In praise of a polished, professional 'gem'

Science Article
September 18, 2003

Transplant Biology colleagues give kudos to Erlinda Santos, whose 30-year journey from lab tech to research assistant feels like it began 'just yesterday'

Center veteran Erlinda Santos pipets cell samples in Dr. Brenda Sandmaier's lab in the Clinical Research Division. Photo by Todd McNaught

By BRAD BROBERG

When Erlinda Santos left the Philippines to come to the United States, she told her parents she'd return in three months if she couldn't find a job. As things turned out, it was an unnecessary promise.

After working as a seamstress in a coat factory and as a teacher's aide in a junior high school, Santos landed a position as a lab tech at the University of Washington, where she joined a small team pioneering the use of bone-marrow transplants to treat leukemia. That was 30 years ago and Santos has been part of that groundbreaking effort and its ongoing success ever since.

"I can't believe it's been 30 years," Santos said. "It seems like just yesterday."

Santos, who has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the Mapua Institute of Technology in Manila, is a research assistant in Dr. Brenda Sandmaier's lab in the transplant biology program of Fred Hutchinson's Clinical Research Division. It's a far cry from her early days, when the bone-marrow transplant team was part of the University of Washington and the center-founded in 1975-did not yet exist.

"Every day has been a challenge because you keep learning new things," Santos said. Dr. Rainer Storb, head of the Transplant Biology Department, originally hired Santos and worked closely with her for many years. "She's always been incredibly faithful and reliable and hard-working," he said. "In the beginning, we didn't have many people and she would come in on the weekends on her own to look after the tissue cultures. Erlinda is the kind of person we would trust with anything. She's just a gem."

Sandmaier, who has worked with Santos for 12 years, calls her an outstanding employee who is respected throughout various departments for being a team player and true professional. "She can do multiple things at once in a very organized manner," she said. "Essentially, she keeps the lab running smoothly and efficiently. I wouldn't know what to do without her."

For Santos, one of the greatest rewards of her job is the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. That's because postdoctoral fellows from numerous foreign countries come to the lab to gain experience and it's up to Santos to teach them the lab's procedures, review their data and help them write up the results of their work.

"We've had postdocs from Brazil, Germany, Croatia, Russia ... that's why we call our lab an international lab," Santos said.

Besides directing postdocs - the lab hosts two new ones every two years - Santos supervises two to three work-study students, who maintain the lab and support the researchers.

Those were the duties Santos performed when she joined the transplant team as a lab tech 30 years ago. As a research assistant, she now plays a much broader role. "I ended up gaining more and more experience, more and more confidence and more and more responsibility," she said.

One of most pressing duties facing Santos is coordinating all the procedures necessary for the lab's various experiments. With multiple research activities underway at any given moment, Santos puts a premium on staying organized.

Operating procedures

"I get instructions from Dr. Sandmaier about what needs to be done and I set it all up," she explained. "Infusion, transplant, apheresis, they all have to be scheduled. And I have to write up all the protocols and have them properly approved."

On top of scheduling the various procedures, Santos also plays a hands-on role in performing them. Over the years, that has meant learning how to operate a steady stream of new and improved equipment. One of the biggest changes was the introduction of apheresis machines to draw and separate blood cells.

Before coming to the United States, Santos taught high school for five years-which was more than enough, she recalled, "I enjoyed teaching, but after a while I got tired," she said, noting she taught five sections a day with 50 students per section. "It was hard to discipline because I was almost as young as some of the students."

Having decided teaching wasn't her niche, Santos attended the Philippines National Institute of Science and Technology for six months, then worked in the institute's library for two years writing scientific abstracts. In the meantime, she applied for a visa to the United States where she figured there would be greater opportunity to put her education to use.

Today, Santos calls Fred Hutchinson her second home and regards the people she works with as family. "I'm proud to be working at the center because I'm contributing to important research and helping people," she said. "In the early years, transplant survival was really low, but through our research, we've been able to improve that."

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