Overview

• My internship is located at the Glick Eye Institute and my mentor is Dr. Ashay Bhatwadekar. His research lab focuses on diabetic retinopathy and my internship project consisted on testing the effects of a type 2 diabetes medications on retinal cells for a possible treatment of diabetic retinopathy.
• This experience so far has helped me strengthen past laboratory techniques such as cell culture, cell counting and aseptic technique.
• My project consists on testing a type 2 diabetes medication on human retinal endothelial cells to observe its effects on migration, and proliferation. The medication is dapagliflozin and I will be testing it since a study (Durante et al., 2019) revealed that a similar drug (canagliflozin) negatively impacts migration, tube formation, and proliferation in endothelial cells.

Why Did I Choose This Internship?

• I chose this internship because I am really interested on how vision is affected by diabetes and how side effects of certain medications can affect the eye. I also chose it because I would have the opportunity to work with cells (which I have previously in the past) and practice and reinforce some of the techniques I learned in the past.
• I think the most challenging thing to learn or do will be learning about all of the experiments necessary for my project and perform them effectively.

Connecting Internship to Classes

In organic chemistry we are learning about the different structures of chemicals and their reactions depending on the reagents and conditions. One chemical commonly mentioned is dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), which is used at labs to freeze cells (which I have recently done). Since I'm working with dapagliflozin, which is another chemical, I'm able to understand its structure and strive to understand its properties. Some chemicals experience changes when exposed to light, such as diatomic hydrogens. We have not covered this chapter yet, but we have been introduced to it, and some of the chemicals in my lab such as Alamar Blue are covered in foil to limit light exposure and help it retains its properties. This internship will help me gain an understanding of my classwork by allowing me to observe the applications of concepts learned in class in a laboratory.

Fall Site Visit with supervisor Qianyi Luo (Jenny).

Reflection

Skills Acquired

During my internship I practiced and reinforced my knowledge of cell culture & aseptic technique and scratch wound healing assay. I also learned how to perform Alamar Blue Proliferation Assay and learned how to use Image J and Graphpad Prism 8. I learned about the importance of communication with the PI and supervisors, which consisted on giving the PI a summary of what was done every week on the project. My internship was more independent, but I learned to communicate better with my PI and supervisor who guided me through my project. I also practiced on reading and writing scientific texts and acquired knowledge about human retinal endothelial cells, medications such as sodium-glucose co-transporter inhibitors, and diabetic retinopathy. One of my strengths is curiosity which lead me to try to understand the concepts behind my project and many of the observations I did in the lab. I would usually ask my supervisor and she would respond to my questions. Because of these questions I learned many things that I'm expected to observe during a lab and during experiments. This internship taught me about the importance of dedication and hard work that is required for science careers. Seeing PhD's working at their labs after their usual hours (9-5pm) while checking on my experiments inspired me to eventually become like them in the future.

Goals

My initial goals were to research the concepts and background information of human retinal endothelial cells, sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitors such as dapagliflozin, communicating more with my PI, keeping my project organized, performing procedures carefully and analyzing the results of my experiments correctly. Another goal was to learn and take detailed notes when performing lab techniques and be able to explain this scientific information to others. I did learn more about the background of my project by reading science articles and asking my supervisor questions, and I communicated more with my PI through emails and meetings. I took notes of the procedures I performed as well as the observations of my experiments. I kept my project organized by making folders for different documents related to my project and I practiced explaining my project with my family and friends to be able to explain the importance and relevance of my project.

Challenges

The main challenge during this internship was communicating with my PI. I was not aware that I had to update him with my project constantly but I eventually learned this and communicated with him more often through emails, meetings with my PI and supervisor and Zoom meetings. During the first half of my internship I was not clocking in because I could not work legally until the second half, which made it harder to keep track of my hours. I also did not know how to analyze the images of my scratch wound healing assay. I found a protocol from a university which was not appropriate, and ended up wasting a lot of time analyzing my images with this protocol. Eventually my PI sent me an article with two equations to analyze the rate of migration and percent wound closure. At the beginning of my internship I had an old passage of cells (P8) which kept dying and was not useful for my experiments. I notified my supervisor and then I received passage 2 cells, which were very useful for my experiments and stored the rest of the cells on the freezer. Another big challenge was not going to my lab because of quarantine. I had left my laboratory journal in the lab and I was supposed to learn cell cycle analysis and endothelial cell tube formation assay, which I did not have the opportunity to learn but might in the future.

Poster