Although Alex Qiuyu Guo is now Senior Scientist for Discovery Biomarkers at Amgen, he admits that he didn’t start off being devoted to science.

“I was more interested in history,” said Guo, who grew up in Beijing as the son of an engineer. “But my academic performance was always pretty good, and a career in STEM was highly regarded in China at the time, especially as a way to support yourself.”

As an undergraduate at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, he majored in biological science and biotechnology. In addition to learning scientific facts, he joined a plant biology and development lab and gained an appreciation for science on a much deeper level.

“I started admiring science and the way that scientists think,” he said. “Science is really how you think about things, how you apply logic, how you design controlled experiments to validate your hypothesis and your evidence-based work. So that was a cool way to think about things as a person, not necessarily even as a professional. And I believe it’s the right way of thinking about things.”

He moved to the U.S. to join the master of science program in biochemistry and molecular medicine at USC, where he did cancer research in Deborah Johnson’s lab. Johnson was the first person to recognize his talent in science and encourage him to pursue it as a career. He then enrolled in the Programs in Biomedical and Biological Sciences (PIBBS) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC to earn his PhD.

His then girlfriend and now wife, who was a fellow PhD student working on stem cells at USC, informed him that Andy McMahon was leaving Harvard to become the director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC. Longing for mentorship from a world leader in biology, Guo opted for a rotation and eventually joined McMahon’s lab with co-mentorship from bioinformatics faculty member Anton Valouev.

During his PhD training, he received both a USC Provost research enhancement grant and a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Scholars training grant to explore gene regulation within the kidney progenitor cells that form the filtering units known as nephrons. He credits his CIRM-supported PhD training with teaching him highly transferrable skills related to stem cells, genomics, and bioinformatics that laid the foundation for his future career in California’s vibrant biotech industry. More importantly, he set the tone for his career by learning the “dedication, scrutiny, and ability to communicate science required to be a good scientist, thanks to the meticulous mentorship by Andy and Anton,” he said.

After finishing his PhD in 2019, he wanted to focus on research that was more disease-relevant while elevating his expertise in genomics. With these goals in mind, he joined the lab of Daniel Geschwind at UCLA to study the genetics of neuropsychiatric disorders with support from a fellowship from Autism Speaks.

During the second year of his postdoc, he and his wife welcomed their first child, a daughter who is now 4.

“Children are the most precious gifts to parents, and one way to build more connection with the world and find more purpose for life,” he said. “That’s my perspective.”

To support his growing family, which now also includes a newborn son, he decided to explore jobs in the biotech industry, which eventually led him to Amgen in Thousand Oaks, California.

“I work on biomarker research,” he said. “Every time you run a clinical trial, you have a chance to collect clinical samples from patients. People have started to realize the importance of designing clinical research studies more carefully to validate the mechanism of action of the drug, to find biomarkers correlating with stronger efficacy, as well as to find new targets.”

Amgen is trying to use these biomarkers to either predict or measure responses to therapies such as new drugs to treat cancer, metabolic disorders, or inflammation.

“I’m super happy with the job,” said Guo. “I like the fact that we are working heavily cross-functionally with smart people with various expertise. Even more, I love to see that my work is en route to having an impact on the real world.”

Thinking about his career so far, he added: “I deeply appreciate the training I obtained from USC and CIRM, which was the only thing that led me to a world and life much broader and deeper than I could have imagined.”