Week 3/2: CERT Strikes Back

Back to the office with Gabriel Carranza.

So far my time here has been pretty good, and I am getting lots of work done.

So let me tell you a bit about my work.

I am an intern at a non-profit pharmaceutical company called the Critical Path Institute under Dr. Romero, who works for the Arizona Center for Education and Research on on Therapeutics or CERT for short. Every Monday I attend the "CERT meeting" (there are about 8 OTHER highly acronymed programs that are headed by C-Path, so they each get a meeting) and get the run down of what their goals and agendas are, and even get to view highly confidential material from pharmaceuticals that reveal the composition of the drugs they make and the stats on them. As I understand it, CERT's job is to find the drugs that are harming people and remove them from main circulation before they can harm people. They focus on the heart, mainly QT prolongation, and educate consumers about certain drugs.

The Electrocardiograph or EKG shows the heart's electrical activity over time. Each spike or drop is labeled a different letter. The QT interval is the time it takes for the heart to repolarize and depolarize. Note by this graph:


That is the QT interval. However, when it is prolonged, it can cause ventricular arrhythmias, which can be potentially fatal to people and even cause a condition called Torsade de Pointes (means "twisting of the points" in french; Rough pronunciation: Tor-sawed de Puah). This can cause a perfectly normal heart rate that you see above to become something like this:

This is obviously a very dangerous heart rate. Drugs that prolong the QT interval can cause Torsade de Pointes. TdP can cause sudden death. CERT is working to stop these drugs and pull them off the market or severely reduce their distribution in non-therapeutic amounts. They have created a list of drugs with a risk of TdP, could possibly have the risk, and conditionally have a risk that can be seen at http://www.azcert.org/medical-pros/drug-lists/drug-lists.cfm . Its the red link. These lists state all the drugs as well as their brand names. That's where I come in.

The list is quite minimal, with nothing much else besides the names and some conditions or facts. My job is to get EVERYTHING I can possibly get about these drugs. Simple things like the molecular formulas, 2-D and 3-D molecular structures are being downloaded onto the list. More complicated things such as the Half Maximal Inhibitory Concentration values for inhibition of the Potassium ion channel or hERG channel (located in the heart) or in short, hERG IC50 values are also included. Getting these values involves searching for as many articles I can get from peer-reviewed sources. Can anyone say pubmed? Easy to say, that pubmed has fallen very far from grace with me as Google Scholar has been, as I would say, PWNING pubmed and getting me far better results for finding articles. I am going very fast, and am about a week ahead. My next goal is automating the procedure so I don't have to do this anymore.

As for office life, it is as Officey as it can be. Having a cubicle near the cafeteria/water cooler allows me to hear a plethora of office chat ("how's the wife and kids?" "ready for the big presentation?" "DANG! We're out of coffee creamers! Someone get Susan to get some more!") as well as have quick access to a teacher's lounge that I can actually use. Free food tends to be my main factor in determining how much I enjoy my job for some reason. I bought Khakis for the first time in my life, and have my own coffee thermos for drinks that are not coffee. I have met the other interns and noticed they both are in grad school. I might go into the summer and get paid for the internship. I also only work 4 days a week now. Boo Yeah.