Carl Fry: Exploring the mystery of IL-16

Getting into medical school is tough—few would deny it. But Carl Fry wasn’t worried. The Wooster senior knew that his Independent Study experience at Wooster would weigh heavily in his favor.  In fact, by mid-March, before his I.S. was even due, Carl had already been admitted to the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Medical school has been Carl’s goal ever since his senior year in high school, when he traveled to Honduras on a mission trip. There he served as a translator for a team of physicians. “Hundreds of people came down from the hills for medical care —glasses, vitamins, pain relievers, and dental work. It was an amazing experience to see the whole world of doctors who go beyond the United States. I said “This is what I want to do!’”

Carl chose Wooster because he knew that he could design his own major and conduct independent research. Because he had a special interest in the brain and how it functions, he chose to create a major in neuroscience by combining courses in biochemistry, molecular biology, and psychology.

For his Independent Study, Carl researched the effects of a particular protein called a  cytokine—a kind of chemical messenger—on the nervous system. This particular cytokine holds surprises and promises, says Carl, because (unlike most cytokines) it appears in two systems—the nervous system and the immune system. The effects of this protein, Interleukin-16 (IL-16), on the immune system are well known: It regulates inflammatory responses, white blood cells, and can inhibit HIV replication. But, surprisingly, research has shown that neurons in the cerebellum and hippocampus regions of the brain, which are involved in memory and motor coordination, can also synthesize and secrete IL-16.

To study the effects of IL-16 and the mechanism through which it exerts its effects in the nervous system, Fry compares gene expression in mouse brain cells that have been treated with the protein with those that have not. He learned the protocols of designing a research experiment—how to dissect brain tissue, prepare cell cultures, and analyze results. “I had tremendous leadership. There were times when my advisor (Catherine Pichon Fenster, assistant professor of biology), would say “Figure it out; see you in a few hours. There was a tremendous feeling that this really was my experiment.”

Fenster says Fry’s results are promising, suggesting that IL-16 functions through a similar mechanism in both the immune and nervous system.