22 April 2023
TOPEKA (KSNT) – 27 News Anchor David George recently visited St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. He had the chance to met and chat with doctor Niraj Trivedi. A summary of their conversation follows.
After nearly 20 years at St. Jude, Trivedi still leads a team that pushes the boundaries of what is possible scientifically in order to cure pediatric diseases.
“The reason I got into science, was the idea of legacy, which I think most humans have…like what will you leave when you’re gone. I have this thought that if you think about human knowledge and the frontiers of human knowledge as a circle and if you were able to push that an inch further and build on that, and others build on that…it would be one of the greatest legacies you could leave.”
As a lab operations supervisor in the Department of Neurobiology, Trivedi is in charge of conducting experiments in the lab of Dr. David Solecki.
Trivedi was the first employee of the lab starting in 2004…responsible for setting up the protocols that would determine how it would operate.
“In my lab, we are very heavily involved in microscopy, so we love seeing individual cells and how they react to different situations…to different manipulations…(EDIT)…it’s so complex…there are like a billion reactions happening all at once. It’s heavily orchestrated and there’s a purpose for everything.”
He describes his work as being “the conductor” while the principal investigator “writes the music.”
In other words, he has to make sure everyone in the lab has what they need and to know what they should be focusing on.
“It’s a very long process. what we do at the bench for that to translate to bedside is a long and arduous process and we are just a cog in the wheel. It takes a lot of different investigators, and different labs, to create a full picture where you can design drugs and then those drugs can be tested and go through clinical trials and then get to the bedside to help children.”
For scientists at St. Jude, the available resources allow them to take experiments as far as they need to go in order to either obtain a resolution or determine if a different course of action is necessary.
Trivedi takes pride in being able to use those resources to push science forward and being able to get the best data possible from the work.
That data is also shared across different groups to achieve a common goal.
“It’s inspirational because we all have the same goal. We all are trying to make children’s lives better and to stop suffering…right from janitorial staff to security guards all the way to science directors and CEOs…we’re all just working on the same goal.”
Even with two decades under his belt in St. Jude labs, and he feels the most important and significant discoveries are coming soon…and he never has to look far for inspiration…
“Being on campus…where you have all of those people in the same place…you see patients…you see kids…and they’re happy and they’re probably having the worst day of their lives but they’re smiling, and you see how we try to make this process the best we can for them. It’s all inspirational. It makes you go to work each day and give one hundred percent and sometimes go home which would be the extra ten percent.
At the end of the day…he says he’s just happy to do what he loves every day — and he adds — thanks to Dream Home ticket buyers, and generous donors, scientific discoveries to help children continue and miracles that give families more time together occur more often.
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