Week-5

The most interesting clinical experience for me this week was to see a patient recovering from a tongue reconstruction surgery and another patient receiving tongue reconstruction surgery. I saw the recovering patient first, the patient had wounds in his mouse, arm, and leg, and I was first confused about how these incisions were connected. Then, the next I shadowed a tongue reconstruction procedure for a patient who lost the front part of his due to oral cancer, and everything made sense. First, an incision was made on the patient's next to access the oral cavity. Then a muscle from the patient's arm was harvested. The muscle came with an artery and vein which would then be connected to the blood supply on the neck. The muscle would then be attached to the remaining tongue. Finally, a thin skin graft was harvest from the patient's thigh to cover up the incision on the arm. 

Research-wise, I made some nice progress. First I was working on creating a bioreactor to support the perfusion of collagen construct with two channels. Unfortunately, the collagen dried up and shrunk after overnight perfusion. This was due to the improper adhesion between collagen and PDMS mold, and a leak in the system. Therefore I improved my collagen curing protocol and used more clamps to seal the system. After the second 24-hour perfusion, the collagen was perfectly fine which indicated good seal and perfusion. 

A new 3D printer came on Tuesday and I worked with Alicia to assemble it and to figure out how to use it to print PCL. We focused on printing a nose bridge implant to optimize the printing parameter for PCL. We were able to achieve a fair printing quality on the first day, but the small details still need improvement to match the quality of its PLA-printed counterpart. Presumably, we could further increase the print quality by using a nozzle with a smaller diameter, which we ordered by hasn't arrived yet. Once the new nozzles arrive, we will further optimize the printing parameter, and hopefully, we can create implantable prints and put them in rats. 

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