Week 5

This week, I had the opportunity to shadow Dr. Elizabeth Arleo at Weill Cornell Imaging. She was doing same-day reading of mammograms and breast ultrasounds. Sometimes, patients request that their films be read and told the results immediately, as opposed to a couple days after the fact. It was interesting to see how she interacted with patients when giving them results or trying to help them make informed decisions. One patient did not want a mammogram, only an ultrasound, because she read that radiation exposure from a mammogram can give you cancer. Dr. Arleo was able to convince her, by showing her statistical evidence, that yearly mammograms improve the likelihood of detecting breast cancer at a lower stage than using just ultrasound. The patient then agreed that a mammogram was the best option. I also enjoyed seeing the approach that Dr. Arleo used when looking at the mammography films. She had a set order of what part of the breast she looked at first and which direction she scanned along the film. It was amazing how she was able to see really small calcifications that I could not see at a first glance! Unfortunately, I did not get the chance to see a mammogram performed as none of the patients were comfortable with me being in the room to observe. However, I still enjoyed the experience!

My clinician, Dr. Bradbury, was able to meet with me this week to give me some very interesting insights as to what questions need to be thought of when translating nanoparticles to a clinical setting. For example, she asked me about the implications of our nanoparticles being uptaken by the liver. I had always read and been told that nanoparticle liver uptake caused toxicity issues and that it limited the tumor-targeting bioavailability of the particles. She was able to add on another layer on top of that: when our particles get uptaken by the liver, they can pass through the bile ducts and get caught in the small or large intestines. This decreases the tumor to background ratio of PET images and makes it difficult to see the presence of metastases. We discussed a lot of other topics in-depth that I found very interesting and insightful. All of this will be very beneficial when thinking about the clinical relevance of my research when I return to Ithaca!

In lab this week, I learned how to culture and passage bone marrow derived macrophages. Unlike other cell lines that use trypsin to detach cells, a cell scraper is used. We also performed flow cytometry to see the labeling efficiency/specificity of free EGFR-targeting moieties on an EGFR-expressing cell line. Previously, this same study had been performed with EGFR-targeting nanoparticles. When we compared the two datasets, we observed that the IC­₅₀ of our particles is much lower than that of free moiety. This means that a smaller concentration of nanoparticles is needed compared to free moiety to achieve 50% saturation, which could be very beneficial clinically. We also began to prepare cells and protocols in order to perform more flow cytometry and western blots next week.

Outside of lab, my friends and I got to see Coney Island, the New York Aquarium, and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. We also watched Chicago and attempted two escape rooms (we escaped from only 1*).

*we were unable to escape from one of the rooms because the last puzzle broke