Expanding the Frontiers of Regenerative Stem Cell Therapy

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