Reflection
- At BioMarin, they fight against rare genetic diseases with protein based drugs.
- Their goal is to make a big difference for small patient populations, and to maximize shareholder value.
- While I was there, I learned about many different things regarding making drugs to cure rare diseases. We first learned about the HPLC (high pressure liquid chromatography), where they separate the protein they want from the other non-necessary proteins. To do this, they send beads of the opposite charge of the desired protein through the HPLC to collect it. They use the spectrophotometer to detect the protein. The next thing that I learned about was analytical chemistry. We looked at graphs and I learned what the graph spike would look like if the spectrophotometer found the protein. Finally, In learned about how they used cell culture incubators to grow cells to produce the desired protein, and how that can take from up to 14 days to 100 days.
- I liked seeing the workplace of biotech scientists because it makes me think about my future. It’s kind of like shadowing for a new school.
- I would like to learn more about how it works when a cell grows and multiplies in an incubator.