Shayle Matsuda

For me, what was hard, or I think the way that it affected me the most in my personality is that I, from a very early age, didn't have this idea of all the time in the world.

I was like, if I want to do something, I have to do it now.

And so I was, from a very early age, I was very, for better or for worse, like,

Everything that I want to happen has to happen now.

So it resulted in me being a very driven human being.

But then at the same time, it also, you know, causes a lot of anxiety and pressure.

And I think that it got me really curious about science, about answering questions and about the fact that, you know, like, oh, man, this story, too.

So.

Leukemia is a really interesting thing because for centuries or whatnot of studying this thing, we didn't know what caused it.

And there's been a lot of hypotheses out there that have talked about could it be an environmental thing, whatnot.

And it was very recently that a paper came out with this new hypothesis that it's kind of like a combination of things.

It's like a genetic thing, like a genetic predisposition.

And then also the hypothesis is that

babies who were not exposed to the right bacteria in their first year of life were more prone to this.

So that was super interesting because a lot of bacteria is another really big thing in my research today.

There's a lot of work going on with coral probiotics.

I'm studying what bacteria is there.

Other groups are working on can we take the bacteria that we know is helping coral survive and inoculate them with that at an early age and then will that help them

down the line.

So this whole idea that maybe we could prevent childhood leukemia by creating a probiotic cocktail for babies.