BME Summer Immersion 2024

 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.

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

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 zoo with fr

 During my last week, I was able to shadow two days in surgery with Dr. Milsom and one day in IR with Dr. Pua. Dr. Milsom performed many colonoscopies and took a large tumor out of someone’s abdomen. This surgery was especially cool because Dr. Milsom was worried for several other complications during the surgery but the tumor ended up being easily accessible and removed. We all felt so happy for the patient since the other options would have been much more difficult to live with. On Wednesday we had the immersion dinner and it was lovely. Then Friday, I went to the radiology reception, and was very impressed by the party that they threw in the Central Park Zoo.