Week 4 - CGregg

On Monday and Tuesday of this past week I shadowed Dr. Spector during his office hours and then I observed a lower leg free tissue flap surgery for a patient that required reconstruction of his lower leg right around the knee.  After the orthopedic surgeons reconstructed the knee, Dr. Spector and his resident Thomas used the gastrocnemius muscle to create a flap that covered the hardware in the knee.  Once the muscle flap was in place, a skin graft from the upper thigh was used to cover the knee.

Furthermore, Dr. Spector was also part of a tumor resection surgery of a patient with a congenital chronic tumor condition.  This particular patient was 13 years old and had a large tumor on the side of the head just above the ear.

After the holiday break on Wednesday, the remainder of the week I worked on my research project.  After the lab meeting on Thursday morning, I found the chemical that I required for an RGD modification of the PEG-DA scaffold.  Additionally, I worked on setting up a time with the Wang Lab to scan the vascular networks using micro-MRI and a gadolinium contrast agent.

My last task for the week was trying to find a software option for generating simple vascular constructs that can be bioprinted.  The current construct that I am working with was generated from patient data which means that the vascular is very tortuous and difficult to print.  Having simplified computational models that can be printed should hopefully allow for a more successful print of the network.