Engaging Chicago Youth in Drug Discovery
With the Chicago Antibiotic Discovery Lab, professor Brian Murphy leads a team inspiring youth to engage with science and research
When Camarria Williams was encouraged to collect field samples in Chicago’s Garfield Park as part of the Chicago Antibiotic Discovery Lab program, she directed a sly smirk in the direction of Dr. Brian Murphy.
“Anything?” the Chicago sixth grader confirmed with Murphy, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the UIC Retzky College of Pharmacy who launched the youth science program in 2022 in partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago (BGCC).
Williams soon focused her attention on the lagoon sitting at the park’s center. She surveyed the scene and turned over a few rocks before spotting her target: goose poop.
“I just figured it’d have a lot of bacteria in it because geese eat a lot,” Williams says.
Bringing the University and the Community Together Heading link
Little did Williams know the sample she collected that rather routine day held a secret: a compound showing activity against a cancer cell line. After additional investigation by Murphy’s lab team, Williams was listed as a coauthor on a paper published last October in ACS Omega tracking the discovery.
It’s a high-profile result for Murphy’s upstart outreach program, which he designed to engage Chicago youth in biomedical research and propel interest in STEM careers.
“Though the university and the community coexist in the same neighborhood, we can often seem like we’re worlds apart,” says Murphy, who has been involved in youth science outreach throughout much of his 16-year tenure at UIC. “The Antibiotic Discovery Lab program is about building bridges between UIC and the community it serves and creating shared, impactful experiences around science that motivate and inspire.”
Inviting Youth Into Research Heading link
Eager to involve youth in his research around antibiotic discovery in nature, Murphy created the Chicago Antibiotic Discovery Lab after securing a highthroughput robotic colony picker for his lab. Housed in a biosafety cabinet, the robotic machine removed concerns about youth handling bacteria-filled samples and enabled young scientists to get involved in an antibiotic discovery pipeline with support from Murphy and his team.
When Murphy floated the potential program idea to BGCC leadership, they jumped at the opportunity to pilot the initiative at the James R. Jordan Club, which sits 1.2 miles from the Retzky College of Pharmacy’s Wood Street home.
“This was a unique opportunity to get our youth directly involved in research and thinking about science in new ways, so we were all in,” BGCC technology program manager Jonathon Rodriguez says.
The three-month program invites BGCC members into high-level antibiotic research beginning with sample collection in local environments. Thereafter, members grow bacteria from their samples before utilizing the Murphy Lab’s robot to screen the bacteria against different pathogens. Learning how to read and interpret different bioinformatics data, members then decide which isolates they will hand off to Murphy’s team for further investigation.
Jin Yi “Jeanie” Tan, a fourth-year pharmaceutical sciences graduate student who has helped Murphy run the program since its 2022 debut, has seen members’ confidence rise week after week alongside their willingness to ask questions and chase curiosity.
“We hope that kids see how fun and impactful hands-on science and research can be,” says Tan, who oversees the graduate students and postdocs who serve as the program’s volunteer mentors.
Williams, for instance, relished the program’s experiential nature and the invitation to apply science right in her neighborhood. She also appreciated the opportunity to visit UIC’s labs and receive guidance and encouragement from experienced researchers.
“It was cool to see how it all works,” Williams says.
Stimulating Interest In Science Heading link
After the Jordan Club hosted the Antibiotic Discovery Lab’s first two cohorts, the program shifted to the Bartlett J. McCartin Club in Bridgeport last fall. Moving forward, Murphy hopes to bring the program to additional BGCC sites across the Chicago area. His team also partnered with BGCC on a federal grant seeking to expand the program to high schoolers and create paid summer research internships for teens.
“Ultimately, we want to engage as many young people as we can in mentored neighborhood-centred research, so we’re creating interest in science and strengthening the STEM talent pipeline,” Murphy says.
Through the program, Rodriguez has seen participants once intimidated or disinterested in science grow willing and eager to interact with research.
“Kids enjoy the everyday connection to science and see it as something attainable,” he says. “Suddenly, science as a career is something they see as a possibility.”
Williams, who initially joined the program alongside her sister at the suggestion of Jordan Club director Will Edmondson, might be the ideal example of the program’s talent development ambitions. While the preteen enjoyed science before joining the Chicago Antibiotic Discovery Lab, the program intensified her interest in science and ignited visions of pursuing a career in medicine or research.
“The program just made me happy,” she says. “It makes me want to discover more things out there.”