Blaine Baker

Alma Mater: Sonoma State University, B.S., Biochemistry

Matriculation Year: 2022

About Blaine: Blaine is from South Sacramento. He loves his family, friends, and a fun time.

Research Advisor: Aijun Wang

Research Interests:  I have one goal as a physician-scientist: to cure Alzheimer’s disease. At Sonoma State, I worked under Dr. Jon Fukuto investigating hydropersulfides as a mechanism to protect against electrophilic and oxidative modifications. I credit him for inspiring my interest in understanding disease mechanisms, pharmacology, and teaching me how to think.

During my time at UC San Diego, I worked for Dr. Susan Taylor researching structural biochemistry of Protein Kinase A. In a collaboration, we investigated the consequences of PKA-c mutations resulting in congenital anomaly syndrome. This inspired me to propose a novel idea; specific isoforms of PKA-c can cause Alzheimer’s Disease via dysregulation of Tau, APP, and p75NTR. This idea was submitted as an R03 grant and is my proudest work. I thank Dr. Taylor for really fostering my creativity, Dr. Philip Aoto for being an incredible mentor, and Lily Vu for being the best lab partner.

Most recently, I worked in Protein Engineering at Graphite Bio, a next-generation gene therapy company. My role was to produce, characterize, and optimize Cas9’s and other DNA repair proteins. It was amazing to work on cutting-edge science in a collaborative environment, and to impact the culture of a new, exciting company. This experience inspired me to pursue utilizing gene editing tools in my career due to their endless therapeutic potential.

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