tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86569104564945921192024-03-14T05:27:44.316-07:00The SciMinded IdealistChadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656910456494592119.post-35070671646725782282021-05-05T12:59:00.000-07:002021-05-05T12:59:01.724-07:00Coming Soon- The SciMinded Blog gets new life! <p>3 years after my last post, it seems this blog is in need of a sprucing up! There have been some big changes in my life since then, most notably that I somehow found my way back to academia (listen, I know I said "never" in my first post... but this is different!). I am currently finishing up my first year as an Assistant Professor on the tenure track at a small regional school, and while this past year was certainly no cake-walk (HyFlex teaching is hard, y'all!), I really, really love my new career. I love it so much in fact, that I want to learn everything I can about college science teaching and pedagogy. My hope is to share some of what I learn on this new adventure of mine right here on this blog. So stay tuned for some new directions here at the SciMinded Idealist! Right after I get through finals week...</p>Chadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656910456494592119.post-5594216546287142782018-05-02T08:30:00.000-07:002018-05-02T08:31:11.693-07:00Lung tumors "talk" to bone cells to promote tumor growth and spread!<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And I'm back! My apologies for the long wait between posts; I've been working on a few other projects in the interim (more on this another time) and haven't had much time to write lately.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anyway, let's dive right into the interesting science I have for you today! I'm jumping the gun a bit and posting this write-up of an upcoming episode of Audiommunity for two reasons, 1.) because we actually recorded the episode many months ago but had to painstakingly reconstruct the audio because of technical issues with our recording software, and therefore I have been sitting on this write-up for quite some time, and 2.) I just think this work is so darn cool! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the general field of cancer research, the tissues, cells and organs directly surrounding tumors are referred to as the tumor "microenvironment", and understandably is a hot area of study. Having a good grasp on what the non-tumor "bystander" cells are doing near the tumor helps researchers develop better-targeted therapies (ie turning the immune system against the tumor,</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12.0pt;">à</span>
la immunotherapy). But what is less well understood is whether or not tumors have any systemic effects on organs and tissues more distant from the primary cancer site, and whether those distant tissues may in turn influence the tumors growth and behavior. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To get at this question, Audiommunity's very own Camilla Engblom, along with coauthor Christine Pfirschke, and a large team directed by Mikael Pittet at Mass General Hospital in Boston, investigated a specific type of lung cancer called lung adenocarcinoma and discovered that, remarkably, the tumors "talk" to cells in the bone marrow (in mice). The result of this cross-talk is the trafficking of cells to the lungs that promote tumor growth and spread. This work was published in the <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6367/eaal5081">journal Science last December as a paper entitled "Osteoblasts remotely supply lung tumors with cancer-promoting </a></span><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6367/eaal5081">
</a><style><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6367/eaal5081">
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</a></style><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6367/eaal5081">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SiglecF<sup>high</sup></span>
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</a><style><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6367/eaal5081">
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--></a></style><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6367/eaal5081"> neutrophils"</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So how did they make this important discovery? It began with a simple observation that mice with lung tumors had increased bone density and bone formation activity. They pinned that activity down to cells called osteoblasts, the cells in the bone marrow responsible for building new bone. To test the connection between the lung tumors and osteoblasts, they created a mouse model in which the osteoblasts were fluorescently labeled (so they could be tracked) and were able to be depleted in the mouse upon injection of diphtheria toxin. When they knocked down the osteoblasts in mice with lung tumors, they found that over time the tumors were reduced in size and number. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">How were these bone marrow-resident osteoblasts having an impact on tumors all the way in the lung? The researchers hypothesized that the osteoblasts must be supplying the tumor microenvironment with tumor-promoting cells. When they looked at the type and amount of immune cell infiltrates in the lung, they found that knocking out osteoblasts resulted in a two-fold decrease of neutrophils. Coming at it another way, if they knocked down neutrophils using an antibody without knocking down osteoblasts, they saw a large reduction in tumor volume.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These results weren't associated with all neutrophils, but specifically a population of tumor-promoting neutrophils with high levels of a lectin called SiglecF on their surface. These SiglecF(high) neutrophils were pretty rare in normal, healthy lung tissue, but were increased 70-fold in mice with lung tumors! Differential gene expression comparing SiglecF(high) neutrophils to SiglecF(low) neutrophils showed the SiglecF(high) cells expressed genes associated with tumor-promoting functions, such as angiogenesis, myeloid cell differentiation and recruitment, extracellular matrix remodeling, suppression of T cell responses, and tumor cell proliferations and growth, among other things (yikes!). Additionally, when SiglecF(high) and (low) neutrophils were isolated from mice, mixed with lung tumor cells ex vivo, and then injected into new mice, tumor growth was accelerated in the mice that were injected with the SiglecF(high) neutrophil tumor preparations. So, clearly, SiglecF(high) neutrophils= bad news.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The final piece of the puzzle is figuring out how the tumor cells are communicating with osteoblasts in the bone marrow. A look at the serum from mice with and without tumors identified a candidate factor called RAGE (receptor for advanced glycation end products) that was upregulated about two-fold in the tumor-bearing mice. RAGE, as well as the circulating form of this receptor called sRAGE, have previously been shown to be connected with bone activity and regulation. In good agreement with this, when they added sRAGE to the serum of tumor-free mice, they saw increased osteoblast activity and increased bone marrow neutrophil maturation. While this part of the study will require more work to pin down, it all hangs together very nicely so far.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To summarize, lung tumor cells "talk" to bone marrow osteoblasts (possibly through a circulating factor called sRAGE), which then send tumor-promoting neutrophils to the sites of lung tumors. So what is the takeaway from this work? First, that osteoblast cell activity and SiglecF(high) neutrophils may be useful biomarkers in human patients, and possibly even good targets for cancer therapies. And second, and perhaps more importantly, that it is critical to consider the entire body when studying cancer because cancer is a systemic disease!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nice work Camilla et al! Now please enjoy this cartoon!</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAmgDbaCmDCvyKjEWtIfFB3yNW4Mv7vRPbGbJj_gTTfW8ec8P4rbpZ1juOrXM306OSupaCWTJTCDsKjaReiRcXMMCOf5S6-xaa4JYtHA0KMKZqTBPGscNcQbCedxqbWXf385-jebN7GW8/s1600/OzTOblast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="381" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAmgDbaCmDCvyKjEWtIfFB3yNW4Mv7vRPbGbJj_gTTfW8ec8P4rbpZ1juOrXM306OSupaCWTJTCDsKjaReiRcXMMCOf5S6-xaa4JYtHA0KMKZqTBPGscNcQbCedxqbWXf385-jebN7GW8/s400/OzTOblast.jpg" width="346" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hmm, this call seems legit...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<br />Chadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656910456494592119.post-32358182971500857712018-01-08T08:38:00.000-08:002018-01-26T16:37:40.083-08:00A vaccine for the common cold? Yes, please!<style>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Happy New Year! This post is a few weeks overdue- my apologies! Blame it on the cold that keeps cycling through my family this month. Anyway, here we go:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Well folks, it’s that time
of year again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Snow is falling softly
from the sky, soup is bubbling on the stove, cookies are baking in the oven,
and my children are… oh god, my children are sick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In fact, they are on their second cold since November, and for the life
of me I cannot keep enough tissues on hand for their little, runny noses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I, too, am on my second cold, and
positively drowning myself in Chamomile tea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At night, I’m nestled in my bed (thanks to NyQuil) while visions of
cough drops dance through my head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">And <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I. Am. Miserable</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cannot
overstate this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All day long my head
hurts and my sinuses ache.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My ears feel
like they might burst and my nose alternates between dripping like a faucet and
stopping up so tight I can’t breathe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
cough so much my stomach muscles are looking like I’ve spent the last month
doing crunches (hey, silver linings, right?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And if I am lucky, I will be out of the woods on this one in, oh, about
5-7 more days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Woof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And at the rate we’re going this year, I
might get two weeks of relatively healthy airways before I am taken down again
by the next cold virus that happens along.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">This time of year I turn
into a real germaphobe (oh, who am I kidding?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I am a germaphobe all year).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
wash my hands so often they get chapped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I ramp up the disinfecting of door handles, computer keyboards, and
light switches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see germs everywhere I
look.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The library.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The grocery store.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son’s soccer games.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband and children’s very
existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I spend the months from
October to April just crossing my fingers and steeling myself against illness,
knowing that the name of the game is ugly survival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because no one likes having a cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At best, they are inconvenient and annoying,
and at worst they can put you out of commission for several days, exacerbating
chronic conditions like asthma and COPD, and landing you in the hospital with
<a href="https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/195/6/765/876640" target="_blank">pneumonia</a>.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFsniS4apipZOTvSeK_tVN8kxAnHM3Dr0Yuqwbl7S2YAmDHeAoanDMkkO8aCEdEp_oSh4WSiq1C2SIAWMLh8b0f2iBMdLGJZyoGNkWN1qVL1bpju4Nbh9X7SheDQRYYpeHjqOTwmMXySU/s1600/germvignette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="191" data-original-width="715" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFsniS4apipZOTvSeK_tVN8kxAnHM3Dr0Yuqwbl7S2YAmDHeAoanDMkkO8aCEdEp_oSh4WSiq1C2SIAWMLh8b0f2iBMdLGJZyoGNkWN1qVL1bpju4Nbh9X7SheDQRYYpeHjqOTwmMXySU/s1600/germvignette.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Must wash hands... Must wash hands... Must wash hands...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But researchers are fighting back by trying to create a vaccine for the common cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sounds simple, right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean we have vaccines for practically
everything else, so you are probably asking yourself, why don’t we have one
that works against colds?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are
actually a few good reasons we don’t yet have one.</span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">First of all, the common
cold is caused by a few different types of viruses, including but not limited
to rhinoviruses (the focus of this post), coronaviruses, adenoviruses, and respiratory syncytial virus, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20081001232445/http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/commonCold/cause.htm" target="_blank">among others</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among the
rhinoviruses alone, there are 3 species (‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’) encompassing about
<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3749525/" target="_blank">150-170 different strains</a> that you can become infected with!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We call these different strains
‘serotypes’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> That is a lot of different viruses to vaccinate against. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Many of the established vaccines
that we receive protect against a single serotype of a particular
virus (ex the measles vaccine), or just a small number of serotypes (like </span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";">the oral
poliovirus vaccine, which protects against all three serotypes of poliovirus</span>). But the newer pneumococcal vaccine protects against <a href="https://www.pneumovax23.com/" target="_blank">23 serotypes of virus</a>!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vaccines that are able to
protect against multiple strains of a virus are called polyvalent vaccines, a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>nd researchers from Emory University School
of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, are trying to create a polyvalent vaccine that
would protect us against as many strains of the rhinovirus as possible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">On the most recent episode of
‘Audiommunity’ (<a href="http://emmunity.org/audiommunity/2017/12/23/episode-27-macaque-prison-gangs">Episode 27- Macaque PrisonGangs</a>) we discussed a paper from this group at Emory entitled “A polyvalent
inactivated rhinovirus vaccine is broadly immunogenic in rhesus macaques”, which
was recently published in the journal Nature (read the original paper <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12838">here</a>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To briefly summarize the work, the
researchers made polyvalent rhinovirus vaccines by simply combining several
serotypes of rhinovirus together into a vaccine cocktail, and inactivating them
(so this is a “dead” vaccine, no live virus).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They then tested whether or not the cocktails could produce an immune
response in mice, and later, in rhesus macaques.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvyqQwVNz7zETFwOaSV6qNeDoUJ7i28rgMgirhoE4PjJqAWaneVw1NUDBfbY0ClfYUt21OF_eSYaDP-D27czNzworPxTCwufB-jqY89MaUwVoTnKKAzbFuQblTvV1x_RSBHUXZHNPTYC8/s1600/vaxcocktail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="265" data-original-width="397" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvyqQwVNz7zETFwOaSV6qNeDoUJ7i28rgMgirhoE4PjJqAWaneVw1NUDBfbY0ClfYUt21OF_eSYaDP-D27czNzworPxTCwufB-jqY89MaUwVoTnKKAzbFuQblTvV1x_RSBHUXZHNPTYC8/s320/vaxcocktail.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Different serotypes are mixed and inactivated with formalin</td></tr>
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</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">The way they tested the
immune response to the vaccine was by injecting it into mice and then taking a
sample of the mouse serum and looking for “neutralizing antibodies”, against
each of the strains of rhinovirus in the vaccine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neutralizing antibodies are proteins that are
made by our B cells that are designed to recognize an “intruder” (in this case,
the dead viruses in the vaccine), bind to it, and “neutralize” its biological
effects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A good vaccine should induce a
broad neutralizing antibody response, meaning that a lot of neutralizing
antibodies should be generated that recognize a lot of different parts of the
“intruder”.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhslEXmUwS47WHx_I0h30Ug5gb6K8zQZnToscW0o3f0dqTObJ_IBKdaJeVX7bVasLunjrW9zuhhnvFutoxy9oUlRm8HtAcn8qcrYLzx4J1E7y7JHg07T26fs-qC92fqQAKiC9hHujW4AZQ/s1600/mouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="123" data-original-width="341" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhslEXmUwS47WHx_I0h30Ug5gb6K8zQZnToscW0o3f0dqTObJ_IBKdaJeVX7bVasLunjrW9zuhhnvFutoxy9oUlRm8HtAcn8qcrYLzx4J1E7y7JHg07T26fs-qC92fqQAKiC9hHujW4AZQ/s400/mouse.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mouse is injected, serum is collected, and neutralizing antibodies measured</td></tr>
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</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">What they found was that as
long as the input amount of viruses in the cocktail was high enough (we call
this the viral titer), they could get a decent immune response to the vaccine
no matter how many viruses they added to it (they tested 10-, 25-, and
50-valent vaccines in this paper).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Historically, two, 10-valent rhinovirus vaccines were tested in the
seventies that generated only a poor responses in test subjects (something like
only 30-40% of them).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, these
vaccines had really low input virus titers that were further diluted when made
into one-milliliter vaccine doses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
researchers in this study recreated those vaccines using higher input virus titers,
and were able to improve the neutralizing antibody response significantly over
that of the original low titer vaccines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: comment;"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span></div>
</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDqCEry2z4Emn92IsgRbcZcKM_4nkU0QB3urrZ5QKOs2oVy6EfJD00RoykVQKxLf8hATMsPn152_GDJsfAJkY1cQ4vj-VQ6hww3FA7_Chg2a1JfgAtlxd7-4UFC-398lV-avxx65IKJtk/s1600/titer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="312" data-original-width="533" height="372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDqCEry2z4Emn92IsgRbcZcKM_4nkU0QB3urrZ5QKOs2oVy6EfJD00RoykVQKxLf8hATMsPn152_GDJsfAJkY1cQ4vj-VQ6hww3FA7_Chg2a1JfgAtlxd7-4UFC-398lV-avxx65IKJtk/s640/titer.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The higher the input titer, the better the neutralizing antibody levels (inset: think of titer as concentration of viruses)</td></tr>
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</span><span style="font-family: "arial";">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">They went on to test a
25-valent and a 50-valent vaccine in rhesus macaques, which are a nonhuman
primate common in medical research.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Remarkably, they were able to detect high levels of neutralizing
antibodies against 100% of the rhinovirus serotypes in the 25-valent vaccine,
and against 98% of the serotypes in the 50-valent vaccine!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is good news for humans, since the more
serotypes we can squeeze into the vaccine, the lower our chances of getting
sick become.</span></div>
</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";">
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"></span></div>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";">
However, there are a few minor drawbacks to this work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The researchers found that the neutralizing
antibody response is serotype-specific; there is no
cross-neutralization against other viral strains not a part of a particular
vaccine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> This means that</span> an antibody against
one serotype of rhinovirus is not protective against a different serotype of
rhinovirus, so any serotypes not represented in a vaccine are still capable of infecting you and making you ill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Another issue is that there were no challenge experiments in this
study.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reason for this is that there
are no animal models for the common cold (you can only recapitulate some of the
pathology in mice and rhesus macaques), so there is no way of knowing from this
study whether these vaccines will actually prevent you from getting sick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this shouldn’t be too difficult to test
in a clinical trial in human subjects since cold viruses aren’t all that
pathogenic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial";">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial";">
</span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">But perhaps the biggest
drawback to this work is that the researchers only tested polyvalent vaccines
against the ‘A’ species of rhinovirus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Rhinovirus A accounts for about 83 strains of virus; but B accounts for
32, and the newly discovered ‘C’ species accounts for 55 strains, which is not a
small number of viruses, all vying to infect us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem is that the ‘C’ species viruses
are really hard to grow in cell culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And as this study showed, the success of the vaccine is all about
getting nice, high, input virus titers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So in the meantime, researchers are working on figuring out the best
ways to grow these strains so they can add them into the vaccine
cocktails.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">Emory has optioned the
vaccine technology to a startup company called <a href="http://www.meissavaccines.com/">MeissaVaccines, Inc</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have just
received an SBIR (small business innovation research) grant from the National
Institutes of Health to develop an 83-valent human vaccine, so let’s wish them luck
in their efforts to make the common cold a thing of the past!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I, for one, will happily volunteer as a human
test subject! </span></div>
<div style="mso-element: comment-list;">
<hr align="left" class="msocomoff" size="1" width="33%" />
<div style="mso-element: comment;">
<div class="msocomtxt" id="_com_1">
<span style="mso-comment-author: Chadene;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_msocom_1"></a></span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span>Chadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656910456494592119.post-58947146848031955582017-12-08T17:59:00.000-08:002017-12-08T17:59:12.148-08:00Bugs in your gut and cancer immunotherapy<style>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Hello, hello!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do I still have any readers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I took a bit of a long hiatus, but I’m back
and hopefully I will be posting more regularly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And I have some news!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As of a few
weeks ago, I am one of the newest cohosts for the immunology podcast
“Audiommunity” (<a href="http://www.emmunity.org/">www.emmunity.org</a>)!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am pretty excited to have this opportunity
to discuss all the latest innovations in immunology with a team of
Harvard-trained immunologists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of
course, I am <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> a Harvard-trained
immunologist, but I’m hoping I can add some value to the podcast by being
willing to ask the “stupid” questions (there are no stupid questions,
amirite?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am also hoping to use my
blog space to distill some of the high-level research we will be discussing
into slightly more accessible summaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So if you don’t know one single thing about cancer immunology or
immunotherapy, I want you to be able to come away from my page with some new
knowledge.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">So, without further ado… On
the latest episode of “Audiommunity” (<a href="http://emmunity.org/audiommunity/2017/12/5/episode-26-lies-and-magic">episode
26- Lies and Magic</a>), we discussed a recent research article that looked at
how the human gut microbiome might play a role in how well a patient with
metastatic melanoma responds to immune checkpoint blockade therapy (<a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/11/01/science.aan4236">check
out the paper here</a>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Okay, lots of
big terms in that last sentence, so let’s break it all down slowly:</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQHpEX44Iu60s_wi8bif-JbpT1ceNkz7Yt1JW7YFnPKoh7K0sfNGBMzXYpAk44pyfjO-hsh6RTA80gLtr4wQqg2H-4YaPbWoOgJ_UCmFJStCo4Ad8v6flxCX1tUTaFeDmen7gJBr9N1ac/s1600/abyss.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="493" data-original-width="370" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQHpEX44Iu60s_wi8bif-JbpT1ceNkz7Yt1JW7YFnPKoh7K0sfNGBMzXYpAk44pyfjO-hsh6RTA80gLtr4wQqg2H-4YaPbWoOgJ_UCmFJStCo4Ad8v6flxCX1tUTaFeDmen7gJBr9N1ac/s400/abyss.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"So, Doc, see anything in there?"</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">First, let’s talk about the
microbiome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The microbiome is a
collection of genes from all the microbes (ie bacteria, fungi and viruses) that
live in and on us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you have probably
heard, human beings are absolutely covered, head-to-toe and inside-out, with bacteria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are on our skin, in our mouths, and,
yes, in our guts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At one time, it was
commonly believed that there are more bacterial cells on and in our bodies than
human cells, although the most recent estimates put that number closer to
one-to-one (<a href="https://www.nature.com/news/scientists-bust-myth-that-our-bodies-have-more-bacteria-than-human-cells-1.19136">read
more here</a>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, that’s a lot of
bacteria (something like 30 trillion cells!).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We call these communities of bacteria the human microbiota, or the
normal “flora” (or as I like to call it, your “gut garden”, heh).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Metastatic melanoma, or
stage IV melanoma, is a truly horrible diagnosis to receive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is melanoma (skin cancer) that has spread
through the lymph nodes to other areas of the body, most frequently the brain,
bones, lungs and liver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 5-year
survival rate, which is the percentage of patients likely to be alive 5-years
after diagnosis, is very low, hovering around 15 to 20% (<a href="https://www.cancer.org/cancer/melanoma-skin-cancer/detection-diagnosis-staging/survival-rates-for-melanoma-skin-cancer-by-stage.html">see
stats here</a>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But recent, exciting
developments in cancer treatment are beginning to improve those odds, for
melanoma and other cancers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These new
treatments are called immune checkpoint blockade, or simply immunotherapy.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seems legit.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Cancer cells and tumors are
very tricky things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since they are just our
own cells, gone wild, they can hold up signs that tell the cells of your immune
system not to attack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Normally, this is
a mechanism that healthy cells use to prevent things like autoimmune reactions
or to ramp down an immune response after an infection has been cleared. But
when used by cancer cells, this trick becomes a dangerous weapon in a tumor’s
arsenal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span> <style><!--
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">The
way this works is the cancer cells express proteins on their surface that bind
to proteins on the surface of things like T cells, for example, and these
binding events cause the T cells to “shut down”. One of the proteins that these
cancers can express is called PD-L1 (for “Programmed cell death ligand-1), and
this binds to a protein called PD-1 (“Programmed cell death-1) on the surface
of T cells (<a href="https://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatments-and-side-effects/treatment-types/immunotherapy/immune-checkpoint-inhibitors.html">click
here for a brief overview from the American Cancer Society</a>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">The idea behind immunotherapy is to block
this binding event, so that the immune cells can raise the alarm against the
cancer and attack it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scientists like to
refer to this as “taking the brakes off the immune system”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are now antibody therapies that can
block both PD-L1 and PD-1 (for example, you may have seen TV ads for Merck’s Keytruda®,
also called pembrolizumab, a PD-1 inhibitor, and made famous by <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/carter-center-statement-120615.html">Jimmy
Carter</a>), and these are turning out to be remarkably effective against many
different types of cancers <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3544539/">(2012 NEJM
article).</a></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMvLASQ5DQdVXa2EKVtV0zUVsQBmbTJVli3fT-RRv19A4NJN8JJf2v4WnfROdWX3BTFBG84GBrsVQLvS3TDXV8pmBiqbHRAFOzDMFtPN8iP9tgs6PSrs2DT7gh1E2xJ1aS6PYknWFXMUo/s1600/Slide4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="720" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMvLASQ5DQdVXa2EKVtV0zUVsQBmbTJVli3fT-RRv19A4NJN8JJf2v4WnfROdWX3BTFBG84GBrsVQLvS3TDXV8pmBiqbHRAFOzDMFtPN8iP9tgs6PSrs2DT7gh1E2xJ1aS6PYknWFXMUo/s1600/Slide4.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Top: Tumor expresses PD-L1, binds to PD-1 on T cell, and T cell is shut down. Bottom: anti-PD-1 antibody binds to PD-1 on T-cell and blocks its interaction with PD-L1 on tumor. T cells are now able to recognize tumor and attack (and they look pissed).</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">But despite these advances,
sometimes immunotherapies don’t work well in some patients or for some types of
cancers<span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"></span>, or
the improvements don’t last<span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"></span>,
and no one really understands why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So in
the paper we discussed on Audiommunity this week, the authors set out to try
and discover whether the gut bacteria in melanoma patients receiving anti-PD-1
treatments had an effect on how well they responded to the treatments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";">Outline of the study:</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">The researchers assembled a
group of patients with metastatic melanoma (they started with 112), and they collected
blood samples and tumor biopsies, and mouth swabs and stool samples to compare
the collections of bacteria in the guts of these patients.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They used a technique called 16S rRNA
sequencing to determine which bacteria were present in the samples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>16S rRNA is a gene that all bacteria have (we
say that it is “well-conserved”), but it differs just a bit between different
species of bacteria, so it can act as a sort of molecular nametag for each of
the bugs that are present. The patients then received anti-PD-1 immunotherapy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And 6 months later, the researchers collected
samples again, determined whether patients had any improvement in their disease
(whether they responded to treatment), and repeated bacterial sequencing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";">Results of the study:</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">What they found was that
patients that had a higher diversity of bacteria in their guts (more species,
or different types, of bacteria) did better with the treatment than patients
with less diversity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This isn’t a
surprising result, since it is pretty well known that loss of microbial
diversity, a condition called dysbiosis, results from, or causes, many types of
chronic diseases, including cancer (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4315779/">reviewed here</a>).
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They also found that patients with
specific types of bacteria had different treatment outcomes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Patients with higher levels of a genus of bacterium
called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Faecalibacterium</i> responded
better, whereas patients with higher levels of members of the order Bacteroidales
did worse.</span><br />
<br />
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvgq40VfofnhgsH9r3qdCigWaA2WG55NdjcY2U3Jlz8-9dhZiGJAVueIsRO63DNZyJIWCVyc_FHlQ_XwYqXmaTQXJKIQ1v-pzGQv4sKvtcn_6HGFngSq2VgaWRXLo7dtdstE2jp2UrRsM/s1600/guts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="716" height="379" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvgq40VfofnhgsH9r3qdCigWaA2WG55NdjcY2U3Jlz8-9dhZiGJAVueIsRO63DNZyJIWCVyc_FHlQ_XwYqXmaTQXJKIQ1v-pzGQv4sKvtcn_6HGFngSq2VgaWRXLo7dtdstE2jp2UrRsM/s640/guts.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Left gut: highly diverse, lots of multi-colored "sprinkles" (bacteria). Right gut: less diverse, fewer "sprinkles".</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";">Looking at the data a
different way, they found that they could predict which patients responded well
to the therapy just by looking at the composition of their gut bacteria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a potentially very useful tool for
the clinic, because being able to quickly and easily predict how well a patient
will do on a specific type of therapy before even beginning the treatment may save
critical time in the course of the cancer.</span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">The researchers also compared
the types and numbers of immune cells and markers of immune system activation
both around the tumors themselves (the tumor microenvironment), and within the
gut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They found that in general there
were higher levels of things like tumor-killing T cells and inflammatory
markers in the patients that responded well to treatment, and higher levels of
suppressive immune cells in the patients that responded poorly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, it is unclear whether the gut bacteria
directly led to these particular immune conditions or if this is just an
association.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Now this is where the study
gets really interesting (in my humble opinion).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They took stool samples from the patients, post-treatment, and
transferred them into “germ-free mice”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These are mice that are born and raised in a sterile environment so that
they are not colonized by any microbes; this allows researchers to introduce selected
bugs into these mice to study their influence on things like the immune system.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the transplant the mice now mirrored
their human patient counterparts (bacterially speaking).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mice were then injected with melanoma and
given immunotherapy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mice that
received stool from patients that saw improvement in their disease in the
initial study wound up with much smaller tumors and higher levels of
tumor-fighting immune cells than the mice that received transplants from the patients
who didn’t improve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To put it more
plainly, the bacteria in the poop from patients that had a good response to
treatment seemed to help the mice respond well to treatment, too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pretty cool, if you ask me!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";">The take-home message:</span></b><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">The long and short of it is
this; specific gut bacteria can affect the way a cancer patient responds to
immunotherapy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is exciting about
this is that you can alter your gut microbiota through diet and exercise,
probiotics and antibiotics, and through stool transplants (which are already in
use in some diseases like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223289/">Clostridium
difficile <span style="font-style: normal;">infection (CDI), to good effect</span></a></i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This means that it's possible that just some simple tweaks to the bacterial composition of your gut may make immunotherapy even more effective, and the authors of this study are already
designing a clinical trial that combines immunotherapy with microbiome alteration
(<a href="https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/2017/11/bacteria-in-the-gut-modulates-response-to-immunotherapy-in-melanoma.html">according
to this press release</a>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">However,
it is important to be clear that despite these promising results, patients
should not try to treat themselves with things like probiotics without the
express permission of their doctor</i></b> (***I am not that kind of "doctor”, and
nothing in this article or on my blog should be taken as medical advice!!).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";">So that's all for now, folks. Please feel free to send me questions, and check back in about a week for my next summary!</span><br />
<br /><i><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Additional Note: the images featured in this post are my own, hand-drawn, mixed-media creations!</span></span></i></div>
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<br />
<br />
<u><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Paper reference: </span></u>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">V.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>Gopalakrishnan,
C. N. Spencer, L. Nezi, A. Reuben, M. C. Andrews, T. V. Karpinets, P. A.
Prieto, D. Vicente, K. Hoffman, S. C. Wei, A. P. Cogdill, L. Zhao, C. W.
Hudgens, D. S. Hutchinson, T. Manzo, M. Petaccia de Macedo, T. Cotechini, T.
Kumar, W. S. Chen, S. M. Reddy, R. Szczepaniak Sloane, J. Galloway-Pena, H.
Jiang, P. L. Chen, E. J. Shpall, K. Rezvani, A. M. Alousi, R. F. Chemaly, S.
Shelburne, L. M. Vence, P. C. Okhuysen, V. B. Jensen, A. G. Swennes, F.
McAllister, E. Marcelo Riquelme Sanchez, Y. Zhang, E. Le Chatelier, L.
Zitvogel, N. Pons, J. L. Austin-Breneman, L. E. Haydu, E. M. Burton, J. M.
Gardner, E. Sirmans, J. Hu, A. J. Lazar, T. Tsujikawa, A. Diab, H. Tawbi, I. C.
Glitza, W. J. Hwu, S. P. Patel, S. E. Woodman, R. N. Amaria, M. A. Davies, J.
E. Gershenwald, P. Hwu, J. E. Lee, J. Zhang, L. M. Coussens, Z. A. Cooper, P.
A. Futreal, C. R. Daniel, N. J. Ajami, J. F. Petrosino, M. T. Tetzlaff, P.
Sharma, J. P. Allison, R. R. Jenq, J. A. Wargo</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
Gut microbiome modulates response to anti–PD-1 immunotherapy in melanoma
patients.</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Science,</i> 2017<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">DOI:
10.1126/science.aan4236</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"></span></div>
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Chadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656910456494592119.post-6701937231615556512017-03-16T10:22:00.000-07:002017-03-17T04:37:17.195-07:00Echoes of the bench in my everyday life<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIO06u_9CthbUL6gr1ovvnsi5Qq6uU6YM_esEdGgPEygLoQfnhflF9zfR8kznDqroWpngUfxxoC9Rmsq_lMpR2KdPgwwSB-l4iLLSY8HKxzoJMu6B1HilV9VmFTkGGbam_pjcliZ3lzC0/s1600/luggagetag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIO06u_9CthbUL6gr1ovvnsi5Qq6uU6YM_esEdGgPEygLoQfnhflF9zfR8kznDqroWpngUfxxoC9Rmsq_lMpR2KdPgwwSB-l4iLLSY8HKxzoJMu6B1HilV9VmFTkGGbam_pjcliZ3lzC0/s320/luggagetag.jpg" width="218" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Luggage tag I got from a vendor show. Free stuff! Yay!</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I have been a stay-at-home mom for 264 days, just a little under 9 months, and this is the longest I've been away from a lab in nearly 12 years. But who's counting? I am often asked by my friends still on the inside whether or not I miss the lab. The answer is a complicated one, rooted in practical forward-thinking optimism, but tinged with sappy nostalgia for the thing I spent the entirety of my twenties doing. Let me try to paint a picture for you of what it feels like to be a former bench jockey who finds herself exiled to <strike>Elba</strike> suburbia.</div>
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The closest I get to a centrifuge these days is the shiny, new, high-efficiency washing machine my landlord installed for us. Sometimes when I'm in my laundry room sorting grungy, stinky little boy clothes (oh, who are we kidding, my husband is an adult), I close my eyes and listen as the spin cycle revs up, the machine shaking ever so slightly as it cruises past 500 rpms, and I remember. I remember popping tubes into the centrifuge we called "the spaceship", a galactic-gray, futuristic monstrosity from the seventies. I had to use all my weight to latch the door. Then I would push "start" and back way, way up as it got up to speed, howling like a spaceship blasting off (hence the name), wondering all the while if this would be the time it finally failed and threw the rotor at me.</div>
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I open my kitchen cabinets to pull ingredients for dinner and suddenly I'm whisked back in time to the stock room at my last job; a walk-in closet of consumables and reagents, a science convenience store, if you will. The possibilities felt endless standing there inside that room, smelling of LB broth, the freshly cleaned glassware sparkling from it's shelves where it had been neatly put away according to size and category. A hyper-organized Type A's dream. Back in the present, I cast a resentful look at my sink full of dishes and remember the carefree joy of placing dishes in a tub near my bench, only for them to disappear and magically reappear hours later, clean and ready to use again. Maybe I should hire a technician? No, a housekeeping service. Well, we don't have the grant money for that anyway. </div>
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Later, after I've served a meal to my family who seemed only moderately impressed with my efforts and presentation, I am reminded of the many bosses, committees and reviewers that have judged my work, detached from the blood, sweat and tears I put into it. As I did back then, I will swallow my pride, take my critiques, and get back to it again tomorrow. Of course the one reviewer who was unnecessarily cruel will stick with me for a while ("that Western Blot was disgusting Mommy", or did my son say, "casserole"??...). I aliquot the leftovers and put them in the 4 degree freezer.</div>
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I wield wooden spoons and measuring cups like I once wielded pipets. I read cookbooks like I once read protocols, mixing and matching steps from several versions to come up with the best possible recipe. I occasionally explode things in the microwave, so that hasn't changed. I wear disposable gloves to cut up raw meat at BSL-1 and wonder to myself, "shouldn't I be doing this in the hood?". </div>
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I trade the latest news on childhood obesity and brain development with my children's pediatrician. We commiserate on the sinking vaccination rates and the latest outbreaks of things like the measles. We express our amazement at the newest recommendations for preventing peanut allergies (news flash: feed your baby peanut-containing products as early as 6 months- check out a <span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/food-matters/peanut-buttery-prevention-new-guidelines-to-thwart-the-peanut-allergy-epidemic/" target="_blank">piece I wrote for Scientific American Food Matters Blog</a></span> for more on this). It's just like being back in the break room at work. The only things missing are some snacks pilfered from a random seminar and a good cup of coffee. Perhaps for my kid's next checkup I'll bring some Dunkins and ask the receptionist to babysit for a few minutes.</div>
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I read reviews of a new sippy cup I'm thinking of trying out on my toddler, and see advertisements that scream, "revolutionary design, strongest suction!" Of course I think, "show me the evidence! Where are the links to the data? And is 'strongest suction' really the best thing, physiologically, for the child? Perhaps a more moderate suction would be more beneficial to the development of their cheek and tongue muscles. And this cup is so new, it's barely made it beyond peer-review. Only 23 citations on Amazon..."</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXFLak3JvTp_k3KF3vNSXK8eNwvdAtZ047QnYjWUfxtM25Xjo9QHhrOx54L-duTNGEUIz_fps2qwM6siRttKS7tVPz9pp6_vqh9aC84gfNZqqLmgvX1hBV9E36CsfGDAPkJYvypbTVjxA/s1600/IMG_1266+copy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXFLak3JvTp_k3KF3vNSXK8eNwvdAtZ047QnYjWUfxtM25Xjo9QHhrOx54L-duTNGEUIz_fps2qwM6siRttKS7tVPz9pp6_vqh9aC84gfNZqqLmgvX1hBV9E36CsfGDAPkJYvypbTVjxA/s320/IMG_1266+copy.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This turkey is precisely 165 deg F (and only a little bit dry).</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Perhaps more practically, I clean my bathrooms with ammonia and worry about the development of resistant bacteria. I use a meat thermometer religiously (and frequently serve dried out, overcooked meat as a result) and worry about E. coli, listeria, and salmonella infections. I help my kids blow their noses and then immediately scrub my hands, hyper-aware of my fingers and keeping them away from my face.<br />
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At the same time, I don't stress out about mopping my floors regularly, knowing that a little household dirt is doing wonders to train my kid's burgeoning immune systems (what an awesome excuse to be a lazy housekeeper!).<br />
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My kids and I discuss science and medicine around the dinner table and on long car rides, and I supply answers to questions like, "why is blood red?" and " why is pee yellow?" and even "ewww! why does baby sister have blueberries in her poop?!" (kids are preoccupied with bodily fluids).</div>
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In short, science has colored every aspect of my life. Being a scientist is as much a part of who I am as anything else that describes me is (ex "germaphobic", heh). I will always be a scientist in the way I act, think and feel, regardless of whether or not I suit up to go to work in a lab everyday.<br />
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So, do I miss working in a lab? Yes, I do. At least, I miss the idea of it, in the wistful sort of way that you might remember a time in your life that you didn't quite appreciate until it was over. But the things I learned from working in a lab come with me everyday in my life on the outside. And maybe, one day, I'll go back (although I've made certain friends promise to slap me if I ever seriously consider it), and bring some lessons I've learned on the outside with me. But that's a post for another time. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoRDgitXVTWxtdFKK4-0yNcOrWY1XufPhnnk1DAT3fsMNHMaCep8Uls4BlOJ_lJF30TvQACd8JmlLSWm65sv2Mca6-txxPvkSTgMrLm75Mltgw04sYOXoKapRb2sUBEUvkJrv7-m8OEJk/s1600/centrifuge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoRDgitXVTWxtdFKK4-0yNcOrWY1XufPhnnk1DAT3fsMNHMaCep8Uls4BlOJ_lJF30TvQACd8JmlLSWm65sv2Mca6-txxPvkSTgMrLm75Mltgw04sYOXoKapRb2sUBEUvkJrv7-m8OEJk/s320/centrifuge.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is the aforementioned centrifuge, complete with a "Caution" sign that I taped to it warning people that the lid slams shut and will take off your fingers if given the chance. I am told it has since kicked the bucket. Rest in peace, spaceship.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaSB9gmaOMvJ2jWLWaSD1RhlHKAAZ5PTIxtOk4vb6e5X4RjmY64rNhJUfJ2FIJYNNiaVAwn3sG-XlMbWfAOAoRIuaoxnvWTlfYQgym4RF_ibuqFqqdu-QqaeR5fAmSRUV7RAmMWkTY1sg/s1600/WP_20140327_003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaSB9gmaOMvJ2jWLWaSD1RhlHKAAZ5PTIxtOk4vb6e5X4RjmY64rNhJUfJ2FIJYNNiaVAwn3sG-XlMbWfAOAoRIuaoxnvWTlfYQgym4RF_ibuqFqqdu-QqaeR5fAmSRUV7RAmMWkTY1sg/s400/WP_20140327_003.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">UPDATE! An old coworker just sent me this much nicer image of the Spaceship. When I asked her why she happened to have this pic, she said, "I took pics of all the old equipment because no one believed me otherwise...And I documented everything in case I was ever injured...". Sounds about right (shout out to my dana14 crew!).</td></tr>
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<br />Chadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656910456494592119.post-32401519055782387102017-01-09T14:06:00.000-08:002017-01-09T14:06:28.519-08:00DinoMania!
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Happy New Year! This post was meant to go up a lot sooner (like, before Thanksgiving...heh), but well, holidays and kids and business and excuses, etc, etc. Anyway, without further ado- it's time for DinoMania!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">When I was a kid, I loved
dinosaurs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Love’ probably isn’t even a
strong enough word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">infatuated</i> with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the time I was about six years old, I
wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I checked out nearly every dinosaur book in the children’s section of
our small town library, and spent many, many weekends with my Dad at the <a href="http://www.dinosaurstatepark.org/" target="_blank">Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course my favorite place to go was the <a href="http://peabody.yale.edu/" target="_blank">Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven</a>, where I
would wander the Great Hall of Dinosaurs and marvel at the massive brontosaurus
skeleton, trying to imagine what it would have been like to stand next to these
great and terrible lizards (dinosaur is Latin for “terrible lizard”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Fortunately (or unfortunately),
when I was around eight years old, Steven Spielberg went right ahead and did
the imagining for me with a little movie called “Jurassic Park”, which
basically ruined dinosaurs for me forever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To this day I can’t eat jello without scrutinizing it for a rhythmic
jiggle, indicating I’m about to be ambushed by a massive <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">T. rex</i> with a taste for man-flesh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And let’s not forget that gratuitous doghouse-eating scene from one of the
horrifically bad sequels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Totally
unnecessary, Steven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Rather than stoke my
interest in a particular career path, movies have kind of a history of turning
me off of a field.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Jurassic Park”
crushed my paleontology dreams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Apollo
13” made me rethink my plans of becoming an astronaut- I didn’t think it was
possible to be any more emetophobic until I watched Bill Paxton puke in zero
gravity- thanks Ron Howard!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My interest
in ancient civilizations?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Destroyed by
nightmares after watching “The Mummy” in a hotel room on a rainy vacation to
Salem, Massachusetts around Halloween time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bad combination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Weirdly enough,
the movie “Outbreak” did not manage to scare me away from virology, and I
became a virologist anyway, but I digress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The point is, don’t get your
career aspirations from movies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
much better (and much more accurate and informative) to stick with books, obviously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nice, safe, papery, books.</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqVut8yRJWrlbpwIyT3GmjWCTlTRf02kxJ9cWjKs_dzdlVwpDJ3uA70tX4Ycz44pj5-TZYFDNYaixZHwtyAtZBdLb7A31af-9cUenWNl2wDG3hldC3eIlGkHNhTPjyy4kPE-PVN_sjq5I/s1600/dinocake.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqVut8yRJWrlbpwIyT3GmjWCTlTRf02kxJ9cWjKs_dzdlVwpDJ3uA70tX4Ycz44pj5-TZYFDNYaixZHwtyAtZBdLb7A31af-9cUenWNl2wDG3hldC3eIlGkHNhTPjyy4kPE-PVN_sjq5I/s320/dinocake.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cake that took me fifty million years to complete.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In my house it seems that my
love of dinosaurs has not skipped a generation, and my four-year-old son owns
lots and lots of books about them. We just threw him a dinosaur-themed birthday
party a few months ago, and he loves to talk about dinosaurs for hours on end,
which isn’t all that unusual for children his age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact my husband and I have a theory that a
general fascination with dinosaurs is a normal developmental stage for all
mini-humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much like when I was a kid,
my son has read through practically the entire dinosaur section of our local
library, and anytime we are in the vicinity of our favorite Barnes and Noble we
somehow manage to return home with a new tome full of the beasts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">One book in particular, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Prehistoric-Predators-Brian-Switek/dp/1604335521/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1483979810&sr=8-2&keywords=prehistoric+predators" target="_blank">“PrehistoricPredators”,</a> by Brian Switek, is our all-time favorite and I highly
recommend it to anyone who has a dino-loving child at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The illustrations are beautiful, the facts
plentiful, and the pronunciation key is clutch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My son’s obsession with this book has spawned his favorite,
self-invented game, which he has christened “the dinosaur game”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea is that you take turns going back
and forth naming dinosaurs until one person can no longer think of dinosaurs to
name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sounds easy, but it turns out some
four year olds play for keeps. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Four year old: “Okay, I’ll go first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Diplodocus.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Me: “Ummm, Tyrannosaurus rex”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Him: “Giganotosaurus”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Me: “Uh, velociraptor.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Him: “Dilophosaurus.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Me: “Dilopho…What? Uhhh, umm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stega, uh, rapta… don.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"> Him:
“Haha! Mommy! ‘Stegaraptadon’ is NOT a dinosaur. You just made that up!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could’ve said stegasaurus or dimetrodon.
Duh, silly! I win. Now I get ice cream!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Sheesh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t realize there was ice cream at
stake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Silly me; ice cream is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">always</i> at stake when you have a
preschooler around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Guess I should pay
more attention during story time.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0dL-YUzvve8QcUENpp6av63epP158ISFqRD23kQiXDoS2b0hVDlMHiZiaJmuhmkiKTj02SGlBlbcX2wCj256nw48slSCi5u4LLT3QVzDODrp0ZGk5cx5B4CCB_oBLqEafluh2dq1uXuU/s1600/stegaraptadon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0dL-YUzvve8QcUENpp6av63epP158ISFqRD23kQiXDoS2b0hVDlMHiZiaJmuhmkiKTj02SGlBlbcX2wCj256nw48slSCi5u4LLT3QVzDODrp0ZGk5cx5B4CCB_oBLqEafluh2dq1uXuU/s320/stegaraptadon.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The mighty Stegaraptadon. Totally real, I swear.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8NgtYtGnMEkm01GMPm3nGn5E8Bza7Zxg2VBVOuuACTdXzCQlPQUiqpmBTB_3qT0SU5Ry-1s4RWOqbArwfS90qDa5hvSkZ62NXL1omcoia4oMpXYptRqq27P3dSypfutuhcOUjgLNM2Vo/s1600/FullSizeRender.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8NgtYtGnMEkm01GMPm3nGn5E8Bza7Zxg2VBVOuuACTdXzCQlPQUiqpmBTB_3qT0SU5Ry-1s4RWOqbArwfS90qDa5hvSkZ62NXL1omcoia4oMpXYptRqq27P3dSypfutuhcOUjgLNM2Vo/s320/FullSizeRender.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Part of the collection.</td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtHeMatPSEl81wOUBVZ7bGiFg-5q6igrvh4PzvogKVyFkkyQa435PyuGNnb3_Nh1WMWzrqfXCGdAsDtQ8dLJ4O6X7W2FvD7Fy_sWqTcVPy54dsEU2XPXq5voxw4w4jPv3hyHAtjFoQsl4/s1600/tyrchron.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtHeMatPSEl81wOUBVZ7bGiFg-5q6igrvh4PzvogKVyFkkyQa435PyuGNnb3_Nh1WMWzrqfXCGdAsDtQ8dLJ4O6X7W2FvD7Fy_sWqTcVPy54dsEU2XPXq5voxw4w4jPv3hyHAtjFoQsl4/s320/tyrchron.jpeg" width="201" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image from Goodreads.com</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Well, speaking of story
time, I happened to be browsing the new nonfiction section of the library
recently when I stumbled upon an eye-catching title.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tyrannosaur-Chronicles-Biology-Tyrant-Dinosaurs/dp/1472911253" target="_blank">“TheTyrannosaur Chronicles: the Biology of the Tyrant Dinosaur”</a> by <a href="http://www.davehone.co.uk/" target="_blank">Dr. David Hone</a> jumped out at me without
warning*. And I’m glad it snared me because it is a fantastically interesting
read for grown ups that never quite “grew out of” their dinosaur phase.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Dr. Hone has written a
comprehensive field guide about everyone’s favorite dinosaurs, the tyrannosaurs,
and contains beautiful illustrations and figures by Scott Hartman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hone covers the history of the discovery of
the large family (yes, family- did you know that more than 30 species of
tyrannosaur has been discovered so far?), with the mighty <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">T. rex </i>being named in 1905. Tyrannosaurs first appeared in the
Jurassic period, but unlike the massive apex predator depicted in the infamous
film, the first tyrannosaurs were small, about the size of a horse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over time the general trend was for tyrannosaurs
to get bigger, and eventually they did resemble the monster we now think of
when we think of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">T. rex</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">But they may not have looked
so much like the scaly reptiles of our time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s generally accepted that birds are the living descendants of
dinosaurs, having evolved from some avian theropod ancestor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Think chickens, not crocodiles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And man, do chickens creep me out- those ugly
feet! Those staring, unblinking eyes!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
far as I’m concerned, the resemblance to the terrible lizards is clear
(apologies to my Mother, the crazy chicken lady).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And phylogenetically speaking, there is <a href="http://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2164-15-1060" target="_blank">goodevidence to support this relationship</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although tyrannosaurs themselves are probably more closely related to
crocodiles than the “bird-like” dinosaurs were, it is now believed that they
(as well as many other dinosaurs) were covered in a downy plumage, perhaps for
insulation and for attracting mates.<span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">A few of my other favorite
tyrannosaur facts that I picked up from this book include that they had large
air spaces in their skulls and highly developed nasal cavities for smelling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And much like birds, tyrannosaur bones had
pneumatic air sacs that were filled by air from the lungs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a section discussing the ecology of
tyrannosaurs, it is explained that far from modern imaginings of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">T. rex </i>battling a triceratops,
tyrannosaurs actually battled each other both for sexual dominance and for food
(yep, they ate each other sometimes).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
they did far more chewing of their prey than wholesale “gulping”, as suggested
by the discovery of pulverized hadrosaur bones in fossilized tyrannosaur
droppings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of all, I was fascinated
to learn that it is incredibly difficult to determine the sex of a dinosaur
from its fossil, or whether a smallish fossil is a juvenile, an outlier, or a
new species entirely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It truly is a
remarkable researcher that can be satisfied working with such “bare
bones” (pun intended).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Overall, I enjoyed the book,
though at times it got fairly academic and may not be for the casual
reader.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if you loved dinosaurs as a
kid and you enjoy some pop-sci nonfiction, check out this book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">To wrap up this “dino-mania”
post, I just want to mention that it was reported recently in Current Biology that
a dinosaur tail covered in primitive plumage was discovered, preserved in amber
(here’s the link to a <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/12/dinosaur-tail-trapped-amber-sheds-light-evolution-feathers" target="_blank">Sciencepiece</a> about the article since the article itself is not open access).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The images are beautiful, and although
dinosaur-era feathers preserved in amber are nothing new, this is the first
time a mummified piece of dinosaur skeleton and tissue has been found along
with the feathers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An actual dinosaur <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tail</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But before you start freaking out, thinking, “this is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exactly</i> how Jurassic Park got started!”
(I mean, I didn’t think that or anything…) it turns out that no dino DNA could
be recovered from the sample, so we’re still safe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">*Note that they don’t allow
jello or other food in the library, even just to serve as an alarm against
imminent dinosaur attack (“No Ms. Librarian, I am not going to eat this jello,
I’m just going to stare at it to make sure it doesn’t start to jiggle…”).</span></div>
Chadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656910456494592119.post-74383749096894725802016-10-11T18:36:00.001-07:002016-10-12T08:45:38.217-07:00Dr. Mommy, PhD: Doing Science with Preschoolers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV8rWJ5YaeQeCsbYQgXVkWXW3hHM-sTd-iNLumUKi69TE8hZ3vfGDZKK6VlXZb59CmDQKklNgT2PAkiTb6S0vQ4YTgcf_B8qrTtjOuw1jqiS6f_dHVay52Qz9AVV0zo2Mq0M6uBWps1FI/s1600/beakers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV8rWJ5YaeQeCsbYQgXVkWXW3hHM-sTd-iNLumUKi69TE8hZ3vfGDZKK6VlXZb59CmDQKklNgT2PAkiTb6S0vQ4YTgcf_B8qrTtjOuw1jqiS6f_dHVay52Qz9AVV0zo2Mq0M6uBWps1FI/s400/beakers.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today, I had the unique opportunity
to bring together the two biggest spheres of my life - motherhood and
science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At my son’s preschool, as part
of the October curriculum focusing on “community helpers”, I was invited to
come talk about being a scientist and to do some science demonstrations with a
group of very enthusiastic three and four year olds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I jumped at the chance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, I had been preparing for this moment
since the day my son was born.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just
couldn’t wait for that seemingly far-off day when I would strut into my kid’s
classroom, beakers and Bunsen burners in hand, ready to cultivate the next
generation of young scientists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I
imagined how my son would beam when all the other kids told him how cool his
Mom was…okay, okay, so I know I’m not as cool as say, a firefighter or a police
officer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I thought to myself, “Hey! I
have a vanity lab coat buried in a closet somewhere (that’s never been in a
lab, of course!). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I can go buy a
pair of safety glasses at Home Depot and have my husband bring home some
nitrile gloves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’ll look cool,
right?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Right</i>??<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tried on the
ensemble for my son and he just rolled his eyes, laughed, and then said,
<b>“Mommy, you look like a Doctor but you’re not a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i> doctor!”</b><i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dear reader, I
disowned him.</i></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzTBUvZqAfks_rRQE3an084ccQCGn0paeY-sqOcv-7NOZ32FvI28l8DS8w3DuOc3Bsm042lGv8USJhHI85gqHhIm5JSeG6GQ6V37wHmGy3NngdCuK3-6iTI4iHUgEyBzZHPUWe_7aP9UI/s1600/notthatkindofdr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzTBUvZqAfks_rRQE3an084ccQCGn0paeY-sqOcv-7NOZ32FvI28l8DS8w3DuOc3Bsm042lGv8USJhHI85gqHhIm5JSeG6GQ6V37wHmGy3NngdCuK3-6iTI4iHUgEyBzZHPUWe_7aP9UI/s1600/notthatkindofdr.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Not that kind of Dr.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anyway, for my visit, I came in the
aforementioned uniform, which, as predicted, earned many excited squeals and
shouts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My own son may not be impressed
but the other kids certainly were, which probably just serves to underline how
very far we are now from the medical and science hub that is Boston.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sat on a teeny, tiny chair that I worried
was going to collapse under my weight at any moment, and looked down at a group
of eager, adorable, budding scientists ripe for the teaching, sitting in a
semi-circle at my feet. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I started by
asking the group if anyone could tell me what a scientist does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here is a small sampling of the answers:</span></div>
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<span style="color: magenta;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“A scientist wears glasses and
looks at things that nobody cares about, and says ‘Hmmmm, interesting’!” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(Alarmingly close to the truth)</i></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“They mix up the chemicals and make
them go ‘Boom!!’<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">” (We usually try to
avoid the ‘Boom!’)</i></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“They eat ice cream!!” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(Well, this scientist sure does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lots and lots of it)</i></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, with that out of the way, I
went on to explain that scientists ask questions about the world around us, and
that we do it in a very special way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
talked about the scientific method and practiced saying “hypothesis”, which of
course was hilarious since even adults have a hard time saying that word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We made a hypothesis about what would happen
if you put water in the freezer (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>“You get
ice! Duh!”</b>-</i> I may have underestimated these kids).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we talked about making a prediction about
what would happen if you put milk into the freezer, based on what happened to
the water (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>“Milkshakes!!”</b>- </i>I may have
overestimated these kids).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With our
fresh knowledge of the scientific method, we set out to do a couple of
experiments.</span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidA2cyjfqleLAdsqUh9CBim0z51hLmlmgnumSMWbWiDANryZIfBgikQ7Ymt-rsfZ_QFfS5tfqvUd-rtDZ4BwjSXeI11-xIm_4kRFwIVg8DA5VWXoNq1LUJEwZg8L1oMyKAo2KYVSN271E/s1600/IMG_3338+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidA2cyjfqleLAdsqUh9CBim0z51hLmlmgnumSMWbWiDANryZIfBgikQ7Ymt-rsfZ_QFfS5tfqvUd-rtDZ4BwjSXeI11-xIm_4kRFwIVg8DA5VWXoNq1LUJEwZg8L1oMyKAo2KYVSN271E/s320/IMG_3338+%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Whole milk, food coloring and dish soap. Eyedropper not necessary, just made the kids feel more like scientists.</span></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I brought out a casserole tin and
poured a quart of whole milk to cover the bottom of the pan (you have to use
whole milk for this experiment, the more fat the better).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I pointed out that milk has a lot of healthy
fat in it, the kind that makes their brains grow bigger and smarter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked for a volunteer to help me add some
food coloring to the milk and we made a hypothesis about what we thought would
happen when we added the coloring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nearly everyone thought the dye would change the color of the milk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then we squirted the dye in and watched in
amazement as the drops pooled on the surface of the milk, separate from each
other, the rest of the milk remaining white.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2tQpNrMF6ubbdQX_C_ihHIk0_O6kHUdvVRQsfzYwixVx4H8_63prcQGLlAcmea6Ot8XbpkuXYlw42ZgUgIrff5kVRYqjitf_JEZs2TYcAIWGJE-T-gpmTGklQClx30zQi3PhoHZjyZa8/s1600/IMG_3340+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2tQpNrMF6ubbdQX_C_ihHIk0_O6kHUdvVRQsfzYwixVx4H8_63prcQGLlAcmea6Ot8XbpkuXYlw42ZgUgIrff5kVRYqjitf_JEZs2TYcAIWGJE-T-gpmTGklQClx30zQi3PhoHZjyZa8/s320/IMG_3340+%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We got a little overzealous with the purple dye.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Next, I brought out a bottle of
dish soap and asked if anyone helps their Mommies and Daddies do the dishes;
I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that nearly all of them do!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were many shouts and cheers about how
helpful they were at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a side-note, none of their parents were present for this demonstration. The teacher
rolled her eyes in her teacher-ly way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
son looked around ready to chime in in the affirmative as well, then made eye
contact with me and decided against it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We discussed what soap does, that its job is to break down “grease”,
which is just another word for fat, and that’s how it cleans the dishes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We made a hypothesis about what would happen
when we added a little dish soap to the milk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most guessed that we would make bubbles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Using an eyedropper, my volunteer dripped dish soap into the pan, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">voila!</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The food coloring instantly dispersed and swirled into the milk in a
beautiful array of colors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The kids were
amazed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some asked if they could drink
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I objected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s going a touch too far for science,
even in my book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we talked about how
before we added the soap, the fat in the milk was holding the dye together, and
that when the soap broke down the fat, the dye was able to mix into the milk.</span></div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzi_9F2rvnyWXwfNfOICanoijY-ex6HPaQU06yn48m60AgxABlbsb7nUmkOMGcdQSc9xvrg2jHFC3Po6A5IPnrYkGLW8PdrjB6o5TPXMRUWKCug72lJi6NP0PxFxFUwu7ic-4hn23wNyQ/s1600/IMG_3343.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzi_9F2rvnyWXwfNfOICanoijY-ex6HPaQU06yn48m60AgxABlbsb7nUmkOMGcdQSc9xvrg2jHFC3Po6A5IPnrYkGLW8PdrjB6o5TPXMRUWKCug72lJi6NP0PxFxFUwu7ic-4hn23wNyQ/s320/IMG_3343.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Adding the soap...</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSuj3Yi26Ng-J3JoiatUIcxW1_Y50Uc_goeUIE0Tn3KqVKilzTGmjOtNikTfxtxGNQf5FG9G3kgFCceni02X9cXxR1psvUpPF8B5VDUIa_WQORkPy3x6EQ-nTxAGUPl7MgiVxgLGDgBMI/s1600/IMG_3344.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSuj3Yi26Ng-J3JoiatUIcxW1_Y50Uc_goeUIE0Tn3KqVKilzTGmjOtNikTfxtxGNQf5FG9G3kgFCceni02X9cXxR1psvUpPF8B5VDUIa_WQORkPy3x6EQ-nTxAGUPl7MgiVxgLGDgBMI/s320/IMG_3344.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lovely!</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Experiment number two was a classic
baking soda and vinegar experiment, except I added some drops of food coloring
on top of the baking soda to make it more colorful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I spread some baking soda out onto a tray and
asked if anyone knew what baking soda was used for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many clearly stated i<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">t</span> was “for baking” and I
didn’t need to ask if anyone liked cake or cookies, this information was freely
volunteered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took a minute to calm
everyone down when they realized I was not going to be doing a cooking
demonstration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ah, the sharp sting of
disappointment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When they all caught a
whiff of the vinegar, a heated discussion broke out as to the merits of pickles
(Eight <b>“yaes”</b>, eleven <b>“ewwwwww! Nays”</b>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was pleased they were so savvy in the ways of ingredients.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDGEd7iL4zSdEc3XnBSauJizJ6CDdg6gXEPQ-AtAwoBfZ67wnusLpExEoIeWApCWADxzcTtdmylnVYBQY-eLnw0UCEy87YCTwGjdeA1NEOuDe_SUqEfXHN0k2ZqvU43FMmaEE5g-kecfY/s1600/IMG_3345.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDGEd7iL4zSdEc3XnBSauJizJ6CDdg6gXEPQ-AtAwoBfZ67wnusLpExEoIeWApCWADxzcTtdmylnVYBQY-eLnw0UCEy87YCTwGjdeA1NEOuDe_SUqEfXHN0k2ZqvU43FMmaEE5g-kecfY/s400/IMG_3345.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I strongly recommend doing this experiment on a disposable tray. Trust me on this one.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This time I got two volunteers to
come up and help me out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first kid
got to use an eyedropper to dribble some vinegar onto the baking soda and we
noted that small, fizzy bubbles were made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We hypothesized that if we used a syringe full of vinegar we would get
even more bubbles, so volunteer number two went to town spraying the vinegar
into a foaming puddle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, I put a
couple inches of baking soda into a clear plastic cup and filled a measuring
cup up with nearly two cups of vinegar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was going for broke with the grand finale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I added some dye to the baking soda and
allowed my son, who was sitting very impatiently the entire time, to come and
do the honors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We counted to three and
everyone held their breath as we dumped the entire measuring cup of vinegar into
the cup of baking soda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The room erupted
in shrieks of excitement as the foam exploded up and over the top of the cup
and all over the tray beneath it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
kid started bellowing, <b>“Volcano! Volcano! Volcaaaaaaanooooooo!”</b> as he danced
around the room gleefully.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They LOVED
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And again, they wanted to drink it. </span></div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEO8LkHRnbTDMJ9C_TOYViw-qz0rpHGN7WNyiDWTpKyfq8YpB-_9U7JQ1YaZ6xkAG3B9t0kVChB3a9rFeTMoNBJcAwY-KOFGkLazjDEnHEgzGVRhS_I6qBuEJNF_Fnz3OrG4RyKCmH4PI/s1600/bsv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEO8LkHRnbTDMJ9C_TOYViw-qz0rpHGN7WNyiDWTpKyfq8YpB-_9U7JQ1YaZ6xkAG3B9t0kVChB3a9rFeTMoNBJcAwY-KOFGkLazjDEnHEgzGVRhS_I6qBuEJNF_Fnz3OrG4RyKCmH4PI/s640/bsv.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What a pretty mess this makes!</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGg3xsVXYPqALE4ONfgEctOKuHwLcJ1a_5T2m3_TP7bSyk43LuiifQbfY4pxRst9mosCpNjc4EPMPPWkAEqZpmJTq2tV0ui35yVVE0v2yuwRKpjsRUiWrWg-CQ_Ijl0891KOES3i-7FQ/s1600/expl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGg3xsVXYPqALE4ONfgEctOKuHwLcJ1a_5T2m3_TP7bSyk43LuiifQbfY4pxRst9mosCpNjc4EPMPPWkAEqZpmJTq2tV0ui35yVVE0v2yuwRKpjsRUiWrWg-CQ_Ijl0891KOES3i-7FQ/s400/expl.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Pour quickly but carefully!</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We cleaned up our experiments (one
of the most important parts of doing science, in my opinion) and discussed the
reaction between baking soda and vinegar, and how they combine to make carbon
dioxide, a gas, and how this reaction is what is responsible for making cakes
rise, nice and fluffy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One girl asked me
why I bake pickle-flavor cakes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Definitely realized I did a poor job explaining acids and bases to this
young group and chose to pretend I didn’t hear the question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I finished up by saying, <b>“I hope that I’ve
shown you guys that science is cool and fun!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You can all be scientists, all you need to do is stay curious about your
world and ask good questions!” and then I added, “So who wants to be a
scientist when they grow up?!”</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><b> </b> </span>Amidst a
chorus of passionate cries of “Me! Me!” my son announced that he was going to
be a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i> Doctor like his Daddy
(again, disowned), and another smart young man stated that he would rather be an
accountant (me too, kid, me too).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Volcano boy was still dancing, and shouted proudly, <b>“I’m going to be a
volcano when I grow up!!”<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></b></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shine
bright, little volcano boy, shine bright.</i></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
</div>
Chadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656910456494592119.post-31502348671371011152016-09-03T07:08:00.000-07:002016-09-03T07:08:47.495-07:00Antibiotic resistance got you down? Never fear, paint will save us! …Wait, what??
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">Considering
freshening up your walls?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How about
Sterile Steel Blue?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps
Bacteriocidal Beige? Antibacterial Alabaster?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">At
this point, there isn’t a soul on the planet that hasn’t heard about the growing
threat of “super bugs”, previously treatable bacteria that no longer respond to
antibiotics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The recent UK <a href="http://amr-review.org/">Review on Antimicrobial Resistance</a> predicts
our antibiotics will be ineffective by the year 2050.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And 10 million people will die each year of
previously minor infections and common medical procedures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>C-sections, hip replacements and transplants
will no longer be considered relatively safe and routine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Depressing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While I originally planned on writing an article highlighting what I
think is a very promising avenue of research into antibiotic alternatives
called “bacteriophages” (viruses that kill bacteria), a few days ago I found
myself in the glowing grip of a TV commercial I had never seen before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let me set the scene for you:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An attractive woman
in her late 30’s, early 40’s, is painting a wall in her house a soothing sage
green.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The room is bathed in natural
light and the woman is smiling placidly as her brush goes up and down, up and
down, in a fluid motion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The voiceover
begins and says, “This is how you apply antibacterial paint”, implying that it
is just as easy as applying regular paint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><End scene></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">My
brow furrowed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did I hear that right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Antibacterial <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">paint</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few clicks of the
keyboard confirmed that what I had just seen on the TV had actually been
announced more than 8 months ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
paint company, Sherwin-Williams, is now selling a product called <a href="http://www.swpaintshield.com/">Paint Shield<sup>®</sup>;</a> a collection
of 550 colors of paint infused with a patented antimicrobial compound. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The company is claiming the paint kills 99.9%
of bacteria including Staph, <i>E. coli</i>, MRSA, VRE and <i>Enterobacter
aerogenes</i> on painted surfaces within two hours of exposure, and continues
to kill 90% of bacteria for up to four years as long as the paint surface is
intact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it will be selling at a
ridiculous premium, going for $84.99 a gallon (compared to $29.99 for a
regular, old, can of paint at my local hardware store).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I’m
not going to take issue with their antibacterial claims.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have the EPA certification to back it up,
indicating that the paint underwent rigorous testing at a third party lab to
support those statements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the EPA was
only assessing the scientific claims at hand; it wasn’t assessing any claims
about the usefulness or wisdom of actually using such a product.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">And
herein lies my problem with it.</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sherwin-Williams’
website says the product was originally developed for hospitals, athletic
facilities, schools and daycares, but that it is also an excellent choice for
the home, in kitchens and bathrooms and laundry rooms. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What irritated me was when I went digging for more
information on Paint Shield<sup>® </sup>and came across some of the original
news releases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each article featured
some version of the line <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“new paint may
save thousands of lives”</i>, citing the need to combat the growing number of
hospital-acquired infections, a quote which at best is yet another example of
journalistic exaggeration, and at worst is utter hogwash (<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/10/28/sherwin-williams-develops-antibacterial-paint-paint-shield-antibacterial/74702516/">see
an example here</a>). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">While
hospital-acquired infections definitely are a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/hai/surveillance/index.html">big problem</a>, unless
patients are routinely licking the walls I don’t think they are at great risk
of acquiring an infection from them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
I could find <a href="http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/7/2/70-0354_article#hospitalenvironmentasariskforinfection">no
research implicating walls in the issue</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In fact, paints (and other surface finishes and fabrics) incorporating
antibacterial compounds have been around for quite some time, and large
hospitals like <a href="https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/8283014/kaiser-permanente-antimicrobial-analysis-healthy-building-network">Kaiser
Permanente</a> actually recommended against their use a few years ago, citing a
lack of evidence that they do anything to prevent infections and a lack of
safety data concerning long term use.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In
a hospital chock-full of very sick people, the fewer germs, the better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is true that bacteria and viruses can
sometimes remain infectious on surfaces for days or even weeks. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We call these surfaces “fomites” for their
ability to transmit disease, and this is why regular disinfection of hospital
floors, walls, and surfaces is already <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de
rigeur</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the fomites we’re
concerned about are ones that we are in regular contact with, things like counter
tops, doorknobs, and sinks, which we touch with our hands and then
absentmindedly touch our mouths, eyes, and faces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140121092749.htm">Doctor’s
neckties and their classic white coats</a> have been demonstrated to be potentially
dangerous vectors of disease (and being married to a Doc, I can say that I do
not allow these items to enter my house).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">What I’m trying to say is that claims
that painting hospital walls with Paint Shield<sup>® </sup>will “save thousands
of lives” are absolutely overstated.</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That
said, in a hospital setting, antimicrobial paint probably couldn’t do much
harm, though I have serious doubts hospitals will deem this product useful
enough to shell out for its hefty price tag.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What is much more concerning to me, however, is the suggestion that this
paint should be used in the home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
quick search of the <a href="http://patents.justia.com/patent/20160194502">patent
literature</a> reveals that the patented technology in Paint Shield<sup>® </sup>is
a quaternary ammonium compound (or QAC for short), which they’ve managed to
stabilize in the paint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>QACs are nothing
new; they have been used for decades in detergents, cleaners and fabric
softeners, and are believed to work by disrupting cell membranes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they are considered very effective, hence
their widespread usage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But with such
widespread usage comes the inevitable: mounting evidence of microbial resistance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
evidence for resistance is in the presence of genes that enable bacteria to
escape the action of antibacterial compounds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The unnecessary overuse of antimicrobial compounds and chemicals in our
homes, which subsequently winds up in the waste run-off in our environment,
doesn’t actually manage to kill all bacteria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Instead, some bacteria see repeated, sub-lethal exposure to the
chemicals, which drives the development of resistance genes like the “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">qac</i>-genes” (reviewed <a href="http://vri.cz/docs/vetmed/57-6-275.pdf">here</a>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">qac</i>-genes
(named for the QAC compounds they function against) encode multi-drug efflux
pumps, which contribute to antibacterial resistance by pumping QACs and other
germ-fighting compounds out before they have a chance to kill the organism, rendering
these chemicals less effective or useless. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually this process results in strains of
bacteria that are totally unaffected by these products.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://vri.cz/docs/vetmed/57-6-275.pdf">And sometimes this resistance to
disinfectants can also result in cross-resistance to antibiotics</a>, making
the problem antibiotic resistant infections worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This type of resistance is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4397847/">well documented in
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Staphylococcus aureus</i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>for example<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>one of the organisms Paint Shield<sup>® </sup>is touted to kill,
and the famous cause of nightmare-inducing MRSA infections. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Making
this all the more relevant is the <a href="http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm517478.htm">very
recent announcement by the FDA of a ban on the marketing of antibacterial soaps
and other products containing over 19 different compounds</a>, due to a lack of
evidence that these products are safe and actually work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">That’s
right folks, there is no scientific evidence that antibacterial hand soaps work
better than regular hand-washing with soap and water.</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Manufacturers of these products will have one
year to remove the chemicals from the products or stop marketing them
altogether.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this is great news,
since several studies published over the last decade have demonstrated that use
of many of these chemicals, Triclosan in particular, not only lack any benefit,
but also contribute to growing bacterial resistance (see <a href="http://archderm.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=478930">here</a>
and <a href="http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/45/Supplement_2/S137.long">here</a>).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So,
in short, will I be running out and buying antibacterial paint for my
home?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No thanks. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the cost alone wasn’t enough to keep me
away, the fact that I may actually be making my home and the environment that
absorbs my household waste into a breeding ground for resistant bacteria does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reality of the coming post-antibiotic age
is certainly frightening, but we would do much more to slow it down by limiting
our use of products that may contribute to this phenomenon, rather than by
trying to encase our families in sterile, little bubbles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And
for goodness sake, <a href="http://www.who.int/features/qa/stopping-antibiotic-treatment/en/">finish
your course of antibiotics</a>! </span></div>
Chadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656910456494592119.post-44141503809523830212016-08-23T05:53:00.000-07:002016-08-23T05:54:28.143-07:00Stuff My Kids Say About Science<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><b>Last week- </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">3 Year Old:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mommy, you ‘member that time I got really,
really sick ‘cuz the buggies got inside my body?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the bright blood cells came to fight
them and you said, “Not today natural election, not today!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><b>This morning- </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">3 Year Old:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Megalodon was the biggest swimming
dinosaur!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the sharks use to be
megalodons!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">Me:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, that’s right!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What do we call that?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">3 Year Old:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Evolution!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">Me:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Very good, buddy!! (Feeling proud)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">3 Year Old:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">our</i>
grandcestors are monkeys! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Grandma and
Grandpa used to be monkeys!!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now
they’re my Grandma and Grandpa!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">Me: …wait a minute…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">Clearly I'm nailing this whole "scientist-mother" thing... </span></div>
Chadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656910456494592119.post-31473390771897108522016-08-02T16:17:00.000-07:002016-08-02T16:17:20.083-07:00Attention Cat Lovers! Anti-cancer treatment might be sitting in your litter box!
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> <span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Typically
when we think of parasites, we tend to envision razor-mouthed, sci-fi monsters wriggling
around in our intestines, drinking our blood and siphoning off precious
nutrients, causing us to waste away, before our stomachs dramatically burst
open to release more parasite monsters into the world <<i>shudder</i>>.<span> </span>Okay, so I may
have confused human parasites with the title villain of the movie “Alien”.<span> </span>But you get the idea.<span> </span>Becoming infected with something like <i>Toxoplasma gondii</i>, for example, is not
something anybody wants.<span> </span>And in a truly
sinister twist, <i>Toxoplasma </i>is transmitted
by perhaps the cutest and fluffiest of mankind’s best friends: cats (dog
people, please hold the rude comments!).<span>
</span>But some truly weird and wonderful research has shown that a
lab-engineered strain of <i>Toxoplasma </i>may
actually be on its way to becoming a powerful cancer therapeutic.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">How do we get <i>Toxo</i>?</span></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho4O9a7EW_M1OaFDDJI0J1aMvOOd_aqHeFGEejAkUMJ-2C9Ik4jej4z3AKC2OygxbV6TUrIS1T5VSHp-LU4OatihKoJ8OYpl7oBly3ej0s5D2up7mJ2dK8FuXlB5eepap1ADxFyVVFYuY/s1600/icanhazparasite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho4O9a7EW_M1OaFDDJI0J1aMvOOd_aqHeFGEejAkUMJ-2C9Ik4jej4z3AKC2OygxbV6TUrIS1T5VSHp-LU4OatihKoJ8OYpl7oBly3ej0s5D2up7mJ2dK8FuXlB5eepap1ADxFyVVFYuY/s200/icanhazparasite.jpg" width="173" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Cats
pick up <i>Toxoplasma</i> by eating rodents
or other animals infected with the parasite.<span>
</span><i>Toxoplasma</i> then <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/biology.html" target="_blank">sexually reproduces in the cat’s intestines and produces millions of microscopic “baby” parasites, called oocysts. The cat then “deposits” these oocysts (we call this “shedding”) outside in the environment or into the litter box</a> (or if your cat is as uncoordinated as mine, on the floor- I’m
looking at you, Charlie).<span> </span>The oocysts
are really hardy and can survive for months under the right conditions.<span> </span>Unfortunate humans become infected by eating
contaminated food (e.g. unwashed vegetables grown in a field where cats
wander), drinking contaminated water, or forgetting to wash their hands after
scooping the box.<span>* </span><span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span></span><b><a href="http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/disease.html" target="_blank">What are the risks? </a></b></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pim.12163/full" target="_blank">In the early stages of infection</a> with <i>Toxoplasma</i>,
you usually don’t seem sick, save for minor flu-like symptoms.<span> </span>Despite an initial rapid expansion of the
parasite population (the so-called “tachyzoite” stage, <i>tachy-</i> meaning ‘fast’ replication), our immune systems rapidly get
to work eliminating the unwelcome invaders.<span>
</span>But <i>Toxoplasma </i>is tricky, and
hides out in our muscles, eyes, and even brains in a protected form called a
cyst (the “bradyzoite” stage, <i>brady-</i>
meaning ‘slow’ replication).<span> </span>Cysts are
walled-off nodules filled with hundreds of infectious parasites, and can be
nearly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#cite_note-45" target="_blank">50 µM in diameter- about two-thirds the width of a human hair</a>!<span> </span>And they can hang around in our tissues for
the rest of our lives.<span> </span>In people with
compromised immune systems, like infants, the elderly, people with HIV/ AIDS,
and people who have had a transplant or are being treated with chemotherapy, <i>Toxoplasma</i> can cause a fatal illness
called <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/disease.html" target="_blank">toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is characterized by seizures, brain damage, and blindness, can cause birth defects or miscarriage</a> in pregnant women, and has recently been <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1004935" target="_blank">linked to <i>altering its host’s behavior.</i></a><span> </span>That’s right folks, it’s a zombie plague!<span> </span>There are even a<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3024.2009.01131.x/full" target="_blank"> few rather controversial studies linking</a> <i>Toxoplasma </i>to neurological
disorders such as depression, suicidal ideology and schizophrenia (not to
invoke the trope of the ‘crazy cat lady’ or anything).<span> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Wait, so we want to use
this bad bug as a cancer treatment?!</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Yes!!<span> </span>But not quite in its natural, disease-causing
form.<span> </span>One of the things that make
certain cancers so deadly is their ability to hide in plain site by <a href="http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/69/18/7329?ijkey=5e9a4c44577778780a826f44b34005e61e30d0a3&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha" target="_blank">suppressing the body’s immune response, a state called “immune tolerance”</a>.<span> </span>In many cancers, immune cells that should be
activated to fight the tumor have difficulty telling the cancerous cells apart
from normal cells, and instead get shut off. <span> </span>As it turns out, <i>Toxoplasma </i>may contain secret weapons that can be used to turn
immune cells against tumors. <span> </span>Using a
weakened strain of <i>Toxoplasma </i>that
won’t form cysts or cause disease, researchers showed that when they injected
it into cancer-stricken mice, the mouse immune cells were activated and the
tumor cells could suddenly be recognized and attacked.<span> </span>Why is that?<span>
</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial;">Toxoplasma</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial;"> provokes an inflammatory immune response, which is ideal for fighting
off certain cancers </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> First
let’s consider what happens in a normal <i>Toxoplasma
</i>infection. <span> </span>The parasite likes to
invade specific cells of the immune system called dendritic cells (DCs) and
macrophages.<span> </span>DCs and macrophages are
what we call “antigen presenting cells” (APCs), since their job is to sample
foreign materials in the body and ring the alarm for the rest of the immune
system by “presenting” a piece of that foreign material, called an antigen, to
other cells.<span> </span><a href="http://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(11)00313-X" target="_blank">Toxoplasma invasion of these APCs causes them to release a protein called interleukin-12 (IL-12)</a>, which transforms plain, old T cells (another
really important cell of the immune system) into specialized Type I helper
cells (T<sub>H</sub>1), whose job it is to fire up other immune cells such as
cytotoxic T cells (also known as CD8<sup>+</sup> T cells), into destroying the
foreign invader.<span> </span>The now activated T
cells multiply like crazy and <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title%20Word&term=Gazzinelli%5Bauthor%5D%20AND%20Synergistic%20role%20of%20CD4%2B%20and%20CD8%2B%20T%20lymphocytes%20in%20IFN-gamma%20production%20and%20protective%20immunity%20induced%20by%20an%20attenuated%20Toxoplasma%20gondii%20vaccine" target="_blank">release another powerful protein called Interferon gamma (IFNγ)</a>, the granddaddy of all inflammatory molecules, which
recruit even more immune cells to the fight.<span>
</span>This inflammatory assault forces <i>Toxoplasma</i>
to <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020751908002907" target="_blank">retreat and form cysts</a>, which is exactly what it needs to do in order to
spread to the next host.<span> </span>So really, you
could think of this as the immune cells playing right into the hands of the
parasite.<span> </span><i>Clever girl</i>.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPngsK5_ytiAFunyBhmIOrhXC2891pUihDE_dTvDjkJ6SBVZrL4E0ETEm9Yoe3QIQ0wIBN8REAyUvSuEKAbDE0Q957reNudoUixS1EJXPD9GyuykCW9HU87NDuYkiLJmlN0UjD5PfQEr8/s1600/toxoimmune1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPngsK5_ytiAFunyBhmIOrhXC2891pUihDE_dTvDjkJ6SBVZrL4E0ETEm9Yoe3QIQ0wIBN8REAyUvSuEKAbDE0Q957reNudoUixS1EJXPD9GyuykCW9HU87NDuYkiLJmlN0UjD5PfQEr8/s400/toxoimmune1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My cartoon illustrating the immune response to <i>Toxoplasma gondii</i>. The parasites invade APCs (dendritic cell in this example), which release IL-12 and induce T cells to release IFNgamma.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> In
certain cancers, <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6024/1565.full" target="_blank">the APCs are still able to sample the environment, but their ability to present the tumor antigens to T cells and “ring the alarm” is rendered useless</a>.<span> </span>Targeting these cells
and converting them into anti-tumor cells is considered a promising approach to
cancer therapy.<span> </span>A weakened vaccine
strain of <i>Toxoplasma</i>, called <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v415/n6874/full/415926a.html" target="_blank">“cps”</a>,
is non-replicating and non-cyst-forming (so it won’t cause toxoplasmosis), but
<a href="http://iai.asm.org/content/77/12/5380.full" target="_blank">still retains all its immune-modulating function</a>.<span> </span>This means that in a cps infection, the parasite
is rapidly cleared and you are then left with all these hyped up immune cells ready
to burn the house down.<span> </span>A few years ago,
<a href="https://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/faculty/facultydb/view.php?uid=129" target="_blank">researchers at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in New Hampshire</a> reasoned
that vaccinating mice that have cancer with cps might be a cunning way to turn
the immune system against the tumors, and they set out to test this hypothesis.<span> </span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDFXfHiuNiFkqnTqoUBg5qFTZaCnwK0BLhMiSAhmeABZEBK_zoCTBaFTTvRHds1envX48OAB_EPs737slv_-OkG3P-k_Am9xoAGPCKIr0c5_XlnqCsBD69iQZxdvgrsmDn9q78F3spmzc/s1600/toxoimm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDFXfHiuNiFkqnTqoUBg5qFTZaCnwK0BLhMiSAhmeABZEBK_zoCTBaFTTvRHds1envX48OAB_EPs737slv_-OkG3P-k_Am9xoAGPCKIr0c5_XlnqCsBD69iQZxdvgrsmDn9q78F3spmzc/s640/toxoimm.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The left panel illustrates immune tolerance. The APCs are able to sample the tumor, but cross-presentation of antigens is impaired. The immune response is suppressed. The right panel illustrates what happens once the APCs have been primed by a <i>Toxo</i> infection.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Their
theory held water; <a href="http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/73/13/3842" target="_blank">in one particular study</a>, they injected cps into a mouse model
of lethal ovarian cancer, and APCs that were normally suppressive were
successfully invaded by the parasites and converted into anti-tumor cells.<span> </span>The immune response that followed effectively
attacked tumors and 100 percent of the mice survived! <span> </span>Vaccination was even effective in a
hyper-aggressive model of the disease.<span> </span>What’s
more, it didn’t matter whether the animals had already been exposed to <i>Toxoplasma</i>- good news, since the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/epi.html" target="_blank">CDC estimates about 22.5% of Americans 12 years and older have been exposed</a> at some
point.<span> </span>Similarly remarkable results were
seen in models of <a href="http://www.jimmunol.org/content/190/1/469.full" target="_blank">melanoma</a> and <a href="http://cancerimmunolres.aacrjournals.org/content/3/8/891.full" target="_blank">pancreatic cancer</a>, as well. <span> </span>But questions remained about the exact
mechanisms at play, what parasite factors were responsible for triggering which
immune cells, and whether this treatment could be safe for humans.<span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%;"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;"><b><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto auto; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> The
<a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006189#pgen.1006189.ref015" target="_blank">latest paper</a> from the Dartmouth group published just last week in PLoS Genetics
has begun to fill in some of the holes, exploring which <i>Toxoplasma</i> proteins are critical for orchestrating the anti-tumor
response.<span> </span>They selectively deleted individual
proteins from the latest-generation parasite vaccine strain genome and then looked
at whether the altered parasite could still trigger a potent immune response.<span> </span>So far they’ve found that live, invasive
parasites are absolutely required to elicit the immune response.<span> </span>And an important parasite structure called
the parasitophorous vacuolar membrane (PVM), along with several, specific parasite
factors secreted before and during invasion, is also key.<span> </span>Another cool upshot of this work is that they
have been able to use <i>Toxoplasma </i>as a
tool to better understand the behavior and function of the immune cells, which
is a very valuable contribution to cancer immunotherapy in its own right.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">So is this treatment ready
for prime time?</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Not
just yet.<span> </span>The work has only been done in
mice, which of course may or may not translate well to humans.<span> </span>And a ton of safety studies would need to be
carried out to ensure the <i>Toxoplasma</i>
vaccine strain is not dangerous in any way before we can start treating cancer
patients with a live parasite.<span> </span>But the use
of <i>Toxoplasma</i> in a clinical context,
and the immunological knowledge gained from these studies, represents a
promising new avenue for therapy, and I for one, will be following it with
great interest.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">The TL/DR Version:</span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Scientists
have cured several mouse tumors by infecting the mice with a safe, non
disease-causing vaccine strain of <i>Toxoplasma
gondii, </i>a parasite commonly found in cat poo.<span> </span><i>Toxo</i>
triggers the right kind of immune response for fighting tumors, in cancers
where the immune cells are normally suppressed.<span>
</span>The treatment works even if the mice already have pre-existing immunity
to <i>Toxo</i>.<span> </span>The latest research has identified which
parasite proteins are critical to induce a potent anti-tumor response.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial;">*Note that you are
more likely to become infected by eating the cyst-laden meat of under cooked
lamb or pork, so it’s not all the cat’s fault.</span> </i></span></span></div>
Chadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656910456494592119.post-26630990482179349972016-05-26T10:03:00.000-07:002016-05-26T10:03:49.930-07:00Storytime: Every End is a New Beginning<style>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">*<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Warning: This post is
blatantly sentimental.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A total
cheese-fest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order to explain the
inception of this blog, I felt it was necessary to get a little bit personal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I promise to tone down the schmaltz once I
get down to the actual business of this website- writing about science!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Recently I’ve been having the same
dream, over and over, night after night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m standing on the edge of a canyon (possibly the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Grand One</i>; it featured prominently in the last vacation I took
before having kids).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sun is low in
the sky but I can’t tell whether it’s rising or setting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel anxious about something but it’s
unclear what exactly is the cause of my unease.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Every time I look down into the abyss below me my stomach lurches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am frozen on the edge, unable to make a
movement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when I look up and out, I
am awestruck by the beauty laid out before me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The feeling of worry lifts and for a moment I am hopeful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stand there that way, at turns afraid and
buoyant, for what feels like hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
strange, dichotomous feelings stick with me long into my waking day, lingering
like ghosts as I work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t need a dream
interpreter to explain why I am having this dream; in a little over a week, my
time in the lab will be coming to an end, and it is both exciting and
terrifying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Like many before me, and many
others that will follow, I am leaving academia for parts unknown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am the “trailing spouse”, leaving my
postdoc to follow my husband on his next big adventure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my decision to leave the bench
encompasses so much more than that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am
suffering from “bench burnout”, tired of the roller coaster highs and lows of a
career in research, and worn down by feelings of inadequacy when I compare
myself to my seemingly much more accomplished colleagues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a full-time, working mother, I regularly feel like I am doing a poor job juggling both spheres of
my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even after three and a half years, I still cry
all the way to work if one of my kids has a bad drop-off at daycare in the
morning. I carry the stress of a failed experiment home, bristling through
dinner and baths, wearing the mantle of “Stressed Out Mommy”, as my children
unfortunately know me sometimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because of the constraints of my husbands career, all 'sick days' fall to me which results in canceled experiments. I have tried to "have it all", but what I "have" just feels like chaos. When my
husband starts his new job I will have the incredible privilege to take some
time off at home with my kids, and I am really looking forward to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at the same time, I love science and it
was not an easy decision to leave a career path that has defined the last
decade of my life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I fell in love with research as an
undergraduate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To me, a life spent in
the lab seemed idyllic, and somehow I managed to remain blissfully ignorant of
any of the potential drawbacks of my choice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I went off to graduate school, bright-eyed and naïve, probably a little
annoyingly over-eager, and anxious to learn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was enamored by the idea of doing good science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being a good scientist requires the creative
flair of an artist, along with an intense mastery of a massive set of technical
skills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this kind of study appealed
to me- the honing of a craft, the practice of a discipline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seemed high-minded and meaningful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But unfortunately, creativity and mastery do
not automatically equal success in academia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Good scientists must also be able to handle failure and rejection, again
and again and again, to take a hit from a review committee and get back up to
resubmit their grant/ paper/ tenure packet over and over, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ad nauseam</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this
tenacity, this persistence, this drive, is not optional.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You either embrace this as part of the
lifestyle or you won’t survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
sometimes you embrace it and you <i>still</i> don’t survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doing science for a living is a hard road to
choose, and ultimately I realized I just wasn’t destined to lead my own lab.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Could I make the jump to industry?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Easier said than done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Could I go work for the government?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe if I wasn’t geographically
restricted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How about doing a second postdoc in our new city? For a multitude of reasons I won't get into right now, no thanks. Ultimately, with our
upcoming move, I just decided to walk away from the bench altogether.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So what then?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What do you do when you find yourself leaving
the lab but you realize you’ve only been trained to do one thing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Well,
for starters, you scrap the notion that your PhD training has only prepared you
for one thing</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The last decade of my
life has been filled with pipetting reagents, passaging cells, running Western/
Southern/ Northern blots, countless PCRs, fixing and staining slides for
microscopy, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tasks that have become
familiar, a part of “my story”, the only things I believe myself qualified to
do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But buried beneath the technical
mastery of experiments, are many other “soft” skills that
were acquired almost without my noticing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over the last several years, my writing has
been critiqued and reworked and returned to me, bleeding and defeated,
only to be resurrected and reworked some more, and polished and made to shine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My seminars have been scrutinized and appraised,
and I have endured the sting of being asked the brutal but essential question, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Why should we care?” </b>in front of a whole roomful of people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While it was humiliating at the time, it
forced me to really think about what I was saying, the story I was telling, and
it made me a better communicator*. And despite these sometimes painful experiences, I have come out on the other side, still keen on practicing the fine art of communication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It occurs to me that, “why should we care (about science)?” has become the refrain of the ordinary taxpayer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“<i>Why should we
give you more of our hard-earned money?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What is the point of studying fruit flies and worms?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What will be the return on our investment?”</i>
they ask, with varying degrees of skepticism. And all of these are valid questions, ones that deserve good answers, delivered without condescension. The answers may seem obvious to those of us sitting up in the Ivory Tower, but we have to put ourselves in the shoes of those that don't live and breathe science, or those who maybe didn't get a solid scientific education in school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>Our research is only as powerful as our ability to convey its importance to the people it is intended to help.</b> It is so key that we as a
global community become more science-minded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And perhaps that is where I find my next purpose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have always been a high-minded
idealist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have always loved learning about the science of our world and sharing what I’ve
learned with others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The SciMinded Idealist</span> has been created as a
place for me to write about research that grabs my attention (during naptimes
and stolen moments while raising science-literate little ones, of course).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope you’ll check in from time to time to
read my thoughts, and share my stories with friends. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So now, as I sit down to write, my
fingers itch and my brain whirs to life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In my dream, the sun is rising, and the feelings of fear and uncertainty
burn off in its warm rays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m leaving
the lab but I’m not leaving science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Just shifting my focus to take in a broader view. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the view from the top is beautiful.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFz7_firkyEzA-Y6vFGTIuDSbYRlmZOvQMJjCQojYGBIm856vLi1p3cmwl-9BpYhmGiPK8GpaSE49sco7Mq8piPFbNWj_hk_N_Z_OqtcV3fXnpIG2xl2-ybQyiKkbR268BJi_1k1fs3tY/s1600/IMG_1496+copy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFz7_firkyEzA-Y6vFGTIuDSbYRlmZOvQMJjCQojYGBIm856vLi1p3cmwl-9BpYhmGiPK8GpaSE49sco7Mq8piPFbNWj_hk_N_Z_OqtcV3fXnpIG2xl2-ybQyiKkbR268BJi_1k1fs3tY/s640/IMG_1496+copy.JPG" width="640" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">At the Grand Canyon, circa 2012</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">* Thanks Barb! </span></div>
Chadene Tremagliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15789816560069383896noreply@blogger.com2