Monday, November 17, 2008

Work goes on and on

Work has been a bit slow lately. We just got a grant sent off to the NIH and are breathing a sigh of relief. I also have 3 residents in the lab. That is taking a lot of my time. Two of them are on 10 week research rotations so I am trying to ensure that their time is well spent and that they can hit the ground running. Luckily, they are all three pretty good. I taught one of them how to do a cochlear dissection last week and he picked it up immediately. I have never had someone pick up the proceedure that quickly. I also had to re-run a Western Blot for our Post-doc. For some reason, she just can't get one to work. I am not sure why. I think it is because she is trying to take shortcuts. In any case I got it to work on the first time - thankfully. I am not sure the results are what she expected but at least she has some results.

I have a big round of mouse surgeries coming up in a couple of weeks. We had a patient come in the clinic with a huge tumor. We are going to implant pieces of that tumor into 16 mice. The tumors will be placed intracranially and monitored by MRI pre treatment and post treatment. I will treat them for 3 months with daily injections of an inhibitor that targets a signalling protein called JNK (Jun N-terminal Kinase). The surgeries will be a challenge but the daily treatments will be a pain in the rear.

3 comments:

Papa Doc said...

Kind of neat to see what you are doing. I am working with ENT's lately. They are a good bunch.

So I heard a report today on the radio about a new proceedure for some ENT surgery. They use a special Proton that will not give off its readiation except in certain designated cells. The people telling about it told of one paticularly tough surgery that this avoids. It is one where the jaw is cut in half and the face split so the surgeon can get to the infected (tumorous) areas to work. It was a cool report. Have you heard of this. Send me an email.

Jason said...

Are you talking about Boron Neutron Capture Therapy?

Speaking of difficult surgeries, my boss had one the other day that started at about 7 am and didn't end until 5:30 am the next day. Luckily, he was only there until about 8:30 pm. The patient had a nasty squamous cell carcinoma that required the removal of nearly half of her face. Once my boss had finished, the reconstruction guys took over and rebuilt her face using bone from her tibia and muscles from her back. I am glad I am not a surgeon.

Papa Doc said...

Oh wow - I just got on this thing after a couple of months and saw what you are doing. Dad didn't tell me about the new surgery, either, so this is all new.
Now that some time has passed, what is the prognosis of the patient that your boss worked on? I can't believe a surgery that lasted that long!
Every time one of Ammon's surgeons comes, I hope and pray that he is awake, healthy and not addicted to drugs (anesthesiologists in particular).
Mom