In the summer of 2016 I was able to continue my work as an undergraduate research assistant in Michael Jankowski's lab at Cincinnati Children's Hospital through the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Program. This was a 10 week long program in which I worked full-time in the lab from about 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. everyday. Because I worked in this lab during the spring semester for an average of 10 hours a week, I was already accustomed to much of what I would be doing and was able to jump right in when this new program begin. During the spring I was mainly just training and learning basic laboratory techniques, but during the summer I was able to gain a lot more independence and work on projects of my own. My first assignment was to research a new protocol for cDNA synthesis and present my findings to my PI. Once the new protocol kit was accepted it was my job to learn and execute the procedure and then write a protocol for the whole lab to use in the future. Because this protocol was completely new and no one else in the lab had done it before, I was very much on my own and had to learn to problem solve like a professional researcher does everyday. After this new protocol was successfully utilized I began to work on my own research project. With the help of my mentor, Jessica Ross, and other members of the lab I was able to gather enough data to show that inhibition of muscle IL1B (a pro-inflammatory cytokine) may be a potential therapeutic target for patients with ischemic muscle pain. As part of this project learned how to give the mice intraperitoneal injections of IL1 receptor antagonist, assist with the surgical brachial artery occlusion and reperfusion procedures, and then do behavioral assays on the mice to test spontaneous pain, mechanical hypersensitivity, muscle function, and voluntary activity levels after the surgery. I also conducted numerous q-PCR assays and assisted with Ex Vivo electrophysiological recording. At the end of the summer I created a poster that demonstrated my findings and presented it at the SURF Capstone Symposium.
Besides participating in high-level biomedical research, the SURF program also provided me with opportunities to take research-oriented training courses and participate in research seminars, journal clubs, and career days. The two most interesting additional activities I decided to attend were the Introduction to Surgery lecture and the one week Crash Course in Immunology lecture. Both of these experiences represent topics in medicine that I am interested in and were a great opportunity to learn more beyond what I was researching in the lab.
Below is a pdf copy of the poster I presented at the capstone symposium:
Besides participating in high-level biomedical research, the SURF program also provided me with opportunities to take research-oriented training courses and participate in research seminars, journal clubs, and career days. The two most interesting additional activities I decided to attend were the Introduction to Surgery lecture and the one week Crash Course in Immunology lecture. Both of these experiences represent topics in medicine that I am interested in and were a great opportunity to learn more beyond what I was researching in the lab.
Below is a pdf copy of the poster I presented at the capstone symposium:
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