Week 6: Seo-Ho/Dr. Thomas Fahey

Week 6 involved a lot of computational analysis for my clinical project. Using R, I analyzed spatial transcriptomic data from patients with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors to determine candidate biomarkers indicating metastasis. I used Seurat packages to annotate my PNET and control slides into their respective pathological categories, such as cancer, normal, or fibrosis. This was then followed by batch correcting the samples and then creating a UMAP and identifying clusters representing areas of the samples with similar levels of gene expressions. By the end of Immersion, I am planning on having a refined annotation of my samples based on pancreatic cell type to determine differences in cell type and gene expression between the three pathological categories. This will also include differentiating between samples with vascular invasion and samples without vascular invasion.

On the wet lab side, I am continuing my embryonic stem cell differentiation into monocytes protocol. I currently have two rounds of differentiation going, and they will both be complete by next week. Using flow cytometry and magnetic bead-based cell sorting, I will soon have an idea of how efficient my differentiation is and if I need to make any changes. I look forward to the results!

On the clinical side, I was able to watch part of a parathyroidectomy, as well as an isthmusectomy. I have had the privilege of seeing these two surgeries many times over the course of this program, and it's cool to see how familiar I have become with the entire process. I'm a bit sad that my time in the OR is almost at its end and hope to devote more of my time to this part of the program in the final two weeks.

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