Joseph Rainaldi

Class of 2020

Education: Blended BS + MS Biomedical Engineering at Cal Poly

 

Biography

Joseph has a philosophy on the future of medical practice that encourages prevention of disease as opposed to only treatment. This philosophy drives him to explore stem cell research as a means of introducing therapies that can correct individuals preexisting conductance down a disease path. Joseph is interested in targeted gene and cell therapies to prevent Acne while also holding interest in mammalian nerve cell proliferation to form neural networks in vitro. His goal, after completion of his post baccalaureate at Cal Poly, is to join a MD/PhD program and later run his own laboratory practice.

Joseph chose to intern at UCSD in the Department of Pediatrics under Dr. Stephanie Cherqui. There, he worked to create an ex vivo gene therapy for the monogenic disease Friedreich’s ataxia. The therapeutic utilizes a CRISPR/Cas9 system to modify unhealthy patient hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) into a healthy counterpart. However, the high number of double stranded breaks incurred during the editing process limits the cells proliferation ability during the crucial time outside of body thus degrading the clinical product’s quality. Additionally, the mechanism by which these blood stem cells are able to treat a neurodegenerative disorder has been speculated but not fully elucidated. Joseph’s role in the lab was to overcome the proliferation shortcomings in CRISPR based HSPC modification and to further understand the means by which HSPCs provide neuronal therapeutic benefice.