(music) My name is Joan Han and I’m an assistant clinical investigator at the National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development. I had never even met anyone who had WAGR syndrome
before. It was only something I had studied in textbooks. My number one question was what
is the special gene that is causing the obesity. Every time we study a rare disease, in many
ways, that is the window to understand common physiology. So it turned out that those children
who had BNF deletion, 100 percent of them developed obesity by the time they were 10
years old. All the genetic studies are basically able to accomplish a lot more. For example,
the technique we used in order to determine the deletion boundaries, the extramural collaboration
is what allowed for this because I had no previous experience using this technique.
So I was awarded the Bench-to-Bedside for the first time in 2007 and the results of
that initial study actually led to many more projects. And in fact I was able to obtain
a 2010 and 2011 Bench-to-Bedside awards that were spinoff of that original project. So
if anyone were to ask me, “Should I apply for a Bench-to-Bedside award?,” my answer
is, “Yes, definitely go for it!” (music)
