When Lucy Li first started her graduate studies at the University of Washington (UW), she scheduled her classes tightly together so she’d have big blocks of time to do research at BRI.

That was no small task. Lucy, an MD/PhD candidate, was in medical school while also conducting research to become a PhD.

Graduate students like Lucy play a crucial role in BRI’s work — participating in collaborative projects across departments, leading various studies, and helping advance BRI’s mission.

She’s currently exploring exciting questions about lupus while working in both BRI’s Hamerman and Ray labs.

“Graduate students are such an important part of BRI,” said Jessica Hamerman, PhD, director of academic affairs at BRI. “They learn how to ask big questions, design experiments, and really think critically about their results. They also get to experience the collaborative nature of our work, both within BRI and with outside partners. My favorite part is watching them grow — seeing them start as students and become independent scientists and true colleagues.”

Finding a Passion for Biomedical Research

Science intrigued Lucy from an early age. Thanks to the Roy & Diana Vagelos Program in the Molecular Life Sciences for undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), she started her research career in a Penn lab studying CAR T-cell therapy. This groundbreaking treatment for  blood cancers harnesses a person’s immune cells to fight the disease.

Many people in the Penn lab were MD/PhDs, and Lucy appreciated how their medical practice informed their research.

“I could see how direct patient care influenced the questions my mentors were interested in and kept their research grounded in their patients’ needs,” Lucy said.

Lucy continued to do lab research for a few years before starting her MD/PhD program. A project examining immune system cells negatively impacting hemophilia treatment sparked her fascination with immunology — which ultimately led her to the UW.

Getting to the Root of Lupus Nephritis

Lucy became particularly interested in lupus because it affects different people in vastly different ways, from skin rashes to kidney problems to joint pain. Lupus can take years to diagnose because its symptoms come and go and mimic other conditions.

That’s why Lucy chose to join BRI’s Hamerman Lab, known for building complex and accurate models to study lupus. She started her work there and soon joined an ongoing collaboration with the Ray Lab investigating lupus nephritis, which is a common complication of lupus that happens when the immune system starts attacking the kidneys.

In a project funded in part by BRI’s Innovation Fund, the expertise of John Ray, PhD, in large-scale genetic screenings blends with Dr. Hamerman’s expertise in building lifelike models of lupus. Together, they are exploring exactly what causes lupus nephritis to inform better treatments.

Lucy’s role is to do large-scale screens of various genes to understand how those genes influence the behavior of cells. The hope is that turning off (also called “knocking out”) certain genes in the model will reveal which ones play an important role in lupus nephritis.

“We already have four or five promising targets, and I’m especially excited about two of them,” Lucy said. “If it turns out that these genes really do affect the cells that cause lupus nephritis, we may be able to target these pathways and create potential new therapeutics.”

Using Research to Improve Care

Lucy hopes to have her own lab one day, where she can explore more questions about autoimmune diseases, like what causes lupus to show up in so many different ways? Is there a better way to classify lupus patients — based on biomarkers we haven’t discovered yet — so they can receive more effective and personalized treatments?

“I find these types of questions fascinating and I have so many more I want to answer,” Lucy said. “The more we understand about these diseases, the closer we get to more targeted therapies that can help patients.”