Week 4 - Ben Grodner

Happy independence day! I cant believe it's already July. This week I spent most of my time in the lab doing trainings, paperwork, and writing protocols. Definitely important stuff to get done, but I am looking forward to getting back in the clinic next week. A highlight was when I attended a Grand Rounds seminar given by Jose Scher from NYU. He spoke on developments in the clinical study of the microbiome, something I'm quite interested in seeing as that's what most of my work revolves around. He presented some very nice evidence for the contribution of the gut microbiome to drug metabolism and described varying effects that the gut microbiome can have on pharmacokinetics. It is one of my favorite ideas since it both simple to the point of common sense and applicable to clinical work. If we can better understand how microbes alter drug delivery, then we can be better at personalized medicine. It is interesting to notice small differences in seminar styles between research-only and medical campuses. In Ithaca, the goal of most speakers is to present an idea or method and supply high quality supporting data. The speaker wants to convince the audience that the idea explains the evidence or that the method works in a way that provides new evidence. If it happens that the idea or method has translational applicability, it's just icing on the cake. In contrast, presenters in medical research seem to focus (understandably) on the translational use of research and if the research happens to reveal a novel idea, it's just icing on the cake. I find that the research-only presentations are more scientifically gratifying, while the medical-research presentations are more actionable.

My research has gotten exciting recently because I am starting to process tissue samples with the method I've been working on. I am hoping to identify microbes using FISH probes in prosthetic joint infection samples. We have several samples and once I get the method running smoothly, I am quite interested to see what I can see. There has been very little done in the visualization of microbes in joint infection cases. Largely, analysis is indirect: inflammation markers, H/E, culture, and sequencing. It seems to me that inspecting infections in situ in a way where we can actually visualize microbes may be a better method for studying the problem. Part of the method lies in developing a probe set that can be used agnostically. I spent a good deal of time this week working out ways to build this probe set and I have some good ideas. Next week I want to dive into some code as well!

I've been running in Central Park quite a bit, and I appreciate it more every day. It's essential to my sanity: if I had to run the streets, and never saw green or open space, I'd be significantly less happy. In some ways, I think the Park moves the City up in my list of places I'd be willing to live. I feel like urban ambiance is so much more manageable when I can get away from it for a while.