La Cañada Valley Sun: La Cañada Flintridge, California

La Cañada Valley Sun: La Cañada Flintridge, California: Medical student advances liver cancer research

By Ruth Longoria
A La Cañada High School graduate is making her family proud and is expected to make a difference in the lives of future generations of Asian Americans, through her recent clinical research work in the Liver Disease Center at Huntington Medical Research Institute (HMRI) in Pasadena.

Penn State medical student Joanna Song, 24, who graduated from La Cañada High School in 2003, was one of 15 young people selected to be part of the institute’s 2008 Summer Research Program. During the 10-week program, Song helped with research into hepatitis B and its correlation with liver cancer in Asian Americans.

The Altadena Guild of Huntington Hospital and the Lucile Horton Howe and Mitchell B. Howe Foundation sponsor the summer research program, which is conducted under the direction of Dr. Victor Pikov, principal investigator of HMRI’s neural engineering program.

“Students bring with them some theoretical and laboratory background in biology and chemistry,” Pikov said in a news release earlier in the summer.

“By the end of the summer, after receiving one-on-one training and experience working with HMRI researchers, [the students] have had the chance to apply their accumulated knowledge in solving real-life scientific questions. This is invaluable experience for the training of our next generation of medical research scientists,” he added.

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Song earned a bachelor of arts degree in molecular cell biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a graduate student at Penn State Medical School. She plans to earn her medical degree in 2011 and return to the Los Angeles area to continue work in the medical field, quite possibly in hepatology, the study of the liver.

She is the oldest daughter of Joyce and John Song, of La Cañada, first-generation Korean Americans, who own Ka-San Korean BBQ restaurant on Foothill Boulevard in La Crescenta. She has a sister, Sharon, 18, a freshman at Harvard University, and a brother, Joseph, 13, who is a student at LCHS.

Song said she became interested in medicine as a youth because her brother was sick a lot and her mother also had medical problems. “I wanted to become a doctor so I could help them,” she said.

Her parents have been very supportive of her decision to enter the medical field and are proud she was able to participate in the research institute’s summer program, she said.

Although her initial interest was primarily in the gastrointestinal system, after her work with the institute, she’s “leaning toward hepatology,” she said.

While participating in the summer research program, students select the laboratory and biomedical project that best matches their interest. The students attend weekly lectures by HMRI scientists, practice laboratory procedures and work alongside medical professionals.

Song said she helped read medical charts and family histories on some of about 350 patients of one of the world’s leading hepatologists, Dr. Myron J. Tong, who is credited with discovering that Hepatitis B is one of the primary causes of liver cancer. Tong and his wife, Lori, an RNMSN, who works with her husband as office manager at the Liver Center, served as mentors for Song and inspired her to continue her dream of making a difference in the medical field.

“I learned a lot from the Institute and from working with Dr. Tong. I found out about liver disease and I learned about doctor-patient relationships. It was a wonderful experience and I’m very interested in continuing in research after I graduate,” she said.

Other students in the summer program researched medical topics such as molecular neurology and pathology, cell biology, and epilepsy and brain mapping. At the end of the program, the students presented their research projects for review. The program allows students to explore a career in medical research while developing friendships and networking opportunities with others in the medical field.

Tong said Song’s research will help identify markers of progressive liver cancer in patients and will result in two future medical publications.

Lori Song added that Song is “a bright girl who is really well-liked at the center. She will have a bright future in medicine.”