My mission: get involved in research so I can cure myself.

January 23, 2007 3:06 PM

My mission: get involved in research so I can cure myself.

I'm a college student, and for the past year have been doing academic research on a health condition I have myself. My diagnosis has been an extremely tough nut to crack: I've seen the best doctors in the field, and they haven't been able to figure it out. Recently, however, I stumbled on several journal articles by a research group in Japan that seemed to explain my exact symptoms. I verified this hypothesis by taking a specific medication, and, to my joy, it worked splendidly. Making this breakthrough was one of the happiest moments of my life.

But I'm not cured yet: there's lots I still have to figure out about how to treat myself. The problem is, the researchers in Japan are the only people in the world who are publishing research on this exact topic. I believe that if I could get involved in their research, I would be able to learn enough to cure myself. (And, at the very least, I would be working on a problem extremely relevant to me.) So,

My goal: Get a position working with this research group.

Since I can get credit at my school for doing independent research, I already emailed the researcher to ask if I could do any projects at my college that would be of interest to him. He declined, but was very kind in his email. I want to email him again, but want to make sure I don't blow it this time.

MeFi, help me! What non-obvious, even extreme, things can I say/do/offer that would make me an irresistible candidate to join this research group? What kind of proposal would be of the most interest to a Japanese researcher coming from an American student? I would be willing to go to Japan for the summer, take a semester off, work as a volunteer, really anything. I know the answer seems obvious (email him and ask him if he is interested in any of these), but I'm trying to avoid the situation where he emails me back to say that he just isn't looking for a student to help him. The implications of my getting a position with him are extremely important for my health, so I really can't afford to be turned down.

posted by wireless to work & money (18 comments total)

Tell them that you suffer from the rare condition that they're studying, and you are willing to be a lab rat.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:10 PM on January 23, 2007

Um...what do you [think you] have, exactly?
posted by parmanparman at 3:10 PM on January 23, 2007

I want to email him again, but want to make sure I don't blow it this time.

If you really want to work with this guy at some point, don't contact him again now. That would be really annoying.

I really can't afford to be turned down.

I don't see how this follows. You think they will stop doing the research if you aren't working with them? Or that they won't be as effective? If it's the latter, you are wrong. An undergraduate-level researcher who doesn't speak the language (I am assuming) will hinder their progress, not help it.

If you want to work with him eventually, then you should do whatever it is that would make you an attractive grad school candidate and ask about doing a PhD with him. And learn Japanese.
posted by grouse at 3:15 PM on January 23, 2007

Thanks for the answers. Point of clarification, grouse: my main goal is to learn the basic science of this health condition myself; that's how this work would have an impact on my own health. Of course I realize I wouldn't be of that much help in advancing the state of knowledge in the field.
posted by wireless at 3:19 PM on January 23, 2007

You wouldn't be of much help... yet. But someday, maybe.

If they really knew something about this condition, wouldn't they publish it? Most of the unpublished information a lab has is more about technique than scientific knowledge. When they figure something out and have evidence to support it, I imagine they would publish it.
posted by grouse at 3:24 PM on January 23, 2007

If you want to learn the basic science of it, ask him for the basic science. Or see if he'll allow you extra access to their research. There's no reason to fly to Japan and join the team.

What's your educational background?
posted by GilloD at 3:24 PM on January 23, 2007

Wireless: The specifics of your story intrigue me, but I'd like to hear a bit more. Send me an email (it's in my profile), I may have some advice.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 3:27 PM on January 23, 2007

Is there any particular reason you need this guy's permission to do research at the collegiate level? What you need to do is to find a sympathetic professor at your college who is a) in the medical field and b) willing to be your advisor on a research project. You can start from the basis of the papers you've already read, keep up on what their doing, and contribute your own work to science. Highlighting the research in your own country will promote US interest in the disease and in finding the cure.

I've read a bit about the culture surrounding Japanese scientific research groups (Beamtimes and Lifetimes, which deals with particle physics, but I'm assuming the culture is the same), and it's very different from how science is conducted in the US. Hiring and promotion seems to be a lot more rigidly structured - it's very unlikely that they'd even be able to hire or accept a foreign undergraduate volunteer (because, you see, you'd be taking resources from more academically deserving candidates).

On preview: GilloD has it. However, he may be reluctant to share, for fear you'll "swoop" his results and publish before him. Remember, this guy has no idea who you are.
posted by muddgirl at 3:31 PM on January 23, 2007

This thread raises many questions, but first I'll take a stab at answering the specific query:

I'm not sure there's anything you can do to make yourself seem like an irresistibley qualified team member, since you're not one. You simply have the condition they are studying and could be a potential source of experimental specimens (not sure since we don't know the condition.)

However, I don't understand how you were able to obtain the medication that helped treat you. Wasn't it a controlled substance? If it did work, what is the point of further research? If you are looking for a cure what makes you think that the Japanese research group is working on that? They identified a therapeutic, yes. However, researching therapeutics and elucidating their mode of action is a very different focus than working on a way to circumvent the condition entirely for a cure. I can't imagine one research group pursuing both endeavors without competition. Very puzzling without more details.
posted by dendrite at 3:34 PM on January 23, 2007

If they really knew something about this condition, wouldn't they publish it? Most of the unpublished information a lab has is more about technique than scientific knowledge. When they figure something out and have evidence to support it, I imagine they would publish it.

You'd be surprised. In some cases, researchers tend to be worried that since they can't yet publish, giving up their information will let someone else scoop them before they have enough to publish. For more obscure stuff, this may be information that is useful or of interest to people in the (very small field), but not enough to make it publishable in a more interesting publication. Or they'll worry that releasing partial information towards a therapy would allow a commercial interest to take that information and be first to market (with the associated IP protections), as opposed to the researcher selling their information to such a company at a more developed stage.

I know very little about the whole publishing thing, but this has been my experience talking to researchers and companies about a rare health condition I have a personal interest in.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 4:34 PM on January 23, 2007

my main goal is to learn the basic science of this health condition myself; that's how this work would have an impact on my own health.

Wireless, are you a biology student?

There is a lot of background a person needs to have to make sense of any primary research, no matter how narrow the question. "Research article: Protein ABC is involved in the regulation of gene Xyz in the human eye." If you had an interest in that paper, you'd want to know about human eyes, yes, but that wouldn't help you judge whether the research was important or even valid. You'd want to know what else ABC does, what else regulates Xyz and what it does, how gene-regulation works, what tools researchers use to study this stuff...

Without context, any given scientific paper is meaningless -- you're just taking the guy's word for it. If you were the kind of person who wanted to take guys' words for things, you'd just let your doctors hassle it. Obviously, that's not you. So hit the long road and study bio.

Go talk to the bio major advisor, or go to the office hours of the friendliest-looking bio reseacher at your school. Bring the papers from the Japanese team that interested you. Ask them: who at this school does this kind of research? (This means -- same organism and tissue, same tools, not same disease/application) Go talk to that guy, and tell him that you want to do research like this. See what he says. Go from there.

Knowing, say, how to harvest and culture cells from a certain tissue would be a hell of a lot more useful to your understanding of research relevant to your condition than -- what? -- making coffee and filing for a bunch of Japanese researchers, even if they would let you.

And it's fun.
posted by Methylviolet at 4:44 PM on January 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

And oh yeah, I worked in a lab where one of the PhD students came back to school at 52 because she had the condition our research applied to.
posted by Methylviolet at 4:47 PM on January 23, 2007

Thank you for the valuable answers. Here are some notes and clarifications.

spaceman_spiff: thanks for your message. I will send you an email.

muddgirl, GilloD, Methylviolet: I'm majoring in math, but I've taken research courses and done summer work in the life sciences. I am already working with some prominent doctors around here who do research in this field. However, they do not know much about the specific pathways that this doctor specializes in. I've tried to do research on this topic under their guidance, but they haven't been able to guide me very far.

grouse: There is some published research (which I've read), but I think I could learn a lot more by working with the research group, especially since there might be unpublished research of which I'm unaware.

dendrite: the medication I took is already commonly available. However, it is probably not optimal for me to take it for extended periods of time, and I suspect there are even simpler ways for me to treat myself.

Methylviolet: The Japanese doctor is mainly working with animal models, so some of the knowledge can be more closely transferred to humans.
posted by wireless at 5:25 PM on January 23, 2007

If you want to work on this disease, change your major to something that will get you into a grad school where you can do a PhD in molecular genetics in a lab that's doing something somewhat related to this disease (or neuroscience or whatever it is that would be most useful). Then, in 7 years' time, or however long it is, get back to whoever is working on this disease and inquire about postdoctoral opportunities in their lab. Learn Japanese in your spare time.

This is obviously drastic. Another avenue to pursue is to make contact again with these "best doctors in the field" that you've already dealt with, and tell them the results of your literature research and self-medication. They might be interested.

Were the Japanese guys able to help with molecular diagnostics, as per your previous question on the topic?
posted by nowonmai at 6:04 PM on January 23, 2007

Have you read every paper they've published on the subject?
Have you read every paper that have cited those papers?
Have you read every paper cited in those papers?
Do you have the beginning of an understand of them all?

That would be a good place to start.

As for your math background, look into computational biology, and think about how you might be able to help with their research.
posted by Good Brain at 6:33 PM on January 23, 2007

You're majoring in math? That's terrific -- if you wanted to double major it with biochem or molbio, you'd definitely have the groundwork for bioinformatics -- and those guys are both (a) enormously valuable in molecular research and (b) thin on the ground.

I think the thing you want to think about right now is building your research skill-set. You're obviously smart and driven, now you need skills and knowledge. The Materials and Methods section of papers is the one to focus on to find out what skills those are -- and you already know some skills that would be useful. (This book is an excellent resource on molecular cloning.) When a paper refers to a method I don't know, I look it up here.

The pathways involved are fairly irrelevant to the skills you need, but I get the feeling that you may not have this Japanese team's work in context of others in the field. As everyone has said, there are definitely others in the field, no matter how obscure it is, and if it has applications to a human condition I will bet my favorite pipetter there are labs around the world fighting over the same scraps of knowledge. I'd be happy to use my lit-search skizzles (and institutional subscription) to find you some context lit if you like (email me at gmail.com)
posted by Methylviolet at 7:41 PM on January 23, 2007

What are your symptoms? What was the medication you took?
posted by Packy_1962 at 8:18 PM on January 23, 2007

I would second what a lot of the people above me said. Develop a background in the subject. Your math experience will be fantastically useful almost wherever you go, but get good at general biology/molecular biology. The specifics of your problem are tractable enough if you have a broad training. Meanwhile, read up on the papers that this Japanese group writes and read both the papers they cite and the papers that cite them. This will help develop context and could get you interested in similar topics, which will be useful in considering future research. Keep doing research with various groups (don't be afraid to jump between advisors in undergrad! It's the best place for it) doing research you find interesting. Eventually, get yourself to grad school in a field like bioinformatics or applied math where you can attach yourself to a research group that works on a subject similar to this Japanese one. A lot of graduate schools, for instance the one I attend, offer grants for international collaboration and research. See if you can use these.

Also, consider things from the point of view of this researcher. What do you have to offer him at the moment that is worth the risk to him? His grant money only goes so far and even though you would be more than willing, it is unethical to use lower-seniority group members as experimental subjects. I don't know anything about undergraduate research in Japan, but perhaps if you could do a study abroad at the university he is at you could revisit the question with him.

Good luck!
posted by Schismatic at 10:26 PM on January 23, 2007