Palm Beach County high school students do research with biotech giant

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Palm Beach County high school students do research with biotech giant

By Rhonda J. | South Florida Sun-Sentinel July 29, 2007

Jupiter They're working on research to help discover cures for cancer, Alzheimer's disease, hepatitis C, depression and other ills.But they're student and teacher summer interns at Scripps Florida, so the day-to-day reality is more about putting on gloves, goggles and white lab coats and learning to use state-of-the-art equipment. The opportunity brings scientific excitement to Palm Beach County classrooms and awakens students to career possibilities."I've been teaching for 15 years and teaching is very rewarding, but when I first crystallized a protein two weeks ago, it was an incredible experience," said Fred Hock, who teaches biology in the International Baccalaureate program at Atlantic High School in Delray Beach. "I didn't realize how exciting it would be just to see this tiny little crystal of protein that hadn't been crystallized before."

Hock is one of three teachers and nine students who completed a six-week summer internship at Scripps Florida on Friday. Thepartnership with the Palm Beach County School District began in 2003. Officials developed an aggressive plan to meet with leaders of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., as soon as the renowned biotechnology center announced plans to locate a branch in South Florida, said School District Science Administrator Fred Barch.The Scripps leading-edge environment gives hands-on practice to students and teachers."Before Scripps came to South Florida, there really was no way to have a laboratory experience like this," Hock said Thursday as interns prepared scientific presentations.Two Palm Beach County teachers got a taste of the internship program in La Jolla in June 2004. After Scripps located in South Florida, the student and teacher internship program expanded each summer.The biotech initiative with a world-class partner such as Scripps added force and direction to Barch's vision."I think that life sciences will dominate this century, and we're right on the cutting edge when it comes to our students and bioscience," Barch told the School Board at a meeting Wednesday. "I believe we have a national model in our biotech academies."The district has 450 students in high school biotech academies at Seminole Ridge in Loxahatchee, Spanish River in Boca Raton and Palm Beach Lakes in West Palm Beach."There are 10 or 15 hot spots in the country where biotechnology is flourishing, and Florida is one of the fastest-growing. Scripps is one of the reasons," said Jeff Ghannam, spokesman for The Biotechnology Institute, which works from its headquarters in Arlington, Va., to educate the public about the science that works with organisms and its potential to solve health, food and environmental problems."When there's a research facility, like Scripps, what happens is that companies tend to cluster and education institutions want to work together to develop that work force," Ghannam said.Ariel Abovich, 16, an 11th-grader at Suncoast High School in Riviera Beach, worked with experiments on bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics."Working in the lab has been one of the greatest experiences I've ever had," Abovich said. "I learned that science is almost never-ending and that it reassured me that I definitely want to pursue a career in science."Ross Einsteder, 17, an 11th-grader in the Seminole Ridge biotech academy, got familiar with some career possibilities."I worked in infectology, doing research on hepatitis C," Einsteder said. "Basically, we took different combinations of drugs and dropped them on cells to see the reactions. It gave me an open door to learn about something I might want to do."That's exactly the point."We give students and teachers an opportunity to work in a contemporary research laboratory," said Deborah Leach-Scampavia, Education and Outreach Administrator for Scripps Florida."It's a bit self-serving," said Leach-Scampavia, who said the 80 student applicants for nine spots created a highly competitive pool. "We're looking for future scientists to work at the bench toward new discoveries."The process for discovering treatments became clearer for the interns."It's different from labs in school, because [here] you're doing experiments that could become very useful to the general public," said Hock, who will pass along his hands-on lab experiences to his students this fall. "Drug discovery, in the long run, could mean treatments for things such as I've been working on, which is cancer biology."To say we're going to cure cancer isn't right," Hock said. "But we're contributing in some small way in the search to find a drug that will work."Rhonda J. can be reached at rjmiller@... or 561-243-6605.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-flpbiotech0729pnjul29,0,1188032.story?track=rss

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