3/20/2017: Week 6 – Building and Crushing
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!
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.
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, let me briefly mention the usual. On Monday, we repeated the filtration process we did for Lil's amniotic fluid on Cheyenne's amniotic fluid and added antibiotic to the cells we previously isolated from her amniotic fluid. We also found out that adding Gentamycin to Lil's cells didn't achieve much, which unfortunately means we won't be able to use her cells to create product. However, after checking bacterial growth for Cheyenne's cells post antibiotic treatment, we were pleasantly rewarded.
As you can see in the bottom quarter, only one small colony of bacteria showed up when we cultured Cheyenne's antibiotic treated cells. We added Gentamycin to the cells, and are hoping this will be enough to get rid of that last bit of bacteria. If so, we'll finally have some good material to work with to create some cell based products. I'll definitely mention this again in my Week 7 post. In case you were wondering, the "Unfiltered" quadrant is bacterial growth for the cells before the initial antibiotic treatment.
On Tuesday, we stretched and dried out some more amnion, and talked a little bit about the current study on the sheep I mentioned in one of my previous posts. A little refresher: the study is on how AniCell's products compare to other treatments for bone injuries in the sheeps' legs. The data the study produced has shown very promising results for AniCell's products. We also organized and numbered some products already in stock, taking time to properly inventory and label everything.
Now, time to talk about those new and exciting experiences I mentioned. We had an extra lab day during Week 6, and on this day, it was time to do some new stuff. Basically, one of the products requires the amnion to be liquified, which means we had to make some amnion into powder and add saline to it. However, making amnion into powder isn't as easy as it sounds. It's actually a very complicated process involving some really cool technology, but I can't talk about it for confidentiality reasons. What I can do is share a picture of the liquified amnion.
But that wasn't the only exciting thing about Friday. The other was when, somehow, we had an "explosion" of liquid nitrogen! Basically, due to a small mistake, the tank we had full of liquid nitrogen built up an intense amount of pressure. So, when Dr. Barcelo went to open it, the cap flew right off and a fountain of liquid/gas nitrogen shot up into the air, enveloping the whole area around us in a freezing white cloud of nitrogen. Thankfully, no one got hurt (although my legs got unnaturally cold for a bit). This "explosion" of nitrogen was definitely one of the most exciting parts of the week.
And that sums up my Week 6 lab work! I'm trying to get Dr. Barcelo to recommend me some more papers on stem cells and cancer, and once I get a chance to read these, I'll make sure to talk about them. This could be before or after my Week 7 post, but regardless, thanks for reading, and make sure to keep on coming back for more!
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, let me briefly mention the usual. On Monday, we repeated the filtration process we did for Lil's amniotic fluid on Cheyenne's amniotic fluid and added antibiotic to the cells we previously isolated from her amniotic fluid. We also found out that adding Gentamycin to Lil's cells didn't achieve much, which unfortunately means we won't be able to use her cells to create product. However, after checking bacterial growth for Cheyenne's cells post antibiotic treatment, we were pleasantly rewarded.
 |
| Only One Colony! |
As you can see in the bottom quarter, only one small colony of bacteria showed up when we cultured Cheyenne's antibiotic treated cells. We added Gentamycin to the cells, and are hoping this will be enough to get rid of that last bit of bacteria. If so, we'll finally have some good material to work with to create some cell based products. I'll definitely mention this again in my Week 7 post. In case you were wondering, the "Unfiltered" quadrant is bacterial growth for the cells before the initial antibiotic treatment.
On Tuesday, we stretched and dried out some more amnion, and talked a little bit about the current study on the sheep I mentioned in one of my previous posts. A little refresher: the study is on how AniCell's products compare to other treatments for bone injuries in the sheeps' legs. The data the study produced has shown very promising results for AniCell's products. We also organized and numbered some products already in stock, taking time to properly inventory and label everything.
Now, time to talk about those new and exciting experiences I mentioned. We had an extra lab day during Week 6, and on this day, it was time to do some new stuff. Basically, one of the products requires the amnion to be liquified, which means we had to make some amnion into powder and add saline to it. However, making amnion into powder isn't as easy as it sounds. It's actually a very complicated process involving some really cool technology, but I can't talk about it for confidentiality reasons. What I can do is share a picture of the liquified amnion.
 |
| Not to be Confused with Amniotic Fluid |
But that wasn't the only exciting thing about Friday. The other was when, somehow, we had an "explosion" of liquid nitrogen! Basically, due to a small mistake, the tank we had full of liquid nitrogen built up an intense amount of pressure. So, when Dr. Barcelo went to open it, the cap flew right off and a fountain of liquid/gas nitrogen shot up into the air, enveloping the whole area around us in a freezing white cloud of nitrogen. Thankfully, no one got hurt (although my legs got unnaturally cold for a bit). This "explosion" of nitrogen was definitely one of the most exciting parts of the week.
And that sums up my Week 6 lab work! I'm trying to get Dr. Barcelo to recommend me some more papers on stem cells and cancer, and once I get a chance to read these, I'll make sure to talk about them. This could be before or after my Week 7 post, but regardless, thanks for reading, and make sure to keep on coming back for more!
Week 6 seemed successful! One question: how are you testing other forms of treatments?
ReplyDeleteMy project doesn't actually involve testing other forms of treatments, but we have talked about some current studies AniCell is running in which we're comparing natural healing over time vs. our products. Unfortunately, we don't currently have a way to test other existing treatments against ours, although the numbers we've gotten (just from out products) have shown that AniCell's treatments do tend to act faster.
DeleteI met with Brandon this week, and I was glad to hear the "engineering" efforts are improving!:) Be careful--the mini horses can be stubborn, and their birthing can be really different. I am looking forward to hearing about it.
ReplyDeleteI was really excited to hear about the exposure to the business side as well and the science and "manual labor". I got the new "voting" link, and I have been using it.
Yes, the "engineering" is definitely getting better over time! I will definitely keep that in mind about the mini horses and update the blog on my experiences with them.
DeleteThank you for voting!