Cass Nordmann - Dr. Sandra Demaria - Week 8

 Last blog post! I can’t believe the Immersion Term is already over. Overall, I think it was a really positive experience that I learned a lot from. After my first trip to the pathology lab, I realized that I really didn’t understand the anatomy of breast tissue and where breast cancer comes from. With Dr. Demaria’s instruction, I feel I have a much better grasp of these concepts and I’m better prepared to do breast cancer research. I had also never really understood how to interpret histology before coming to Weill. If I saw images of H&E stains in a paper, I mostly just ignored them because I didn’t know what to look for. Now I think I’ll have an easier time reading the literature and I’m interested in potentially doing some histology of our in vitro systems back in Ithaca. Getting to work with the organoids in the Demaria lab was huge for me and my lab. I’m already working on plans with my PI and Dr. Demaria to bring some organoids to Ithaca so we can do our mechanics-focused work on patient-derived cells. It could be a really important research direction for us and something that I’m looking forward to working on. I think this experience really helped re-spark some of my excitement for research after my difficult first year at Cornell. But as great as all this was, I’m very excited to go home and see my cat. I’m definitely not cut out for city life, which I suppose is an important lesson in and of itself.

This past week, in addition to preparing and giving my presentation at our final weekly meeting. I’ve just been wrapping up what I’ve been working on with growing organoids in collagen and getting the answers to some questions my PI has about the organoids. Some of the other PIs in the department aren’t as forthcoming with information as Dr. Demaria has been, but I’m hoping to speak with her again soon with my PI so that we can get any questions sorted out and arrange for organoids to be delivered. Next week I’ll give a little presentation to my lab about the organoids and we can move forward from there.

Today, I’m going to change the media in my well plate one last time, get some data analyzed, and call it a day. The Demaria lab intends to continue imaging my plate for another week or so and may want to do histology or RNA-seq on the organoids once they’re done growing. We’ll hopefully be in touch to share data and our thoughts on projects moving forward. Everyone in the Demaria lab was so supportive and helpful while I was here and I’m so glad I got to know them and that I was able to make connections to potential collaborators.

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