October 2018 – Blog about neuroblastoma research

Halfway through

Can you control the time? I can’t and know none who can. It flies, when things around you work out, and drags on when not. The time flies for me here in Baltimore. It feels so intense sometimes and then slightly slows down. I take pictures almost of everything: the path’s signposts when rambling in the network of Johns Hopkins Buildings, the first frosty morning, joyful deer at the backyard of my host family house, outdated clothes in the shop…

In the past, I had a similar journey to Ireland. It was 3 months research placement during my PhD. Did I like it – oh, yes I did! I travelled a lot, felt romantic and changed my life on my return home. But I did not run a diary or tag my way on Facebook. I have learnt the lesson: do it even more intense as you can’t travel back in time and write down your experience. It may be funny or educational to read in a couple of years! I become addicted to it though not always have time to do it.

I like the people who I am working with. They are a fantastic bunch of self-motivators and open-minded personalities. They are workaholics either naturally like me or because of the exciting projects they do like I do. Who knows, but very likely because of both. Isn’t it a dream to have an exciting project and great people around you? The luck like this gives you wings.

The American enthusiast studying Russian and my Mum

The host family – is my other great luck! This luck was crafted as a parallel story when none knew how the Fulbright application and an American enthusiast learning Russian may intersect. You would not believe, but parallel lines can be non-parallel sometimes! His journey to my home city in Russia paved the way to the opportunity to stay at his aunt’s house.

Every day 50 min drive to and from Hopkins opens up the other side of the local lifestyle and infrastructure. What are the rush hours? How many drivers are signalling before taking a turn? How do they call the shopping trolley? How parking system works?

Experiencing life as an American working in Baltimore.

Scientific part of my journey

Reading my posts, it looks like I am more enjoying the cultural part and almost forgot the main reason I crossed the Atlantic with the Fulbright wings.

The first month in the lab was more a warming up. Where is my desk? Where is the cell culture rooms? How do they run it? How different is it? So, many microscopes – am I capable of imaging? And so on and so forth…

My typical day starts at 8-8.30 am and finishes once all is done. It may be 6pm or 10pm. Once the experiment is set up, I have to monitor cells every 24 hours for 5-7 days with no weekends or days off. The monitoring includes imaging. Lots of imaging. Every condition has 20-30 single cells to follow up. Each cell gets its own GPS tag manually to be able to image exactly the same cell as it grows and becomes a group of hundreds by multiplication. For example, I am running 8 different cell lines in 3 experimental conditions. So, 20-30 cells per all 24 combinations give us 480-720 individual cells to follow up. The imaging takes ~5 hours every day. After 5 days, I will have 2400 – 3600 pics of cells to analyse. It will be fun! I may need lots of Guinness to fly through that numbers.

Tagging cells. The left arrow points to a group of neuroblastoma cells. The arrow in the middle point to the same cells, but this image allows you to see the actual number of the cells. This group has 8 cells. The right arrow points to individual GPS tags for each cell

At the next step, I will select some of the conditions for video recording to trace cell fate from a single neuroblastoma cell to a metastatic niche consisting of hundreds of them. This video will show me how it all happens minute after minute.

Is not it exciting? I am thrilled!

September Highlights

I pass this traffic light on my way to work every morning. It has all mentioned in the text: the street label, and the additional sign regarding ‘red’ light rules.

The first month flew in a flash. Vibrant and exciting. What did surprise me? Well… No public transport in Baltimore as we got used to in Dublin. Driver friendly environment. I like street indications at the junctions. Helps a lot in navigation. Clear and straight to the point. You can drive anywhere, you find a parking spot within 1-2 minutes, though the fee can be very high if in town. Around Johns Hopkins Hospital street parking is just 1 USD per hour, though limited to max 2 hours. You can turn on ‘red’ if no danger posses. As it always happens some drivers read this rule on demand and turn on ‘red’ even the additional road sign prohibits it. Many jammed/bumped cars in use.

Ok. Baseball. I and some man from my host family went to see a match of the local team Baltimore Orioles vs Chicago White Sox. I like their positive team colours – orange. It was sweet to get a free orange hoodie at the game and eat a standard size ice cream cone – enough to feed 2-3 people. Their stadium is a big museum of Orioles success. Nice to rambler around. The team is not doing well in the current season. They lost 0:2. Many players are traded in and out. Did I gain all insights of the game? Hmmm… But, wish the team and the fans best of luck in the next season!

What about the American Church? Yep, I did it, too! I attended the worship service in Glen Mar Church – a United Methodist congregation. Wikipedia says that the United Methodist Church (UMC) is a mainline Protestant denomination and a major part of Methodism. Did not hear about it much, but I am staying with the family who is not just active members of the UMC, but the head of the family is a recently retired pastor. So, I went there for his last service. It is very different to Catholic or Orthodox and the feeling that you get entirely different. Pastor and church members interact actively and not passively. It feels more like a family or person consulting and support environment rather than a dogmatic lectureship.

However, my main highlight is NASA. And it deserves a separate story.