Lauren Donato week 1 Mason lab lymphoma trial

I started commuting on Monday to begin working at the mason lab! I leave my house at around 6:20 and get to the lab by 9 (2 trains and one trolley later). I work from 9-4:30 ish. The first day I met Dr.Mason and she presented to me her ongoing projects, which I am confident in understanding. She is such an amazing teacher and so so funny and nice. She has a pretty cool accent too because she's from England so I'm hoping by the end of this I can imitate a better English accent (jk). When I arrived Monday there was a dog on the osteosarcoma trial about to get vaccine so she ran with me to the animal hospital so I could understand the process, pretty exciting stuff for the first day. She then gave me a tour of the lab. She introduced me to the 3 other members of the lab who do the lab work, Josefine, Kazim, and a grad student at the vet school Beatrice (all of which were so welcoming and nice). Whatever I am told to do, they demonstrate how first, pointing out all of the details I need to follow, and then trust me to try on my own. Although I spent most of the spring learning in detail the osteosarcoma trial, Dr.Mason wants me to work on the lymphoma trial instead. It is a little different, but the same concepts of immunotherapy are there and I have already read one paper on it. On Tuesday morning we had a lab meeting in a small conference room, and the 4 of them presented their data to Dr.Mason from the previous week and they discussed what it meant and where to continue from there. Dr. Mason and the other other lab members explained all of it to me, and also challenged me to explain what I thought about it. I feel really involved. Even though I have my "own project," that project is very important for her current lymphoma trial and I work directly with her and all of the lab members. It is really cool because I am doing lab work in a tissue culture room with all equipment I've never used, and I also get to go to the animal hospital with Dr.Mason and see the actual dogs that I am studying in the lab, so I get to experience both sides of the trial. My project is creating a CD-40 activated B cell vaccine for privately owned dogs with non-Hodkin's lymphoma. This is a cell based vaccine constructed from the patient's blood, activated ex vitro, and then put back into the dog. The B cells are purified from the blood sample, tumor RNA is inserted and transduced, and then when put back into the dog may stimulate tumor immunity. So far I got blood samples and am working on growing activated B cells. I did a PBMC which purified the red platelets and the plasma out of a blood sample and I only pipetted out the thin middle layer of B cells. I made B cell media and began growing the B cells. I learned how to count cells, and so far I have 23 million B cells, which I need to keep track of and keep restimulating the next few weeks with KT520 ligand until I try to transduce in the tumor RNA. I saw the cells under the microscope this morning. Today I extracted tumor RNA from a tumor biopsy tissue, and ran a gel to check the quality. This RNA will later be part of the cell based vaccine. I love my project and the lab and I am looking forward to the rest of the summer. When I'm not working on my project I follow along with what Kazim is doing, which is a little different, and yesterday I watched him to a maxi prep all day. A maxi prep is a mini prep but HUGE, the centrifuge could eat me. Dr.Mason also gave me some data entry stuff she needs done to get the vaccine approved so I help her with that in the spare time here. Apparently a news crew is coming in this Friday to interview Dr.Mason on her osteosarcoma trial, so that will be exciting. On a boo note, one of our dogs got put down yesterday :(. But Queen Shiba (an adorable dog) joined the trial and her name is great. All of the dogs have great names (scooby doo, queen Shiba, Ferdinand, etc).

Hope everyone is having a good time. I attached a few pictures of the lab,  my desk, and a funny sign.