who could help answer this question.
“What brought me to chemical engineering is the major's versatility and broad curriculum. I've always liked biology, physics and chemistry, so chemical engineering was a very logical choice for me. This also explains my interest in Dr. Palmer's research, which encompasses all those subjects,” he said.
Dr. Palmer’s laboratory engineers hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs) for applications in transfusion medicine and tissue engineering. In essence, he is creating artificial red blood cells (RBCs) and plasma.
While real whole blood serves many different functions, artificial RBCs are designed for the sole purpose of transporting oxygen and carbon dioxide throughout the body. HBOCs (hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers) are a class of RBC substitute that use the natural oxygen-carrying protein molecule hemoglobin (Hb) to store and transport oxygen, and could potentially be used as a short-term RBC replacement to greatly improve the care of accident victims, wounded soldiers, and RBC transfusion recipients, especially when blood is in short supply.
Palmer’s lab is also developing therapeutics to treat heme toxicity (i.e. byproduct of Hb breakdown), which results from the destruction of red blood cells in the blood. Heme is toxic to cells and organs, especially the kidneys, where it can lead to kidney failure. One such therapeutic is apohemoglobin, which has the ability to scavenge free heme in solution.
Ivan’s challenge: Explore the efficacy of using apohemoglobin to protect against heme toxicity.
Ivan’s project: Develop a process to successfully scale up the production of apohemoglobin by removing heme groups from hemoglobin, and quantify its ability to bind free heme in solution.
Ivan worked hard over the summer and found the research to be extremely engaging. He has also found that the challenges of intensive research can even extend beyond the laboratory.
“What stands out for me during the last few months is that, many times, things don't go as expected. I found this to be especially true when I once told a friend who was going to give me a ride that I would be done in 20 minutes. Five missed calls and 13 angry text messages later, I noticed that an hour had passed. What I thought was going to be straightforward five-minute procedure required three different attempts and four different modifications. However, these challenges posed opportunities to test and develop my knowledge and skills – if not the limits of my friend’s patience – and made the accomplishments even more rewarding,” he said.
What’s next? Ivan, who is a sophomore this fall, wants to further his academic knowledge by obtaining a master’s degree and potentially a Ph.D. “I'm not decided on a specific research area yet. What interests me the most right now is to pursue a career in research and development or bio-pharmaceutical process development/managing,” he said.