2nd Place in Research Symposium

Author: Thomas Needy | Major: Biomedical Engineering | Semester: Spring 2024

I am Thomas Needy, a rising senior in Biomedical Engineering from Fayetteville, Arkansas. I conducted this project under Dr. Rebekah Samsonraj in the Department of Biomedical Engineering within the College of Engineering during the Summer and Fall of 2023. Due to cost of attendance issues, I received funding for this project in the Fall of 2023 and the Spring of 2024. After this project, I plan to continue working in the lab, and after graduation, I plan to attend medical school at UAMS.

The goal of this project was to combat the cellular aging of Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs). When stem cells are repeatedly cultured, they may become senescent. Senescence is a phenomenon in which cells stop dividing and fail to differentiate into specific types of cells. When cells intended for cellular therapy become senescent, they are not useful in their desired applications, making this a phenomenon researchers hope to avoid. In this project, we hypothesized that treatment of senescent MSCs with quercetin, a senolytic drug, would cull senescent cells and allow healthy cells to proliferate.

I was assigned to investigate this topic in the Spring of 2023 after I had decided that I wanted to get involved in research. To do this, I went to the Biomedical Engineering faculty website and looked at the research pages of each professor. I saw that Dr. Samsonraj investigates stem cells in her research, and this piqued my interest as I believe that stem cells are a growing field within medicine. I emailed Dr. Samsonraj expressing interest, and she informed me of some of the projects that she was hoping to conduct. After learning more about each prospective project, I chose the one examining the effects of quercetin.

While working on this project, I encountered numerous problems. During the staining procedure for one line of cells, I accidentally used an expired and non-functional stain. As a result, I wasted 3 weeks of work and had to start over to obtain the necessary data. Another challenge I faced was in photographing the cell plates with the microscope. When photographing MSCs the background must be paper white, and the cells must be a deep red color. To achieve this, one must change the microscope settings until these criteria are satisfied. Many of the pictures I had taken did not meet standards, and I had to find my old cell plates and rephotograph them multiple times. This, along with troubles extracting my photos from the microscope resulted in hours of unanticipated time in the lab. However, with help from my research mentor, my lab mates, and my family, I was able to solve all these problems.

Last semester, I had finished conducting the experiments, and this semester I got to present my findings in a competition. During the Spring semester, I made a poster about my research and entered it in a university competition between other students who had conducted research. I ended up coming in second place within the engineering subcategory, giving me a goal for next year. I also submitted my abstract for my research to BMES and will hopefully be able to attend the conference next Fall in Baltimore.

While this project caused me to spend hours in the lab, balancing lab duties with school responsibilities, I could not have done this on my own. I am incredibly grateful for the help given to me by Dr. Samsonraj and my lab mates including Vitali Maldonado and David Heinrichs. Any time I had a question, needed advice, or needed training, somebody who could help me was there. I am very thankful for the sacrifices others made to help me in my endeavors. This summer, I will be busy studying to take the MCAT, but after that, I plan on resuming my activity in the lab. Next semester, I am excited to continue working in the lab, attend BMES, begin constructing my honors thesis, and tackle whatever else may come!