Interview with HMX Participant Haley BrinJones

As a senior research associate in the oncology department at Moderna, Haley BrinJones works on designing immune therapies for acute myeloid leukemia. She took HMX Fundamentals Immunology to expand her knowledge and provide context for her work.

Why did you decide to take the immunology course?

Although I come from somewhat of an immunology background in that my last lab was focused on immunology and oncology, my degree is just in normal biology and there was never really much of a focus on immunology. So having a nice, solid background and notes to refer to, and having everything explained in a way that’s concise and well done, is good. There are surprisingly few good immunology resources out there online, and this course was done well to put everything together.

How much of the content was new to you?

Most of the overview of everything – the innate vs. adaptive [immunity], the basics, I already knew. But most of the details as far as the specific signaling, where it happens, that was more new. I would say 50% of it was new, and 50% I think I knew the basics – but getting it in a more concise manner and [seeing] how everything interacts was helpful.

What topics did you find most interesting or useful in the course?

For the most part, a lot of the stuff I’ve worked on both now and in the past has to do with T cells. So most of the stuff that was going into T cells, how they differentiate and how they signal, was really great. Especially antigen processing – I think that that is kind of a term that people throw around a lot in oncology and other fields and you’re just sort of expected to know. Learning specifically about MHC I and MHC II, exactly how that all works, that was extremely helpful as well.

How did the structure of the course work for you?

I did really like how the course was broken into these very small chunks and then we were immediately quizzed on it. I think that was very helpful; a lot of times you can watch a video and it just goes in one ear and out the other, so having to answer questions immediately was great. And then at the end of each section having the full quiz where you had to refer back to everything and specifically try to interpret things and not just answer from rote memory. I really appreciated that we actually had to think about it; it was well done.

Have you had a chance to apply what you’ve learned?

We’re constantly designing panels to look for how our drug is affecting the immune system in mice and in in vitro systems…I’ve already used [what I’ve learned] in trying to design a new panel for cytotoxicity and looking at that in T cells. We were all looking at activity, and I was like, “Oh, well here are a couple of markers that I know for cytotoxicity, so let’s throw those in there.” Just having a context for how things fit together and knowing how different cells interact with each other, where they might be located in the body… it just helps to put everything in context and start to think about things in a more logical manner versus just, these are the three markers we always look for. Already it’s been helpful.