Week 2 - Leigh Slyker

This week was a less intensive week in the OR and in the clinic. Dr. Spector was out Thursday, and consequently we had a lot more time in the lab than last week. It was hanging out in lab, seeing the ins and outs of what goes on in this environment, that made me reflect for the first time how much it differs from our entirely research focused environment in Ithaca.

Both as engineers and as researchers by training, we find ourselves in such a fertile niche for development in this setting of medical basic research. There are so many unsolved problems, so many projects that can be aided by the eye of an engineer, so many projects that could easily fill the time of a full time researcher, such as ourselves.

As such, one particular project, where patient breast cancer cells are seeded in a collagen hydrogel, and their invasion is tracked over time, has caught my interest in the last week. They have been looking to test the mechanical properties of these constructs, as well as patient breast tissue for some time now. Still, with no institutionalized experience with mechanical testing, its hard for them to get started with that ordeal, especially when mechanical testing frames are sometimes hard to get a hold of.

An image of some of their gels, along with some patient breast tissue has been included below.



Over the next few weeks, as an aside to my summer project, I will be working on a protocol for them to use moving forward. A basic compression testing setup for them, just as a starting point, as well as some of the theory and analysis we typically apply to biological materials, may prove invaluable to their project. At least I hope I can be of some assistance in that respect, seeing as I've spent the better part of a year now, throughout different projects, learning how to test the mechanics of hydrogels.