Week 6 Kata- Drug screening on patient samples

 This week I spent most of my time working on my research project in lab. I was processing patient samples in order to see if they are eligible for epichaperome inhibitor therapy. The epichaperome is an integrated chaperome network that facilitates tumor survival, and some leukemia patients can have high epichaperome network and can be eligible for this therapy. As this is investigatory therapy, it is given when all the standards of care fail to refractory AML patients that are sadly in terminal stage. I received two peripheral blood samples on Monday and one on Thursday that I processed. Obtaining results takes around 3 days. Initially, I needed to perform red blood cell lysis to extract cells from blood sample. First phase of testing on the cells is performed to determine if the drug can bind to the cells and to quantify the amount of the binding between drug and the cells. This is done using flow cytometer. To determine if the patient sample is epichaperome positive or negative, it is tested along with positive and negative control which are leukemia cell lines and healthy donor sample respectively. In parallel, extracted cells are seeded in 96-well plate and treated with drug in different concentration to determine cell viability over 48 hours. Along with Dr.Guzman , the data I collected was analyzed and sadly patients did not qualify for the therapy. I was able to see the high percentage of the leukemia blast in each sample which shows how sick these patients are. 

While shadowing Dr. Kaner I was exposed to rare case of Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL).  APL develops when due to genetic mutations normal myeloid differentiation is blocked. Peripheral blood of patient was full of the promyelocytes which were even detectable by histology sample.  APL is characterized with a severe bleeding tendency which lead to patient death if not diagnosed promptly, if patients are diagnosed before bleeding occurs, they have high chance of being cured.



             Image 1. Received patient peripheral blood samples from the clinic. 

Image 2. Flow cytometry data collection on the patient samples. 



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