I have been chiding myself for not posting hear (get it?) more frequently. I am aware that 99% of anybody reading this blog probably doesn't really understand or perhaps even care (and that doesn't bother me; I am writing this more for me than for anyone else) what I am talking about and that is probably why I have been slacking. Another reason is that Biomedical research crawls forward at a glacial pace. It is rare that something new and ground breaking occurs. I figure that if I can have even a couple of those types of events occur in my career Iwill be pretty happy. Mostly, though, it is millimeter by millimeter that progress is made.

I mentioned the xenographs I was going to do in my last post. We finally performed the surgeries in December but with disasterous results. Out of the 16 mice we implanted, only three of them survived. I am not really sure why but I am guessing that it is a combination of anesthesia problems and internal bleeds. There are a couple of large arteries near the implantation site that I know in at least a couple of the mice were nicked. Placing the tumor next to one of those arteries within the cranial vault may also have caused the mouse to stroke out due to increased pressure on the artery. The human patient who so kindly let us have his tumor will be back in surgery in a few months so we will give it another try.

I just finished a Western blot that is quite interesting. I need to spend some time thinking about it before trying to describe the results. If what I think is occuring actually is occuring, I may have stumbled onto one of those moments - a small one but one never the less. One of my favorite things about biology is that there is always something new to think about and figure out.