Week 3- Mariela

What an exciting week!

I kicked off this week with clinic shadowing, along with meetings regarding the clinical trials Dr. Nanus and his collaborators are working with. I was able to meet the team that's the liaison between the doctors and the drug producers and oversee the progress of the many (in the high seventies!) trials the team conducts. They were kind enough to offer to talk more about it with me in the future. Perhaps I will be able to dip in to how drug clinical trials work soon.

Later that week, I was able to observe a robotic cystectomy with a neobladder reconstruction under Dr. Douglas Scherr, a surgical urologist. The surgery consists of removing the bladder using the da Vinci Surgical System, then manually intervening to create a new bladder out of part of the intestine that is then reconnected to the urethra. Before Immersion, I didn't even think that removing the bladder is an option, let alone using robots and making a new one out of part of the intestine.

I was accompanied by a medical intern, who answered my silly questions and walked me through the procedure. The nurse anesthetist also very kindly answered my questions, and we bonded over the fact that he used to be a chemical engineer. It was fascinating seeing from the screen how the robot scissors and cauterizer snipped around the bladder, the camera zooming in and out. The precise motions made it look easy. The whole set up was surreal, almost like a video game. After the surgery was done, I asked Dr. Scherr if the joy sticks had any haptic feedback when he tugged and pulled. He answered that while newer machines did have some feedback, he was very used to the movements and didn't need the feedback. That just blew me away, knowing that all those precise motions he had done with the robot arms were all just well-practiced motions.

At the lab, I streamlined the platelet purification protocol and practice would we would pick cells with the CellCelector. The CellCelector is a machine that does just that: select and pick individual cells for further RNA extraction, in our case. Platelets are much smaller and "stickier" than CTCs, so picking them precisely is a bit of a challenge.

 

Figure 1: Assessing the presence of platelets by immunofluorescence using Alexafluor 647 conjugated Mouse anti Human CD61 antibody, as observed with the CellCelector. Left: Brightfield 20x; Right: Cy5 20x.

Fun in NYC: I was able to snag tickets for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert! I went along with David, who was the actual expert of the show. It was very exciting to see how the show is produced and participating in a live audience. Very worth staying up late.