In Spring of 2015, I participated in the Science Education Partnership (SEP) program hosted at Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center in Seattle. My interest was in creating avenues of access for artists, designers and other interdisciplinary thinkers interested in frontier life science and medical research. I was selected by scientist, Shani Frayo, who worked in the Ollie Press Lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The Press Lab is devoted to the investigation of novel treatments for hematologic malignancies including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, leukemia, and myeloma.
I was very lucky to be mentored by Shani Frayo. She was patient with me, taught me many procedures along with an entirely new vocabulary. The concept of my first lab with Shani was to do an experiment that targeted Hotchkins Lymphoma cells from 3 different individual cell lines for chemotherapy treatment. The process began with complex (for me!) math calculations, and plate layout. We did 2 preliminary assays, which are tests that determine what is happening to a cell. The goal of the experiement was to achieve maximal cell killing with a selected dose of ABT 199 (Chemo treatment). The next experiment we did incubating immortalized cells with the chemo treatment ABT 199 to access cytotoxicity. This was a flow cytometry experiment, which is a technology process that is used to count the size, shape and unique properties of cells.
My partner Beth Gatewood and I followed the protocol to prepare the cells for the Flow Cytometry. It involved a lengthy process of diluting cells, pipetting cells into wells, incubating, mixing, adding luminescent signals, centerfuging, washing cells. etc.... In our final analysis, there was no change or shift in the peak...the cells had no change in expression...OR...the assay was performed incorectly. We're not sure exactly where things when sideways, but our results we inconclusive. The cell count was very low, antibodies lost cells. Shani had us conduct every aspect of this experiment, whereby I learned an entirely new scientific language in the process. The lab work gave me a privileged perspective of the precise methods used in testing the efficacy of chemo treatments for blood disorders such as Hodgkins, Non-Hodgkins, Leukemia and Myeloma.