Hello and welcome back!
This week I learned to juggle… that is, I learned to juggle
multiple new experiments and strange new jobs.
To start off, though it may seem a little unrelated, I’ve
begun working at McDonald’s. It’s been interesting to say the least. Luckily,
it hasn’t affected my schedule at Mayo Clinic, although it has altered my
outlook a little bit. I think I can appreciate the slow, relaxed, meticulous
pace of the lab more now that I can compare it to swearing customers, burning French
fries, and toppling ice cream cones. However, as different as it may seem, I’ve
been able to draw some parallels between the two; like the fact that in either
work place I’m constantly sanitizing. In one job I’m growing bacteria, and in
another I’m getting rid of it…and I honestly couldn’t tell you which one is
which.
But, regarding juggling experiments at the Mayo Clinic, I’ve
now got 3 active experiments going at the same time. One experiment is the drug
titration, which determines the progress of cell proliferation. Another is the
analysis of the RNA produced by each cell line. And the last is the western
blot, to determine the protein production. All three steps will be the final determination
of what our conclusion to the experiment will be. The end is approaching, and
it’s exciting stuff.
The results from last week’s drug titration also came in,
and it seems that there may be some off target effects coming from the inactive
version of the drug. The inactive versions are meant to act as a control,
having the same effect on the cells as those that have not been treated.
However, when we reviewed the results, in some cases the cells treated with the
inactive drug grew even more than those with no drug. This may hint that the
drugs are having some unwanted side effects. But, we’ve decided to run the test
again to make sure that our results are more certain.
Until then, thank you for reading!
Angela
Angela: It is not surprising that you are juggling multiple experiments. Obviously, having worked there for a while, they are well aware of what you are capable of, and are probably pushing you and making you stretch. I'm not surprised that you are dealing with this situation.
ReplyDeleteI know the feeling! I had to run multiple batches of slides last Friday. It's hard keeping everything straight when you multitask, but I'm sure you'll be able to handle it.
ReplyDeleteWow, I'm glad I don't have to do three different experiments, since my one experiment takes long enough. How long does each experiment take?
ReplyDeleteWell, the drug titration takes about a week, since we need to incubate the cells to measure growth. The other two take a few weeks, since they're done in stages.
DeleteWhat could be causing the inactive drug to stimulate growth, if anything? That seems like a serious negative side effect.
ReplyDeleteWith drug trials, it is often common for there to not even have a negative control. So, in this case, we are lucky to have two. Unfortunately, we aren't totally sure what is in the inactive drug, but we can guess that it is most likely another ASO that just doesn't target what the active drugs do. That might mean that it accidentally causes those off-target effects. Luckily, the inactive drug is not the one that will be used to treat patients.
DeleteInteresting about the inactive drug! Could that be another paper on its own? Or at least a section of one?
ReplyDeleteYou do protein analysis to check if your target protein is actually being reduced in expression? And RNA analysis to check gene expression? Why do you have to do the RNA analysis if you can see whether the drug works from the western blot analysis?
Went back in your blog and answered my own last question...
Delete