Counting Cells through Microscope
Author: Avery Fiser | Major: Chemical Engineering, Chemistry | Semester: Fall 2023
During my senior fall semester of 2023, I began research in the Chemical Engineering department under Dr. William Richardson. Not only did this lab intrest me as a chemical engineer, but I also wanted to be a part of the lab’s mission of engineering personalized medicine for combating heart disease. I worked alongside the postdocs, Fibi Meshrkey and Jake Potter, in conducting research in the lab.
Personalized medicine is becoming more vital than ever as an American loses their life approximately every minute due to a coronary event, while these events can be seen occurring once every 34 seconds in the general population. When a patient has a heart attack, scar tissue forms due to the death of the myocardium; therefore, properties of the healing scar play a major role in the determination of the recovery experience. Less than 1% of drugs are able to make it from the initial discovery phase into clinical use for patients. Engineered heart tissue therefore provides value in order to open greater possibilities for the likelihood of successful delivery for discovered drugs to patient treatment through the use of an improved vitro testbed. With such a prevalent issue in our society, being a part of this research was fascinating to me.
In my research project thus far, I have been analyzing cells composed of various blends of collagen and matrigel. Beginning research required a heavy amount of learning over specific laboratory techniques necessary for completing experiments. The first months of my research were devoted to training and practicing techniques for cell culture. Proper techniques are vital in order to ensure contamination does not occur in the cell passaging and changing of media processes. My postdoc, Fibi, has assisted me every step of the way to ensure I am comfortable in performing the techniques. I was able to become familiar with the chemicals, such as PBS, collagen, fibrin, media, trypsin, as well as a variety of instruments utilized in growing cells in culture flasks. I initially learned the steps for freezing and thawing cells prior to the passaging process to prepare for testing. After passaging cells, the cell count was determined in order for calculations to be made regarding collagen, media, and cell concentrations to be added into the cell plate which would be incubated throughout the study. Images of each individual cell well, which contained a variety of concentrations within each row, were captured every 24 hours for 8 consecutive days. ImageJ software was initially used to analyze the images captured; however, due to discrepancies in camera angles, this was difficult to study for the initial trials. Therefore, the postdoc, Jake, introduced a new method of capturing images for consistency in analysis. The goal of this on-going experiment is to investigate contraction in each well to optimize the collagen concentration for future applications to testing. I am excited to continue experimentation to determine the optimal collagen concentration by similarly repeating this experiment in the upcoming semester.
In the Spring semester, I will be analyzing the images captured in my previous trials for optimizing collagen concentration. I will also be running similar experiments by varying the concentrations while incorporating fibrin as well. On the other hand in the upcoming semester, I will be involved with the 3D CAD aspects, led by Jake, in applying Autodesk Inventor to model adjustments and new designs. This 3D design work is crucial for innovating opportunities to provide more reliable techniques and instruments during experimentation. As heart failure is an issue concerning a majority of the population, the general public will be positively impacted by improved drug screening; therefore, I am proud to be a part of a dedicated team working to better the health of our society.