Sarah
Welcome to a new episode on STEMterviews. Today we have with us Cole Delyea from Boston. He currently works as a research associate at Sana Biotechnology in Boston. And I’m very curious to hear about all the differences between working in industry versus working in academia. So I’m really glad that you have time today to talk to us.

Cole
Yeah, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

Sarah
Yes. So to start, can you please summarize what are you doing right now? What are you working on? What kind of projects are you involved in?

Cole
Sure. So right now at Sana, I’m a research associate. So what that entails…and I work in protein assay development in the bioanalytical department. So what that means basically, is that I am calibrating assays to make sure that what they read out is actually what they read out. So think of it in terms of see, you know, a ruler is supposed to measure 10 centimeters. But how do you know that the 10 centimeters that it’s measuring is accurate, and that it is replicatable. So that’s kind of what my work right now is entailing, is making sure that when you do protein assays, like ELISAs, you can verify that the readouts you’re getting are true. So you know that they’re within an appropriate standard, or an appropriate level of error that is acceptable across the industry for assays, basically. So that’s what a lot of my work revolves around. And then with that, I get to then be involved in multiple aspects or multiple different projects, because every project kind of needs a final readout to be able to verify the experimental or to verify the experiment results and the variables that are changing.

Sarah
Okay, that makes sense. So what does it mean to verify the results? So why, how do you make sure that your 10 centimeters are really 10 centimeters/How do you do that with a protein assay? What is your baseline? Or how does it work?

Cole
So there’s multiple ways that we or I’ve been doing it. I’ve been able to verify protein company just given kits. So when you get an ELISA kit, and it says, this is what your standard is, and if you do this, your data should fall within there, we basically do a ramped up version, because lots of those kits give 5-6 point standard curve. So we ramped that up to a 10 point standard curve to verify all of the data within the range.

Sarah
What does it mean? Sorry to interrupt, what does it mean to ramp up the standard curve from 5 to 10? What does it mean?

Cole
Yeah. So with the 6 point standard curve, you have a lot of space, basically, between your points. And if your assay is trying to have a dynamic range of say, 200 to 5000 of whatever analyte you want to measure, if you have 5 points in between there, you could say, “Oh, there’s 1 point every 1000, effectively”, including one at the top and bottom, so 205,000. So your standard curve, ideally, would be something like 201,000/2,000/3,000/4,000/5,000, something like that.

What I mean by ramp up is that we increase the number of points within that curve. So that way, there are more independent data points to generate that curve from, so that way, it gives a more accurate measurement of anything that may be in between there. Because when you’re putting on this line of best fit for the standards, like the more points you have, the more accurate that line is going to be. So that’s what I mean by ramping up. So really undergird really, like make sure that what you’re looking at would be accurate in terms of when you need to analyze samples.

Sarah
Okay, I understand. So you have that line and usually have like, I don’t know, 12345. But you basically instead of 5, you have 10 points in between and can be more or your data are more safe or more secure, right? Okay, nice.

Cole
Yeah. And so we verify that in multiple ways by doing replicability. So you repeat an assay many times with the same set of standards, and then you calculate the variance and the percent recovery that you get from there. So what your spikes are, what your standard sample is supposed to be, and any controls that you have. So you know what that is supposed to be because you’ve calculated it based on your initial standard or your initial concentration. And then based on the assay, it’ll give you a readout as to what it’s measured to be. So you kind of measure in between there for the difference. And then you can aggregate the differences to determine the variance.

So there’s that and then you look at samples or sample stability, like how many times it can be freeze-thawed and how each of those freeze-thaws affects the integrity of the sample. Also, if you’re looking at samples in different media preps, so you’ve got cell culture, or you’ve got live animal plasma, for example, you’d look at the assay and how those different media or matrices affect the sample readout. So kind of nipper, doing more experiments on the assay, so that way, you get a robust understanding of what it can and also what it can’t measure. Because if there are certain variables that you introduce where your sample or your the concentration of your analyte that you’re looking at, if it’s under recovering, if it’s over recovering, or if it’s just wildly variable, you know that those standards are those set of experimental variables you cannot reliably get data from them.

Sarah
Okay.

Cole
So you know that, say, you’re measuring something in plasma, and you’re measuring something in cell culture media, because you’re doing some sort of animal experiment, and you’ve got a cell model that you should be able to correlate between them, say, the cell media, you add all of this stuff up media, like FBS, any sort of cytokines that you need to put in there, any sort of growth factors. And so you’ve got a million things in there and also in the plasma.

But when you measure, when you spike in the concentration of the analyte that you’re looking at, say, the media underrecovers, it doesn’t give you the concentration of the sample that you put in. So that means that there’s something interfering with the analyte in that sample that is undetectable by the assay that you’re trying to use to measure that. So either you need to change something in your media to be able to accurately measure the amount of analyte that you’re looking at. Or you need to choose a different assay to measure or create your own assay to measure the analyte that you’re looking at, in the cell culture media.

Sarah
Okay, but how do you know that? How do you find that out? Because if you have this only this assay to actually find out what you’re looking at, how do you find out that you’re missing something? Because if you can’t measure it, how do you know that you’re missing it?

Cole
Well, because you have a known concentration of your analyte to start with.

Sarah
Okay.

Cole
And so you specifically spike a predetermined amount into the media, or whatever matrix that you’re looking to measure it. So you know, what is supposed to be in there. So that’s how you can measure.

Sarah
Yeah, this is basically how you work. So you have your kit to test and then you add something of which you know, how much is in there, and you’re supposed to identify exactly this amount, but if you don’t, you know that something’s gone wrong, right?

Cole
Yes

Sarah
Okay, I understand. Okay, and how does it work? Like, because I guess you have a range of different kits in your repertoire. But do you say, “Okay, this week, we’re going to focus on this kit, whether it can measure everything, and this next week, we’re going to do this”, or everybody is working with different kits, how does it work?

Cole
So when you work in a team of people, and you have a group, like you’re in a group that is meant to basically develop these assays so that way when people give you samples, you can reliably tell them the results and you can confidently say that what you’ve given me and what I’m giving back to you is true. You’ll work on one, from my experience so far because I haven’t been in industry for too long yet. But from my experience so far, it’s you work with one assay primarily, you help your teammates to do inter, forgetting the word, inter operator variability, because you know how in science if one person does one experiment, and they are getting results, and then they hand off their procedure to someone else, and they’re not getting the results, that’s a problem.

Sarah
Yeah. So been there, yes.

Cole
Yeah, you need to be able to verify that the procedure when working in someone else’s hands, works. So you’re also learning about different types of assays, different types of methods that you’re using. So I use, like, standard ELISA, I use MSD platforms, I use U-Plexes, I use V-Plexes. So these are just multiple ways, or single and multi analyte detection methods, basically, like a standard ELISA being one of the easiest because you’re measuring one analyte. Whereas MSD, there are little electrodes on the bottom of the plates that you couple, I think it’s SULFO-TAG – not SULFO-TAG – you biotinylate, then probe or antibodies that you’re looking at, and those specific biotin beads bind to specific electrodes, and then you do sort of a sandwich ELISA on top, and then you have a SULFO-TAG, so that way, these antibodies forms a chain, where it gives off an electro chemiluminescence signal. So that way, you can determine multiple analytes in a sample, like I think the plates that we use, you can go up to 10 different analytes, but you can get a wide variety of them.

So and for different species, and different analyte combinations. So I’m working on multiple different methods. And basically you, again from my experience, you work on an assay until you can complete all of the verification on it. So you’ve done all of your repetitions, you’ve done all of your alterations, to really determine what or how robust and reliable that kit is, or that assay, I say, kit assay. But it’s an assay. So you determine how reliable that assay is. And then you write up your report. So that way, you can hand it off to someone else and say, “look, this is all the work that’s already been done”. And because of that, other people can use this kit, this assay doesn’t matter. This is how we know that it is verifiable. Because even though the companies where you may get predetermined kits from, they’re supposed to have done that, you also need to independently do that, because you can’t be certain that all of the variables are the same, where they tested it, for example, how they were testing it, versus how in the company, it needs to be tested. So you kind of work on one assay until it’s done. And then you move on to the next one. But in between, you’re also helping out your colleagues to verify their assays as well.

Sarah
Yeah, okay, I understand. All of this sounds very different from what we use in academia, how projects work there. How do you find that? How do you like the differences? How is it for you?

Cole
So in academia, you are a one person team. I found you are doing absolutely everything, from like base molecule creation, you may be working with a different lab, because you don’t have a specialization in organic chemistry or quick chemistry or whatever. You just can’t do that. And so then you work with another team to get that. But then you’re the one doing all of the animal work. You’re the one collecting samples, you’re the one doing all of the alterations, and then you buy an assay, and you hope that the assay that you’re using has been verified appropriately by the company, and you just get to work with that or you’re doing Western Blots or you’re doing Flow Cytometry as readouts whatever. But you’re doing absolutely everything. So you are the driving force, which is a lot. I’ve been through multiple scenarios with that and it’s a lot.

In industry, because the detail is just so much more, you are then focused in on doing one specific set because depending on where you go, what type of company you go into in biotech, like what they’re looking at, they want specialists looking at individual steps of the process. So that’s what you’re focused on. So that way, the steps that you’re performing you can perform with high accuracy and verification. To ensure that that step is done in the best way possible, instead of you needing to do absolutely everything and kind of being like, “yeah, well, you know, they said it was right”. They said it was right but if you’re gonna ask me to verify, how do I know it was right?

Sarah
It can’t just be told, yes. Yeah. I, yeah, remember those times. I always do that assay with this. And then you have like this 10 minute step. No, wait, I always do like this. And I do 10-20 minutes. Like, okay, so which ones right now? What, what is the truth? What is the truth actually like?

Cole
Yeah, cause you get the assays that you need to do and you have to troubleshoot them for the first month when you are in academia, because you do it as they were written, and it’s not working. And so then you have to tweak it continually until it works in your hands. And so in industry, like, that is people’s jobs is to do that individual steps. So that way, when everybody works together, the science machine flows smoothly, basically.

Sarah
Sounds good. Yeah. It’s critically important, yes, to make sure everything works at all our kits in assays work that people are using. Nice. So how come you actually decided to leave academia? What was your motivation?

Cole
I’m not gonna lie. Money was a big factor in leaving academia, because academics get paid like garbage. And as a trainee, you don’t get paid very much. I don’t know if it’s really any better if you move up to a PI position, or when you get a research associate there. I’ve heard salaries from postdocs are not great. And that’s just not something that I was particularly interested in, is continuing on an academic career or an academic career path, only to end up as a PI and no longer doing science and being a fundraiser. That’s also another thing that I was just like, oh, that doesn’t really seem like something I want to do. Yes, the autonomy to do your own research is very enticing, but you’re not doing that research. Once you finish your PhD, and you go to start your own lab, your job is no longer to do research, your job is to train the next generation and to fund science, which are very admirable goals, and very important to do. But I found that was not for me, I wanted to keep working with my hands. I wanted to be paid for my efforts, and kind of leave the environment of academia, which I felt was very political at times.

Sarah
Okay.

Cole
Just with department machinations and needing to perform certain things. Also the grant writing process, really awful. And that constant stress of, oh, do we have money to do these things like, because unfortunately, to do science, you need money because you can buy better equipment, and you can buy better reagents that are time saving. Time is your ultimate resource. Sure, you can make western blot gels for two hours for US$ 2 a gel, or you can buy them and not have to spend the time making them for US$ 350 a gel like and then you have two hours to do something else. Because is your time worth that extra dollar fifty?

Sarah
I completely understand. Yes, I can relate to that so much.

Cole
Yeah. So like, those are some of my reasons, personally, because I saw that I started out research in undergrad. And I saw that and I’m like, that’s not what I want to do. But for me to go and continue to be a scientist to do science, I need a graduate degree. The undergraduate degree wouldn’t do that.

Sarah
Yeah. Okay. And how…

Cole
You can still go, sorry, you can still go into industry with an undergraduate degree and also if you got science too. I’m not saying that’s a limiting factor. It just basically, from what I’ve seen, the degree that you exit academia with to go into biotech basically just determines your starting position. But that doesn’t, from what I’ve seen so far, that doesn’t hamper your upward mobility. And if it hampers your upward mobility in a company, change companies, right?

Sarah
Okay, that makes sense. Yes. So how was the switch for you from academia to industry? Was it difficult to find a position? Or were there so many offers that you actually had to choose one? Or, how was that?

Cole
So I just recently moved to the US and Boston area in October, I think, October of 2021. So I’ve only been here for 4 months, when I was looking for jobs, outside of academia, because I went to school in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, at the University of Alberta. And there was not a plethora of biotech jobs there. I was looking in, out east in Toronto and Montreal, there weren’t really a lot of jobs. There were jobs, but there weren’t jobs that I was getting callbacks for. And that was just a Canadian thing. I found that there wasn’t a lot. I was very fortunate in that in my job search, I was contacted by a recruiter for the company that I work for right now who said, “hey, your profile looks like something that we are looking for. It looks like a match. How about you come and interview with us? And we’ll see how that goes”. And I’m like, “honestly, sure. That sounds like a good idea”. An interview definitely couldn’t hurt.

Sarah
Nice

Cole
So the interviews went well. The company that I’m at, Sana, looks like a good place to work, good salary, good benefits, good culture. These are all things that kind of play into a decision. So that all looked good to me. I was very excited about the role to broaden my skill set even further because even through my academic journey, I switched labs from undergraduate to my graduate degree, specifically, so that way I could sharpen my skills and learn more. So this is also a continuation of learning different skills for me. And so I interviewed near the end of grad school, and I said, “Hey, I need to finish my degree first. I need to defend my thesis. So can we hold off until that?”. And the company was very flexible in that regard. They’re like, yeah, sure, no problem. So after I finished my degree, they flew me out to Boston, helped me set up and now I’m living here.

Sarah
Nice. They flew you out. That sounds amazing. Nice.

Cole
Yeah. Very lucky to have been offered a relocation package to come out and work.

Sarah
Amazing. That is super cool. And nevertheless, you’re also having a science communication video channel where you talk about science or research. What is your motivation for this?

Cole
So my motivation for this, my science communication channel is called Investigate Explore Discover. It’s on YouTube. I’ve been doing this for just over a year now. And my motivation to do this was, you know how people, when they present their research, you have visiting scientists, they spend an hour long lecture going through the minutiae of their research. And for me, this is very boring. Puts me to sleep very often, because people are not excited. They’re not thrilled to be giving the talks. They’re just like, this is the information. This is what you need to know if you want to know the minutiae. It doesn’t matter if you want to know or not, I’m going to tell you, and it’s going to be an hour of me just droning on about miscellaneous things. And yes, they’re important. But nobody wants to watch. I didn’t want to watch them. Because it’s like, okay, you put me to sleep in the first 15-20 minutes. I want to see your stuff and I want to be excited, but the presentations are just bad. The research is still good. The knowledge is still there. But for me, I didn’t want to watch that.

Sarah
Yeah, I know, they have all the knowledge there. It’s all there. They just have issues with communicating them, bringing them out in an engaging way. Telling a nice vivid story. Yes, I know. I know that.

Cole
So I saw that and I’m like, okay, that’s a huge gap. And especially for primary research, when you look at papers as well, some papers are just god awful to read. They’re just difficult. Yes, they’re important. Yes, they’re saying important things. But they’re not written well, they don’t have a story. Like, there’s sometimes just difficult topics that you may not be an expert in, and they’re written for experts. And it’s like, well, that’s not helpful. Because you’re trying to disseminate knowledge. If you have all of this good knowledge, it means nothing, unless you can effectively communicate that to people, because it needs to be shared. And so seeing that, going through grad school, I realized, like, okay, I kind of enjoy presenting, I enjoy giving engaging presentations, I enjoy trying to work with people to make sure that people get the points, kind of adding a bit of humor, a bit of levity, whatever.

So, what I did was I figured, like, okay, if I wanted to learn new information, how long do I want to learn it for? And like, will that give me the key points? And will I have all the appropriate background information to understand what they’re talking about? So that’s kind of what fueled me to say, like, or fueled me to start my YouTube channel. And I’ll do a minor plug here. And that I’m always looking for people that are also interested in sharing their stories. My formatting is videos that are under 15 minutes, because at that point, I find my attention would just wander. Because you have, like, 15 minutes already is a big task. But if you’re looking for information about 15 minutes for a new topic, and the generalities of what that topic is saying, I think is a reasonable amount of time to present. So looking at that as like, okay, well, this isn’t being done. So, either I need to complain about it, I need to ask other people to do it, or do it myself. And….

Sarah
There you are finding out your YouTube channel.

Cole
Yeah. So because like, it’s just, it’s also a skill. It’s a skill that takes practice. Because if you go back and look at some of my first videos, they are awful. They’re very painful for me, even for me to watch. I’m just like, oh, “I could have been so much better”. But you have to start somewhere.

Sarah
Exactly. My very first articles, posts. I’m just like, please, let’s just thank god I can edit stuff on the internet. This is just awful to read. So what are you actually talking about then in your channel? How do you give presentations, you make animations? How does it work? What’s your process?

Cole
So it’s kind of a hybrid of slide presentations, and not news. But like having someone be physically there, because I’ve seen presentations on YouTube, where people are just going through a slide deck, and they’ve got voiceover again, like, yeah, it’s effective at communicating, but it’s not really engaging for me. Like, it’s like, okay, cool, I appreciate that you’re going through static slides and doing those things. But again, you run into that same problem where people may not be excited, they’re just kind of reading it. And it’s like, okay, well, who is actually going to want to learn about that when it’s presented in that way?
So what I do is basically a video of myself talking about that new topic. The topics that I choose are primary research articles that are free to access, so that way anybody can go and look at the actual data that is presented in the articles. And so it is a summary of the key points and key information in that article. So the formatting basically is 1/3 to half of the time is spent in the 15 minutes, talking about background, so making sure that you have all of the relevant information and how it relates to a broader context like society or like why you should care. But half or 1/3 to half the video goes through just that to really cement what are some of the relevant information you need to know and why it’s important. And then about another half to third, again, kind of talks about the results and what was found. And then also a little bit more goes into future directions and questions, also related to that research. So it’s, as well, kind of limited in timeframe to the point of recording to be within two years of publication, because research is consistently moving at an incredible rate. And really, at this point, two years is about the lifespan of relevance for a lot of papers.

Sarah
Very true, yes.

Cole
Before something just new comes out, and expands even further on that topic. That’s what I present on.

Sarah
And who is your target audience? Who are you trying to reach with your videos?

Cole
So my target audience is really general, but it’s general people that have an interest in science, so people that would have a little bit of science background enough to understand that. So that’s who I’m aiming to target. Monitor the papers that I choose, because of my background, are mainly immunology related or microbiology related, because that’s what I’ve done research on and studied for ridiculously long, what I feel like, and I went to school for them. So like, that’s where my background knowledge is. And so that’s the topics that I cover. But yeah, my target audience is a general audience, I don’t want it to be too jargony. I try to reduce the amount of jargon that’s in there, to make it easily understandable for people that are interested in learning about science, because already like I realized, the average person is probably not going to watch a 15 minute presentation on somebody presenting new research. So you kind of need that interest to even want to see that. Yeah, but I want to make it, if say you wanted to show your grandma about something that you can show a video on that topic, to your grandma, your grandpa, your parents, aunts, uncles, even nieces and nephews, depending on how old they are. But you want to, or I wanted to be able to have it so that way, people that have the general science understanding can go about and learn it because some of the topics, I realized, like, you just need a little bit of background, you can’t start from absolutely nothing. Because building up that very basic knowledge and then going into the higher topics that the research is specifically probing like the very minutiae, like the minute details of that, then like that gap is just too big to get the standard basics.

Sarah
Yeah, this is super interesting. I wish we could talk forever. I mean, that’s exactly my goal. My vision is to understand science. How and where do you make the switch of like, how much do they already know? How much detail are you going to bring in? Who is your audience? What do they actually want to know? Why is it important to them? All of this? It’s super interesting. Yes. So everyone, if you’re interested in immunology, please follow Cole on YouTube on, what’s the name, just say it.

Cole
On Investigate Explore Discover. I’m also on Twitter under the same brand, but also if you go @InvExDis, this is just the first little bits of those words. So I’m active on there as well.

Sarah
Okay. The links will be in the show notes. Yes. Awesome. Cole. Thank you very much. So at the end of our STEMterviews, I hope you know, we always have a couple of random questions. Are you down for us?

Cole
Absolutely.

Sarah
Awesome. So in one sentence, what are you truly passionate about?

Cole
I am truly passionate about science communication. As it turns out, it’s a very simple statement. But yeah, I am passionate about making science accessible to more people and bridging the divide. I think that is especially showing up recently between people that do the science and people that may be interested but don’t have the full background or understanding. And so even elaborating on that like, it’s great if you do everything and it’s great if you’re very knowledgeable, but it means absolutely nothing if you can’t communicate it to people. Like, you need to disseminate that knowledge. You need to make it known to more people. And so….

Sarah
I couldn’t agree more. Yes. It’s the essence of what I’m doing every day. Yes. I love it. Okay, next question. What was your favorite subject at school?

Cole
My favorite subject, like, in up to high school was biology. That was something that was very interesting for me. Even just reflecting on them immediately, I’m like, “man, these seem like very stereotypical answers”.

Sarah
It is what it is.

Cole
But yeah, I mean, biology always interested me. I also really enjoyed, like, going further back to junior high. Like, I really enjoyed shop class and doing things with my hands as well.

Sarah
Nice. Okay, what do you do in your free time when you don’t do videos for people on YouTube? What do you do?

Cole
It takes a lot of my free time outside of work. So in my other free time, what I like to do is, I like to read, I like to go for walks. I like to pretty much read and go for walks. I watch a little bit of TV, play a little bit of games, but kind of spend time being active as well. Yeah, not anything too crazy.

Sarah
Nice. If you wrote a book, what would be the topic of the book?

Cole
This one plays into what I think is important. The topic of the book that I would feel even comfortable writing about right now is, like, science communication, how to be engaging, like very practical tips as to how to be an engaging presenter and somebody that is what I think because I’m just one person, like, how do I even know if what I’m doing is even applicable to people. But it would be how to kind of engage people and make better presentations that people would actually want to see.

Sarah
We definitely have a lot more to talk together at some point. Yes. But right now, we got to stop you. Thank you so much for your time, Cole. It has been a pleasure talking to you.

Cole
Thank you, Sarah. It’s been wonderful too.

Sarah
Awesome. Okay, thank you so much.

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