I began this week by finishing off the protocol I have been
working on for my drug encapsulation project. I found that it was difficult to
write because I don’t yet know what equipment I have access to yet. To get a
better understanding of how I should proceed with my projects, I talked to Dr.
Sing. He will be advising me on my work after Professor Xu goes back to OSU at
the end of the month. Dr. Sing explained to me that the next step in my project
should be to get in the lab for some hands on experience. I made plans to
shadow another student, Yuan Shuai, in the lab on Tuesday so that I could get a
better understanding of where everything is.
On Monday afternoon, Shen Shuwei and I went to the lab that
has 3D printers so that we could print off an object that is about the same
dimensions as a human eye. We printed off 3 models that have different
thicknesses so that we could determine if the 3D printer could print layers as
thin as we want them. The photo below shows the SolidWorks drawing of what we
printed.
Printing all three models required 15 hours to complete.
On Tuesday morning I shadowed Yuan Shuai for his
experiment. He encapsulated curcurmin in a PLGA microsphere. It was so
beneficial for me to get into the lab and see where everything is. I am hoping
to do my own experiment later on this week. The first time I try the experiment
on my own I will need Yuan Shuai there to make sure I am doing the right thing.
We have planned to try again on Friday! Before I can try to encapsulate
Avastin, I need to build my skills with encapsulating other drugs. Avastin is
much more expensive than curcurmin, so I will be practicing with curcurmin.
Eventually I will need to build my own micro/nanosphere fabrication setup.
Until then, Yuan Shaui is letting me use the set up that he built. For dinner
on Tuesday night, Dr. Sing was kind enough to take all of the students in my
lab out to a nice dinner. I really enjoy these kinds of dinners because I can
try so many different dishes in one meal. Back in the United States everyone
orders and eats their own meal. I have noticed that in China people share
multiple entrees when at a restaurant. I love the change and I am hoping I can
eat like this more when I go back to the United States as well! Below are a
couple of photos of our dinner.
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| There was some trouble getting a good photo with everyone in it!
The far left in the photo above is Jiaqi. She has helped me
out so much on my trip by showing me around and translating for me! This photo
also shows Dr. Sing, his wife, and his adorable daughter!
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After dinner we had to go back to the lab because there was
a large group meeting. The meeting lasted a couple of hours. We didn’t get out
until about 10:30 p.m. and other students had to stay later!
On Wednesday I devoted my time to preparing for my
presentation on Friday. This week I will be presenting on paragraph structure
and writing an introduction. This presentation was more difficult to create because
the examples are much longer than they were for chapters 1 and 2. My goal for
this presentation is to make it more interactive with the members of the lab. I
am hoping I can get some good participation!
In the afternoon, Shen Shuwei brought me the 3D printed eye
models. Below are 2 photos of the preliminary eye model:
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