Shufan "Vikki" Yin_Dr. Babak Mehrara_Week 8

 Week 8 Final Week Blog!

This week is the end of my summer immersion research in Dr. Babak Mehrara's lab in MSKCC. To summarize my progress during the past two months, I participated in their lymphedema research to further understand the pathophysiology of cancer related secondary lymphedema. This experience was extremely helpful for my future research. Meanwhile, I learned and practiced some really important in vivo experimental skills, including flow cytometry, tissue staining, protein and RNA isolation, qPCR, western blot, etc. 

On Monday, we collected patients' blood samples for isolation of human peripheral mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and to prepare for flow cytometry for memory T cells. After centrifugation,  I observed a clear phase separation of 4 layers as shown in the images: clear plasma on the top, mononuclear cells (buffy coat) in the middle, then a semi-transparent Ficoll-Paque Plus layer, and a red non-transparent layer of granulocytes and erythrocytes at the bottom of the tube. We slowly aspirated out the buffy layer (PBMC) and washed it several times with centrifugation. Finally, we counted cells under a bright field microscope. Following the PBMC isolation, we performed a flow cytometry to estimate the memory T cell population within the patient blood sample.

On Tuesday, the summer immersion cohort presented on their summer research. It was really interesting to learn clinical research in different fields, including cardiology, neurology, etc. 





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