Past work have examined children's understanding of race, including their categorization of others based on race, racial preferences, and racial attitudes. Almost all of these studies have only investigated children's racial understanding based on Black and White individuals. In the current study, we wanted to examine whether 4- and 5-year-old White children categorize and hold preferences on the basis of race comparing Asian, Black, and White individuals. Participants were asked "Who do you like the best?" to determine whether they held preferences for individuals based on race, between paired pictures of different-race children. To assess categorization, participants were asked to match pictures of children to exemplars they thought looked most like the children in the pictures. Results demonstrate that children categorize based on race significantly greater than chance t(47) = 5.569, p < 0.001. In terms of preferences, children significantly preferred White over Black children, t(47)=2.801, p=0.007. However, they did not have a preference for Asian versus White children, t(47)=1.219, p=0.229 or Asian versus Black children, t(47)=1.070, p=0.290. Taken together, these results suggest White children have a fairly sophisticated understanding of race; not only do they differentiate between members of their in-group and out-group (significantly differentiating on race between White/Black and White/Asian comparisons), but they also differentiate between other racial groups (significantly differentiating between Asian and Black individuals). Although children categorize and recognize race, this does not mean they always form preferences based on race.

Everyday, human beings engage in prosocial behaviors, which are behaviors intended to benefit others. These include simple acts, such as holding doors for others, and costlier behaviors, such as donating money. Even young children help, share with, and comfort others. To gain insight into why human beings engage in prosociality from such an early age, it is critical to examine individual variability in children’s prosocial behavior. That is, why are some children more prosocial than others? One factor that may influence prosociality is social anhedonia, which is the reduced capacity to experience pleasure from social interactions. Adults with high social anhedonia are less prosocial; however, no work has explored if children’s capacity to experience pleasure from social interactions motivates their prosociality. The current work develops a measure of social anhedonia in early childhood and examines if variability in the capacity to experience pleasure from social interactions is related to children’s tendency to engage in prosocial behavior. To explore this question, parents of 4- to 8-year-olds report their child’s prosociality. They also report their child’s social anhedonia using the Child Social Anhedonia Scale, which I created based on a questionnaire assessing adulthood social anhedonia. This work is ongoing, but an analysis of 134 participants (57 females) revealed a significant negative correlation between children’s social anhedonia and prosociality, r=-0.32, p<0.001. This finding suggests that children who are less likely to experience pleasure from social interactions are also less prosocial, implying that perhaps enjoying social interactions serves as a motivation for children’s prosociality. This study is the first step in understanding the relation between pleasure from social interactions and children’s prosocial behavior. Future studies could further examine if this relationship is causal.

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare, aggressive, neuroendocrine skin malignancy that is typically radiosensitive. Standard-of-care for loco-regional MCC consists of a wide local excision and sentinel node biopsy, followed by post-operative radiotherapy (PORT) to a total dose of 50 Gy in 25 fractions over 5 weeks. This approach has been shown to reduce the incidence of loco-regional recurrence. In cancers characterized by a rapid growth pattern, delay in starting PORT after surgery is associated with increased loco-regional failures. However, the impact of delayed PORT on recurrence patterns in MCC has not been characterized. We evaluated 152 MCC patients from a prospective registry with the following criteria: diagnosed with loco-regional disease, received definitive surgical resection followed by PORT, treated at the University of Washington Medical Center (UWMC) within 6 months of initial diagnosis, and had at least 6 months of follow up data from the date of surgery. Statistical analyses were conducted in STATA 14.0 using univariate tests to assess associations between variables and survival outcomes. The group was dichotomized according to UWMC recommendations to initiate adjuvant RT no later than 6 weeks after date of definitive excision. Sixty-three patients had short delay to PORT, defined as 6 weeks or less, and 89 patients had a long delay of > 6 weeks (range: 12-419 days). There were no differences between the two groups in regards to age at diagnosis, stage, sex, tumor site, tumor size, and immunosuppression status. Among the short delay and long delay groups, no significant survival differences were observed: loco-regional recurrence-free survival (p=0.69), and MCC-specific survival (p=0.48). These preliminary results suggest that delay for up to 6 weeks does not impact loco-regional control or cancer-specific survival, and may allow for improved wound healing. Further analysis is underway to determine the upper limit of safe PORT delay.

The spread of disease can occur through bacterial colonization of shared contact points within a community. Potential platforms for bacterial colonization and subsequent spread have been introduced with the bike share applications across the city of Seattle. The bike handles serve as a shared contact point for each rider with the extent of bacterial colonization of those handles unknown. Using swabs to collect bacteria samples from bikes, we are able to assess the number of colony forming units present on each handle. Our ongoing research is examining the levels of bacteria found on the bikes in different parts of the city at different times. This analysis will show the extent of bacterial colonization, whether there is a time or location dependence, and provide a basis for further study into the risk this new shared contact point may pose.

Brain tumors are the most common form of pediatric cancers after leukemia. Deregulation of the family of MYC (avian myelocytomatosis viral oncogene homolog) transcription factors in some forms of pediatric brain cancer correlates with very poor prognosis. It is believed that overexpression of MYC may play a role in sustaining aggressive brain tumor cell populations in diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), medulloblastoma, and atypical teratoid/rhabdoid (AT/RT) pediatric brain tumor types. A targeted therapy capable of inhibiting MYC transcription factors may be a promising option for children with MYC-upregulated brain tumors. We addressed the role of MYC genes in the tumorigenesis of several patient-derived pediatric cell lines with upregulation of MYC transcription factors. Via a lentiviral delivery agent, we attempted to knock down MYC transcription factions through the expression of doxycycline induced omomyc—a 90 amino acid, MYC-derived, polypeptide that interferes with normal MYC activity by outcompeting for the enhancer binding sites that MYC normally binds to. We found that MYC inhibition, using omomyc, halted the growth of tumor cells in over half of the patient-derived primary cell cultures with MYC overexpression. 6 out of 11 lines showed significant inhibition of tumorigenesis through the induction of omomyc. This suggests that the mechanism of action of omomyc, as a MYC inhibitor, may serve as a model for drug development against MYC for pediatric brain cancer.