Featured SACNISTA

While growing up in Laredo, Texas, Toni Gutierrez didn’t know she wanted to be a research scientist. As a young girl, she loved being around children and learning about science, so she wanted to become a pediatrician. But, Gutierrez lost interest in a medical career after discovering that being a good doctor entailed a lot of memorization of information that has already been established—something she couldn’t put her whole heart into. While Gutierrez’s interest on becoming a doctor waned, her graduate advisor and mentor, Dr. Jose Cimadevilla encouraged her to try a summer research program. Despite Gutierrez’s hesitation, she gave into her mentor’s persistence. By the end of the summer research program, she was hooked. Research provided Gutierrez a new way to interact with science. It required thinking about questions no one has ever asked and figuring out how to answer them.
 
As a doctoral student at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Gutierrez derives satisfaction from being on the front line providing basic research that could lead to the development a new and better drug therapy to treat lupus. “Every new piece of information you get creates an opportunity to make a targeted therapeutic,” Gutierrez says. That’s not the only satisfaction she gets from her research. It also gets her creativity going as she taps her imagination to get a mental image of the entire immune system in action, “It’s this totally insane puzzle,” she says. Putting that puzzle together and then running experiments is a challenge that Gutierrez says takes focus, determination, and supportive mentors to guide her.
 
Fifty-years have passed since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new drug to treat lupus. But thanks to researchers like Toni Gutierrez, it may not be long before a new breakthrough in treatment is on the rise.
 
Toni Gutierrez is doctoral candidate at the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center. She has attended SACNAS conferences since 2001.
 
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