Josette Vigil - Dr. Scott Rodeo - Week 5

This week I switched my focus from clinical shadowing to my immersion research project, where I plan to harvest tendon cells (tenocytes) from mouse tail tendon, culture them, and place them under load using the labs FlexCell in vitro setup. This model allows vacuum pressure to apply controlled strain and frequency to cells in a collagen matrix, promoting tendon growth. My plan is to use this model to assess how tenocytes behave under two different strain percentages, and if higher strain leads to myofibroblast differentiation within this model. The outcome of this project will be to assess cell behavior using immunofluorescence staining. 

My primary concern for this project is the time it takes to culture enough tendon cells to yield tendons in the FlexCell model. Tendons are not highly cellular, meaning the yield of tenocytes per tendon is fairly low, even when gathered by an experienced researcher. Additionally, it can take two weeks to develop enough cells to create a FlexCell tendon. Having discussed these concerns with Dr. Rodeo, he encouraged me to continue with the project and see what results are achievable before returning to Ithaca at the end of the summer. With this in mind, I am starting to prepare for my end-of-summer research deliverables, including the shorter oral presentation, poster, and immersion term paper. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

India Dykes - Dr. Spector - Weeks 7 & 8

Image
 For the last two weeks of immersion I wrapped up the bioprinter conversion project and spent some time in Dr. Spector's clinic for office hours. In the clinic, we observed an eyelid lift consultation and a liposuction patient follow-up. We also saw a patient who had a large abdominal hernia that had been increasing in size over the past 4 years that needed to be repaired. Dr. Spector showed us the MRI of the hernia that showed the intestines extending beyond the abdominal wall. In the lab I successfully completed the bioprinter hardware build which included customizing several iterations of prototypes before finalizing the design and flashing the custom bioprinter firmware onto the Prusa board. In the future the bioprinter will be used in Dr. Spector's lab for 3D printing custom collagen breast cancer models and vascularized adipose tissue platforms.
Read more

Cory Knox - Dr. Liston - Wk8

My final week at immersion consisted of wrapping up surgeries with Shane, analyzing the data collected from the pilot Novelty Induced Hypophagia study, presenting my work amongst my peers and the immersion administration, and going to some of my final NYC bucket list locations.  The surgeries all went well and I was able to help Shane set up for his last few behavioral studies needed for the supplementary figures in his upcoming publication. We found that our pilot study was only effective on male mice, so 15 more males had to undergo fiber optic implantation to generate a well powered assay for later on. I am very thankful to Shane for teaching me so much this summer. The presentation also went well. It was interesting to see what my peers were doing this summer and I was excited to share the experiments that Shane and I had been working on.  I was also able to use the final week as a chance to visit some places in NYC that I had put off. It was very fun going to the Bronx zo...
Read more

Harry Zou Week 8

My last week was a busy week, both on the clinical side and also on the research side. I shadowed in the clinic and also in the hospital. On Wednesday, I shadowed a pulmonologist, Dr. Meredith Turetz in her practice. In her practice, Dr. Turetz mostly sees patients with bronchiectasis as well as asthma. The first patient came in as a follow up for severe asthma exacerbations and Dr. Turetz prescribed Symbicort, a medicine that she liked since it had both a fast acting component in a steroid as well as a long acting component in the bronchodilator. In between patients, we also had an interesting conversation on the changing landscape of asthma medication with more biologics being approved now. She also saw a patient who had bronchiestasis as well as a previous non-tuberculosis mycobacteria (NTM) infection. It was interesting to me to learn that even though the airways look dilated in bronchiestasis, the flimsy nature of the airways causes them to collapse resulting in restricted breathi...
Read more