“The first pass through any life sciences experiment is always about learning – don’t be afraid to be messy, make mistakes or break things. It’s the second pass that’s about refining and reproducing,” says Samuel Berryman, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia (UBC, Vancouver, BC, Canada), and recipient of the 2023 SLAS Graduate Education Fellowship Grant.
Berryman is a rapid-fire solution finder as he works to overcome the limitations associated with the analysis of chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapies. He even wrote in his application for the SLAS grant, “I am best suited for research because I cannot just work on a small portion of a project. I need to take it apart and learn how every aspect of it fits together.” Berryman laughs and affirms that this is still the case one year into his two-year grant.
In the process of advancing his research objectives outlined in the grant proposal, Berryman invented a platform to evaluate CAR-T cells at the single-cell level, developed a process to manufacture the technology, started a business – ImageCyte – and applied to be on Innovation AveNEW at SLAS2024.
