Week 1

06.15.2018

Even though we were delayed by an accident on I-80, the ride to NYC was overall a smooth and pleasant one. It turned out that departing on Saturday was a good decision as once we arrived at NYC we found out that there would be a parade on 5^th avenue the day after---what a great way to start the exploration of the city! The trip down to midtown was as fun as expected. We stopped by Shake Shack and the famous Joe’s pizza (not the original one but one of their later locations) and experienced the interesting NY subway culture on the way back when one of the subway artist started singing a song to the pizza box we were carrying.

It turned out, even though NYC indeed is expensive place to live, there are still many enjoyable and free events to attend. On Wednesday, we went to the NY Philharmonic Orchestra’s Philharmonic in the Park concert. My schedule had not been allowing me to go to a proper classical music concert since I moved to Ithaca, it was very nice to hear a symphony orchestra’s live performance once again----especially when they are one of the best in the world. The performance was brilliant, and I got Shahrazad stuck in my head for the rest of the night. I actually enjoyed it so much that I started to look up tickets for their indoor performances. Sadly, they will be doing a tour to Shanghai, China after concluding the Philharmonic in the Park series and the next season would not start until September. Maybe I should write this down and let the next year’s people who’s interested in this know they need to plan ahead.

Like the exploration of the city, my work here also had a slightly bumpy but overall smooth start. For the seven weeks I will be here, I shall be working with Dr. Scott Rodeo form Hospital of Special Surgery (HSS), who has been a long term collaborator of the department. There are three goals for me in this seven weeks: 1. Learn the surgical technical for inducing post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA) via anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) transection; 2. Help develop the techniques and apparatus needed for the closed non-surgical model for PTOA via ACL rupture in mice and hopefully rats; 3. Observe in clinic and surgery to see how our glycoprotein construct will be used in clinic and to identify any clinical need that has not been met.

For goal number one, I have written an IACUC protocol for HSS and submitted it for review with the help of Dr. Rodeo earlier this year. It is still pending; however, I have started my training in cadaver mice. So far, I have covered manual close non-surgical ACL rupture, open surgical ACL transection and biomechanical testing of the tendon. Next week we hope to revisit some of the techniques (especially the ACL transection) and move on rat cadavers while we wait for the IACUC protocol to be approved. For goal number two, I have met several times with different parties of interest in the lab and our in-house engineer. Now we have a solid set of objectives and constrains, and several design iterations. Hopefully I can finish my sketches and calibrations soon, so we can try out this really cool 3D printer in the building to start prototyping next week. Goal number three is the slowest progressing one, as there was still paperwork to be done by Thursday and Dr. Rodeo will be traveling on Friday.  But I am in contact with Dr. Rodeo’s assistant now and I should be starting my clinical observation next week.