utenzi

This isn't the type of ring typically bandied about on St Valentine's Day. You're not going to catch anyone slipping one of these rings into a piece of cake for some unsuspecting young thing to chip teeth on. This is the kind of ring that we test angiogenesis drugs with. It's in the bottom right hand corner. (By decreasing angiogenesis---the formation of new blood vessels---you can control the growth of cancer tumors) One of the ways we test these drugs is using a CAM (Chorioallantoic Membrane assay) model. The drugs that are developed using this, as well as mouse models, might one day go into human clinical trials---and eventually be marketed as breast cancer oriented chemotherapy drugs. That's our goal, at least. In the meantime, it's a neat picture. If you're into pictures of blood vessels and chicken eggs. I hope it's not bad luck to show chicken parts on Friday the 13th!

For anyone that is interested out there, I'm almost over my cold. I've been to work both days this week as well as last Friday. Today was the first day that I've spent over 8 hours there though and the difference was telling. Once I got home I laid down--just for a minute!--when I got home at 6pm and the next thing I knew the phone ringing woke me up at 7pm. 10 minutes or so on the phone, during which I fell asleep momentarily twice, and then back to sleep until 11pm! Man, that's as much sleep as I usually get in a full night and it's not even midnight yet. Damn. As for these pictures, the one above is for people who've seen my house. Clear counter space isn't something I'm known for. This is proof that my clutter-free project is showing results! The second picture is my breakfast from Tuesday morning. People who know me realize that "breakfast" isn't a work normally in my vocabulary. For some odd reason I woke up this morning at 6am and ...

The current project that I'm working on is a chicken based model for angiogenesis called CAM (Chorioallantoic Membrane). It's pretty simple. You buy fertilized eggs, place them in an incubator for a few days, then crack the eggs and add the contents to petri dishes. At this point they've been warm for 3 days and you can start to see some chick development but it's only a wee small thing. Several days later we add drug to some of the petri dishes--right on the yolk--and don't add the drug to the rest so as to have controls. Several days later you compare the controls to the drug added yolks and use that information to determine if the drug affects angiogenesis. It's a great system because the affect is easily visible and it's fast. Chicks take 21 days to develop from initial fertilization to hatching and we use the eggs for the 3 day to around the 10 day part of that cycle. I started writing this at 3pm and now it's after midnight. This working for a livi...

How many eggs do you prepare at one time? We did 30 on Monday. These weren't to eat, however. They were fertilized eggs we bought from the Ag unit over at State and we got them for a CAM (chorioallantoic membrane) assay to test some peptides for angiogenesis properties. Only a bit over half were actually fertilize so some rooster is apparently falling down on the job. Bad rooster! But the 17 that are fertile will be used to further the reach of medical knowledge. Just warms your heart, huh? The photo above was the eggs in an incubator waiting for us to be ready to do the assay prep. Below are the eggs after deshelling (that's a serious scientifc procedure marked mainly by hitting the side of the egg against a hard object) and being placed into petri dishes. The assay takes 2 weeks to run and I'll be taking more pictures...