Week 3 - Nada

At the beginning of this week, I started to design the parameters for the in-vivo experiments that we have planned to conduct in the lab. The experiments are going to be on glioblastoma mouse models where we will be injecting C'dots throughout a 10 day period. This set of experiments will hopefully illuminate the effect of C'dots on this particular type of brain tumor. In previously published work, C'dots have demonstrated anti-tumoral effects in a nutrient-deprived tumor microenvironment through inducing a mechanism of cell death called ferroptosis. The way in which C'dots affect the tumor microenvironment is still largely unclear and hopefully this work will shed some more light on the changes that occur. Planning these experiments involved reading and compiling all the previously published protocols and methods in order to decide on the best protocol to adopt. 

On the more clinical side of things, I shadowed Dr. Cisse in his outpatient clinic this week. Much like the past few weeks this experience has been incredibly eye-opening as it demonstrated to me how much communication and patience are such a key aspect of interacting with patients. It has also been helpful to listen to Dr. Cisse's explanations of different tumor pathologies and the process he follows to decide whether a patient is a candidate for surgery or not. This process is of particular interest to me as it highlights the different treatment options that are available to patients as well as the tools that surgeons and clinicians use to make decisions. On Thursday I also got to watch a procedure that involved cortical mapping.