miss akay

SF summer internship

The past couple of mornings I've wondered about my obsession with this city. Is it possible to NEED to live somewhere? Sometimes I feel like I do need to be here. Obviously, I come back frequently enough that I think my family wonders if there is someone special in SF that I can't seem to get enough of. Well, yes there are a ton of people. A whole city full of them. And it takes a lifetime to enjoy their company!

We've had some beautiful sunsets. I took this one from Justine's friend Jen's back deck. She has an unbelievably gorgeous spot in between the Castro and Noe Valley. There are so many gorgeous spots in SF! Alright, enough gushing. On to the latest news.

What have I been up to? Well, I finished my first week of work and am spending more time on my own doing things in the lab instead of just training. Wow, do I feel like a beginner! Luckily I have the greatest teachers/mentors ever. The lab that I'm working in conducts research on Retinoblastoma. It is a type of cancer that some children get, before the age of 5 years old. Inherited as an autosomal dominant mutation, luckily it is very rare. Unfortunately this makes it more challenging for research. There are only around 350 cases each year and is not a lucrative money maker for drug companies, nor are there many subjects for big studies.

What is my role? My role is primarily to learn a lot. My hands are inexperienced and my mind is unfamiliar with bench work. Simple calculations like finding molarity or determining volume needed for serial dilutions take me forever! How Cliff keeps his patience while I slowly plug through calculations is beyond me. I've decided within a week of working with him that Cliff is a genius. He really is! This week he has thrown me to the bench to sort out my own in vitro experiments. I've made some mistakes along the way and am realizing that I've learned stuff when I'm able to figure out my mistakes on my own. Learning can be a humbling process but the growth is enormous. Cliff identified a few small molecule drugs that have been used to treat other cancers and based on their mechanism of action hypothesized that they are worthy of testing on Retinoblastoma. What I am doing is plating cells. This means a solution of floating cells are first counted using a hemacytometer slide. The number of cells per volume is calculated and then a dilution is made so that each shallow well of the 96-well plate is filled with roughly 10,000 cells each. Each column on the plate is treated with a different dilution of drug and plates are made in triplicate so that a plate is analyzed at 24, 48 and 72-hours. Results are plotted and we determine an effective dose.

The next phase of my job, if the drug is a success in vitro, is to test it out on rats. Yes, that's right. I know, I know. It has been a challenge for me to get over this, especially since I was a hamster lover as a kid. I'm still in training and haven't done much with the rats yet, other than last week when I gave them cancer. Yes, you read that correctly. I gave cute tiny little baby rats cancer. It's not easy because they are so darned adorable and very, very little! The day the rats were born I injected retinoblastoma cells directly into the back of their eyes, while they were under anesthesia. So, I got my first experience putting a patient under and also giving intravitreal injections. The cells will take awhile to grow and then I will photograph them and eventually treat them with the drug I test in vitro.

It's basically a great experience from start to finish and the atmosphere is unbeatable. I am in the greatest city ever, learning from the smartest, happiest, and greatest researchers I have ever met! I love it here.

posted by miss akay @ 8:32 PM