utenzi

I've been sick the past few days. Might be that swine flu thing but more likely just a cold. Damn thing is lingering though and due to the H1N1 scare, I can't go into work during normal hours. But I've still got to treat the mice I'm working on so I go in for a couple of hours after 6pm. All in all it's great for me. I can do as much in 2 hours after 6pm as in 5 hours during the regular day. Why, you ask? Because nobody talks to me! Half the damn workday is wasted with gabby co-workers. Damn annoying if you ask me. It's almost worth having this cold just to get away from all that idle chit-chat. And, NO, that's not my GD cold talking either! LOL A side effect of this schedule is that I'm getting a lot more sleep than usual. I figure the past two days I've averaged 10 hours of sleep a day versus my typical 4. This is wonderful. I normally can't sleep this much even using sleeping meds. I just can't sleep well at night but it's easy peas...

People involved in research often spend time with rodents. My first research job involved lots and lots of mice, some rats and some rabbits. As a result, I can see the truth and humor in this T-shirt from Threadless . Needless to say, the rodents never survived the experience though the ones we used for antibody production often lasted for quite a few months. Pretty easy duty, actually. We'd inject a rabbit or rat with some antigen, wait for the antibody titer to grow, bleed the rodent a few times, maybe every other week, and then, in the end, we'd say goodbye to our rat or bunny. Not much different than being an animal on a farm or some such where the animal is being raised for eventual slaughter. We don't eat the flesh but we do use the blood products in various ways. You can see why this T-shirt is funny. After all the use we put to rodents, it's not surprising that they'd want a little payback on us scientists. One of those "You will rue the day" type...

Two weeks ago I talked about some staining I was doing but never showed a picture from the final rinse. Here's one of the slides that I didn't use in my presentation. That post also talked about an injury to my hand and that's still bothering me a little. Fortunately it's almost healed. I hate it when boo-boos last several weeks. Usually I heal faster. On the other hand, I seem to have found a new problem. I might be having issues with mitral valve prolapse. It sure does make taking my morning pulse a lot more interesting.

It's been a while since I posted anything from work so here's a few pictures I took today. This first one is the "staining flesh" part of the title. I tripped on a rubber mat that had come up from the floor. I didn't hit the floor. Fortunately I broke my fall using my hand on a bench top, however there was a centrifuge key there and it poked into my hand pretty hard when my weight came down on it. It didn't break my skin, but as you can see, there's already a black and blue mark forming from blood under the surface of the skin. It's also quite sore, swollen, and hard to the touch. It's going to be fun using it tomorrow! On to "staining slides" which is a much better topic than staining flesh. *ouch* This first picture is of 20 breast tumor slides (8 from mice and 12 from women) being boiled in citra buffer. This process brings antigens to the surface of the cells on the slide. That allows for better staining since the antibody-antigen com...

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!

I was reading some news reports on breast cancer today and one was linked to this press release from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center at The University of Texas. Despite modest overall improvements in breast cancer survival rates for women with advanced disease over the last two decades, the rates for black women have not improved and the difference in life expectancy between white and black women continues to widen, according to researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. As a research scientist working in the area of breast cancer, I do try to keep up to date on the field but my focus is more on the drugs that kill cancer cells. The sociological aspect is not something I usually pay much attention to. However... this study really contained some conclusions that surprised me. I'm not sure if they're accurate--which is also something to mull over. The study evolved as a follow-up to recent research of Sharon Giordano, M.D ., assistant professor in M. D...

The Carolina Tarheels had made it to the Sweet 16 on Friday in a very uneven game. They won it but it wasn't pretty. In contrast to that, earlier today they played a very good game against Georgetown. At least it was well played by the Tarheels until the last 5 minutes or so of regulation play. They they just couldn't get any points and Georgetown was able to come up from behind and tie--forcing overtime, which just hasn't worked well for the Tarheels all season long. This was no exception. The Tarheels collapsed in overtime. Georgetown scored something like 12 points in the 5 minutes and the Tarheels went scoreless until the last 7 seconds. A 3-pointer that was far too little and far, far too late. End of the season for the Heels. It was sweet while it lasted and there's always next year -- and for such a young team, that's a promise that will be kept. That was the "ugly" that was referred to in the title. The "soft" was 60 Minutes. Have you eve...