Hunter Gaudio - Dr. Elemento, Dr. Cristofanilli - Summer Immersion Week 6

This was a busy clinical week due to Dr. Cristofanilli's return from vacation. We had over 30 patients on Tuesday and on Thursday this week. I have also made plans to shadow tumor board on Wednesday of next week and am in the process of coordinating the observation of either a lumpectomy or mastectomy procedure before the end of the program. 

On Tuesday, we attended a lecture by Dr. Jason Spector, Chief of Plastic Surgery at Weill Cornell. He walked us through his background and the path that led him to reconstructive surgery. He likened the practice to engineering, explaining how the primary goal was to solve a problem (restore function) given a set of limitations (salvageable biological material, infection-prevention, aesthetics, etc.). He also spoke about his company, Fesarius Therapeutics, and its product, DermiSphere, which is a single-use 3D acellular dermal matrix, which utilizes collagen microspheres to create density gradients within the hydrogel to promote neovascularization. 

This week was also quite busy in terms of research. I met with Dr. Lorenzo Gerratana from the University of Udine to discuss potential machine learning projects utilizing a dataset of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and circulating tumor cell (CTC) clusters that he helped build with Dr. Cristofanilli during their time at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Additionally, a member of the Cristofanilli CTC lab walked me through the CellSearch image outputs to demonstrate how CellSearch and the lab identify which circulating cells are CTCs, which are white blood cells, and determine if CTCs have HER2 protein receptors. 

Next week, I will be integrating several databases to merge clinical information, individual CTC and CTC cluster information, and ctDNA information. This will establish the foundation for larger analyses that could potentially involve AI as the dataset grows. Additionally, Natera is finally completing the data transfer of the Signatera database, which will enable me to work with Dr. Elemento's group to process the whole exome sequencing data, and eventually correlate mutational profiles of primary tumors with therapeutic response and the outcome of longitudinal minimal residual disease assays. 

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