Expanding the Frontiers of Regenerative Stem Cell Therapy

Hey everyone! I only got one day in the lab this week, but I still have new stuff to talk about!  BACK TO THE LAB AGAIN I was traveling yet again, so I missed going to the lab on Monday. From what I heard, all Monday entailed was scrubbing and drying some more amnion and sterilizing a few containers under a UV light. Tuesday was a lot more eventful. As soon as I got to the lab, I realized this was the first time all three of the interns would be working together in the new lab, and as if to commemorate the occasion, we had a very special job ahead of us. But before I get into that, here are the pictures of the new lab that I promised in my last post. Side #1 Side #2 Double Office Action Pretty sweet, isn't it? Now, the "special task" I mentioned before. Apparently, Dr. Barcelo had some frozen canine stem cells from two years ago, so on Tuesday, we got to work with something that didn't come from a horse! We spent most of the time simply

Welcome back! Because I was only in the lab for one day, and ranch duty is officially over, this post will be shorter than usual. However, even though it's short, I have some new things to cover, so I'll get right into it! EASTER SURPRISE Before I get to the lab, one very exciting thing I want to talk about. One of the mini horses gave birth! Maybe it was all the running around (read the last post), but on Sunday morning, she surprised everyone by giving birth even though all signs were showing otherwise the previous day. As you can imagine, the foal was very small! The mini horse is already the size of a large dog, and this little baby horse was only about the size of a cat! Imagine that! I wish I could've seen this cat-sized horse in person, but I do have an awesome picture: Adorable! Anyway, because of the surprise nature of the birth, Mr. Ames wasn't able to collect amniotic fluid from this one, but he caught it in time to collect amniotic membrane.

Hey everyone!  Week 10 already, wow! It feels like just yesterday when I cleaned out my first stable! Anyway, this was one of the least eventful weeks of the internship (partly because all the work is slowly coming to an end), mainly because I didn't get to go the lab at all this week. However, I heard that all the time in the lab this week was spent finishing up moving, so I didn't really miss anything. LIFE ON THE RANCH Week 10's ranch duty was the shortest ranch duty ever because we only had two very simple tasks, both of which we've done countless times before. First was cleaning out the stables, which went without hitch. We also performed some milk tests, none of which showed any particularly interesting results. The second task was washing the horses, which should've been super easy, but of course, we messed it up. And we messed it up bad... Basically, while we were trying to get the mini horses from the pasture to take them to the bathing area, they

Week 9 was quite exciting for AniCell, not because a bunch of horses gave birth or we made a lot of product, but because we moved to a different lab! Although the lab is in the same building (it's actually only two doors over), it's significantly bigger and even has a space we can use as a designated clean room. Much of Week 9 was spent helping with the arduous moving process, and because I don't want to bore you with the details of transporting materials and relabeling shelves, this post will be fairly short. LIFE ON THE RANCH I actually missed Week 9 ranch duty due to some prior commitments, so I don't have much to discuss. Based on what I heard from the other interns, the day was spent finishing up final details regarding the tree and simply washing the horses. Here's another picture of those minis I talked about in my last post: Mini Horses Pt. 2 A milk test was also performed that day, with no particularly interesting results. A short post sect

Hey everyone, sorry this post is so late! I meant to post this last week but was unable to because I was traveling.  Exciting news: I FINALLY GOT TO SEE ONE OF THE HORSES GIVING BIRTH!!!!!! It was an amazing experience, and I have a whole section of this post (in the middle) dedicated to it! Be sure to read all the way through to find out how it was! Anyway, I have a lot of things to share about Week 8, so let's get started! Warning: Some of the pictures in the second section of the post (regarding the birth) are slightly graphic LIFE ON THE RANCH Remember the tree I talked about last time? Well, we got through a lot more of it this time around. I was also a lot more courageous than last time and helped remove some pretty gnarly branches. Some of them were pretty heavy too! We left the project nearly finished, and now have a huge pile of thorny branches next to the trimmed tree. After taking care of the tree, we also performed some bush maintenance near the border of our ra

Seventh week already, wow! This was a very busy week, filled with long hours and interesting tasks, so prepare for a lengthy post! DOUBLE BARNWATCH Sometime last Sunday, Lansdowne went into red alert, meaning the interns were on night duty! I was very excited, as I thought this could finally be my chance to witness the birth, and took the later shift (1 A.M. to 4 A.M.) that day. Unfortunately, Lansdowne didn't give birth that night, and because we were all so tired from staying up late, lab duty on Monday was canceled. Lansdowne didn't give birth the rest of Monday either, so we had to go back for another night watch shift. This time, I took the earlier shift (9 A.M. to 1 A.M.) because I was quite tired from the previous night. I ended up staying the whole night at the ranch, but thanks to my horrible luck, Lansdowne still didn't give birth.  Because of all the late shifts the interns had, Tuesday's lab duty was also canceled. At this point, we thought we would

Hey everyone, time for some Week 6 talk! LIFE ON THE RANCH Remember that project we were working on last week? After hours of grueling work this past Saturday, we finally finished. We now officially have one mini horse proof stable!  Beautiful As you can see in the picture, the final product looks quite different from the early stage picture I included last time. One important step we took was to cut the boards we'd painted in half using a table saw. Sawwwww This method let us conserve enough wood to eventually make another stable mini horse proof. This will be necessary since we're getting two mini horses and the one that gives birth first will start getting possessive very quickly. But anyway, pretty much all our time on the ranch this week was spent finishing this up, so that sums up the ranch portion of this post. BACK TO THE LAB AGAIN Working in the lab this week came with a good deal of new and exciting experiences. But before I get to those

Hello again, everyone!  As promised, here is my Week 5 post. I'll be talking a lot about what I did on the ranch and in the lab, but for Week 5, there's something special I have to address first. VENTURE MADNESS Invest Southwest's Venture Madness is an event in which startups across Arizona compete for money based on their innovativeness and potential impact. It started with 64 companies, and after two rounds of online voting, this number was narrowed down to 16, of which AniCell was one. These 16 companies were then invited to the Venture Madness event to compete for the top prizes through live presentations.  Low-Quality Brackets Picture The whole top 16 event was actually three days long, and I wasn't there for all of it, but I was able to attend the final day, when I found out AniCell had made it into the top four! Going to the event was very exciting, as I've never been to formal business events like this, and I even got to hear the CEO of Red

Hey, everyone! I've got a few different things to talk about for my Week 4 post, and I'll get right into it. BARNWATCH AND CHEYENNE As I said in my last post, I had to spend the night at the ranch two Fridays ago watching Cheyenne and Lansdowne (mainly Cheyenne). Staying up late into the night was quite an interesting experience. Although my shift was only until 2 A.M., I ended up watching the horses until 4 A.M. with Nikash, whose shift was from 1 A.M. to 4 A.M. We had a pretty nice setup, with my laptop playing YouTube videos sitting right next to the laptop with live camera footage of the horses, and didn't observe anything unusual. But that was only until 3 A.M., when Cheyenne suddenly got down on the ground and started shaking and rolling quite violently. Because the two signs that horses are about to go into labor are either their water breaking or them lying down, we thought it was about to happen and ran to wake our mentor up. However, it ended up being noth