3/27/2017: Week 7 – Long Nights/Thorns/Columns
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 have to go in for night watch once again, but Lansdowne finally gave birth around 7 P.M. on Tuesday. The good news is it was one of the cleanest collections we've ever had, and both the mother and baby (boy) were healthy. The bad news is that I missed the birth once again. However, I was more than happy that it had happened and I could sleep a little early that night.
LIFE ON THE RANCH
Of course, even though we spent two nights on the ranch during Week 7, we still had to report for our regularly scheduled Saturday ranch duty. This Saturday was a mix of old and new. I was hoping to see the mini horses this week, but due to some issues their owner had, they'll actually be coming next week. I'll make sure to talk about them in my next post. Because the mini horses weren't here yet, we spent some more time making the stable they'll stay in nice and homely. This involved cutting off the extra parts of the screws we used to hook the boards to the railings and grinding the edges into blunt points using extreme power tools.
We also sprayed down the whole stable with a mixture of bleach and fly spray, and washed/set up a nice water drinking station for them. It really was a great feeling seeing the finished stable after putting so many hours into painting, cleaning, constructing, etc. I can't wait until the mini horses get to actually stay in there.
After taking care of that stable, we cleaned out Lansdowne's (who left by Saturday) stable and prepared it for the new regular sized horse, Sissy.
She seems like a very energetic horse, so I bet it'll be quite the interesting experience when we have to wash her next week. After taking care of both stables, we then moved on to a special project, involving a very special tree. Basically, in one of the pastures, there's a severely overgrown tree with tons of dried up branches. We were tasked with trimming it and making a sort of canopy for the horses to use as shade. However, there was one problem. Every single bit of the tree (minus the trunk, I guess) was stock full of huge, super sharp, slightly infectious thorns. And unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating.
We used a chainsaw (yay, more power tools) and some garden shears to cut through the masses of dry branches underneath the tree and moved them away from its base. Later, we'll be burning all this extra material, leaving just the nicely trimmed tree in its wake.
See that brown pile next to the tree? That was all once under the tree (and attached to the tree) where you can see open space. But now, there's some nice shady open area for the horses. Unfortunately, I got pricked a bunch of times, and although it wasn't too painful, it was kind of itchy.
Other than all that, we also filled out a sort of Mid-Internship Report about our experiences so far and what we've liked about working with AniCell. I won't bore you with the details of this, though. And that sums up everything important about the ranch for now. Keep your fingers crossed for pictures of those mini horses!
BACK TO THE LAB AGAIN
Because we weren't able to go to the lab on Monday or Tuesday like usual, we went on Thursday and Friday this week. Thursday was our first day in the lab since Lansdowne had given birth, so we had a lot of work to do. The first thing we checked was how Cheyenne's cells were doing after being treated with Gentamycin. And we got really good news! There was absolutely no bacterial growth, meaning we can use her cells to create cell-based products!
But we wouldn't be able to that until the next week because we had to finish up some other stuff first. More specifically, we had to process and separate all of Lansdowne's amniotic fluid from her stem cells, and keep processing and drying Cheyenne's amnion. On Thursday, we also talked about an assignment for the interns regarding how to save space when sending amnion to be sterilized. I'll talk more about my findings, which were kind of interesting, in a later post.
We spent most of Thursday doing the above, and on Friday, we continued working with Lansdowne's amniotic fluid, making sure to properly filter it. We also got a chance to check Lansdowne's cells for contamination, and surprisingly, even before treating it with antibiotics, there was no bacterial growth at all. It really was a great collection! But Friday was also time for something new, packing our first official product: StemWrap+. Remember how I talked about liquefying amnion in my last post? Well this week, we packed that liquid product into 90 different tubes (holding 2 ml of the product each), a process slightly more complicated than it sounds.
First, we had to label each of the 90 tubes with a little sticker, and then scan each of them so they correspond with a specific number in our inventory. I was in charge of scanning, and Irene was in charge of putting the stickers on.
After getting the tubes labeled and scanned, we laid them out in columns of ten inside the fume hood.
Keep in mind that all these procedures have to be done with extreme sterility in mind, meaning special sterile gloves, surgical gowns, face masks, and hairnets for everyone handling the tubes. Anyway, after getting all the scanned and labeled tubes arranged in that fashion, Dr. Barcelo went on to use his fancy digital (yes, digital) pipette to quickly fill each one with 2 ml of the liquefied amnion, giving us 90 vials of finished StemWrap+.
After all the tubes were ready, I then proceeded to arrange them all neatly inside one of our special freezer boxes. The empty diagonal is so the tubes aren't packed too tightly.
We ended Friday by putting the finished SW+ and the filtered amniotic fluid in a -80 (Celsius) freezer. I also asked Dr. Barcelo to send me some more papers on cancer and stem cells, and I'll share my research (probably along with those numbers I was talking about before) in a separate post from my Week 8 post sometime soon.
As always, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the last few weeks, where I'll likely be talking about some more individual focused issues, such as ways I've seen that we can improve our product making process. Until next time!
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 have to go in for night watch once again, but Lansdowne finally gave birth around 7 P.M. on Tuesday. The good news is it was one of the cleanest collections we've ever had, and both the mother and baby (boy) were healthy. The bad news is that I missed the birth once again. However, I was more than happy that it had happened and I could sleep a little early that night.
 |
| This is Pretty Cute |
LIFE ON THE RANCH
Of course, even though we spent two nights on the ranch during Week 7, we still had to report for our regularly scheduled Saturday ranch duty. This Saturday was a mix of old and new. I was hoping to see the mini horses this week, but due to some issues their owner had, they'll actually be coming next week. I'll make sure to talk about them in my next post. Because the mini horses weren't here yet, we spent some more time making the stable they'll stay in nice and homely. This involved cutting off the extra parts of the screws we used to hook the boards to the railings and grinding the edges into blunt points using extreme power tools.
 |
| Power Tools Exhibit A |
We also sprayed down the whole stable with a mixture of bleach and fly spray, and washed/set up a nice water drinking station for them. It really was a great feeling seeing the finished stable after putting so many hours into painting, cleaning, constructing, etc. I can't wait until the mini horses get to actually stay in there.
After taking care of that stable, we cleaned out Lansdowne's (who left by Saturday) stable and prepared it for the new regular sized horse, Sissy.
 |
| Sissy Wearing a Fly Mask |
She seems like a very energetic horse, so I bet it'll be quite the interesting experience when we have to wash her next week. After taking care of both stables, we then moved on to a special project, involving a very special tree. Basically, in one of the pastures, there's a severely overgrown tree with tons of dried up branches. We were tasked with trimming it and making a sort of canopy for the horses to use as shade. However, there was one problem. Every single bit of the tree (minus the trunk, I guess) was stock full of huge, super sharp, slightly infectious thorns. And unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating.
 |
| LOOK AT ALL THOSE THORNS |
We used a chainsaw (yay, more power tools) and some garden shears to cut through the masses of dry branches underneath the tree and moved them away from its base. Later, we'll be burning all this extra material, leaving just the nicely trimmed tree in its wake.
 |
| Dead Tree, Tree |
See that brown pile next to the tree? That was all once under the tree (and attached to the tree) where you can see open space. But now, there's some nice shady open area for the horses. Unfortunately, I got pricked a bunch of times, and although it wasn't too painful, it was kind of itchy.
Other than all that, we also filled out a sort of Mid-Internship Report about our experiences so far and what we've liked about working with AniCell. I won't bore you with the details of this, though. And that sums up everything important about the ranch for now. Keep your fingers crossed for pictures of those mini horses!
BACK TO THE LAB AGAIN
Because we weren't able to go to the lab on Monday or Tuesday like usual, we went on Thursday and Friday this week. Thursday was our first day in the lab since Lansdowne had given birth, so we had a lot of work to do. The first thing we checked was how Cheyenne's cells were doing after being treated with Gentamycin. And we got really good news! There was absolutely no bacterial growth, meaning we can use her cells to create cell-based products!
 |
| Clean Clean Clean! |
But we wouldn't be able to that until the next week because we had to finish up some other stuff first. More specifically, we had to process and separate all of Lansdowne's amniotic fluid from her stem cells, and keep processing and drying Cheyenne's amnion. On Thursday, we also talked about an assignment for the interns regarding how to save space when sending amnion to be sterilized. I'll talk more about my findings, which were kind of interesting, in a later post.
We spent most of Thursday doing the above, and on Friday, we continued working with Lansdowne's amniotic fluid, making sure to properly filter it. We also got a chance to check Lansdowne's cells for contamination, and surprisingly, even before treating it with antibiotics, there was no bacterial growth at all. It really was a great collection! But Friday was also time for something new, packing our first official product: StemWrap+. Remember how I talked about liquefying amnion in my last post? Well this week, we packed that liquid product into 90 different tubes (holding 2 ml of the product each), a process slightly more complicated than it sounds.
First, we had to label each of the 90 tubes with a little sticker, and then scan each of them so they correspond with a specific number in our inventory. I was in charge of scanning, and Irene was in charge of putting the stickers on.
 |
| Step 1: Scan & Stick |
After getting the tubes labeled and scanned, we laid them out in columns of ten inside the fume hood.
 |
| So Many Tubes |
Keep in mind that all these procedures have to be done with extreme sterility in mind, meaning special sterile gloves, surgical gowns, face masks, and hairnets for everyone handling the tubes. Anyway, after getting all the scanned and labeled tubes arranged in that fashion, Dr. Barcelo went on to use his fancy digital (yes, digital) pipette to quickly fill each one with 2 ml of the liquefied amnion, giving us 90 vials of finished StemWrap+.
 |
| Really Expensive Drag and Drop Action |
After all the tubes were ready, I then proceeded to arrange them all neatly inside one of our special freezer boxes. The empty diagonal is so the tubes aren't packed too tightly.
 |
| Very Neat, Just How I Like It |
We ended Friday by putting the finished SW+ and the filtered amniotic fluid in a -80 (Celsius) freezer. I also asked Dr. Barcelo to send me some more papers on cancer and stem cells, and I'll share my research (probably along with those numbers I was talking about before) in a separate post from my Week 8 post sometime soon.
As always, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the last few weeks, where I'll likely be talking about some more individual focused issues, such as ways I've seen that we can improve our product making process. Until next time!
Great progress, Vijeeth! Did you ever get to see the baby calf born or no?
ReplyDeleteThank you Ritika! It's actually not a calf (we don't work with cows, only horses), but I haven't had a chance to see anything be born yet. I'm hoping I can catch the birth of the next horse!
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