Year 8/NCE

The primary goals of the Cal Poly Pomona (CPP)/California State University Los Angeles (CSULA) Stem Cell Bridges Training Program have been: 1) to provide comprehensive training and full-time research internships for qualified students; and 2) to give other university students a basic understanding of stem cell research through development of appropriate stem cell curriculum and an opportunity to attend seminars from leading stem cell experts.

To date, 68 of our students have completed their stem cell research internships in research-intense laboratories at City of Hope, California Institute of Technology, Scripps Research Institute, University of Southern California and Western University of Health Sciences. To date, 61 students have graduated with a degree from either CPP or CSULA. About 89% of our UG level interns have entered higher degree educational programs (MS/PhD),professional schools (MD/Dental/Pharmacy/Physician Assistant) or the research work force, and 100% of our MS level interns have joined a PhD or MD program or the research work force.

Since our last year-end report was submitted in May 2016, Meher Masihi, MS student from CSULA, has been accepted into a graduate program at UC Santa Cruz in biomedical sciences and engineering beginning Fall 2017 and Linda Tsai, another MS student, is in a PhD program at City of Hope. She started in fall of 2016 with a H.N. and Francis Berger Foundation Fellowship. Sevan Esaian continues to work on his Master’s degree in the LSAMP Bridges to the Doctorate Fellow at CSULA and has recently published a paper with his CIRM mentor, Dr. Bronner (CIT). Carla Gonzales, one of our undergraduate interns, will be attending Keck Graduate Institute in the Masters of Bioprocessing Engineering program in Fall 2017. Julio Sanchez and Alberto Herrera who were both undergraduare interns from Cohort 6 have begun their 2nd year in Ph.D. programs at Cornell University and City of Hope, respectively.

It is clear that this program had a profound effect on the students and faculty at both campuses not only through the research experiences of the student interns but also through the exposure of the campus communities to the promises of future medical treatments that will be derived from stem cell research.