Week Six – Bear Season

Bad news bears this week. But, it’s springtime! The flowers are blooming, the air is filled with pollen, the cars gleam in the GMU parking lot, and I just recently figured out if the itch in my eye was allergies or pink eye (it was allergies).

So what’s the bear that’s bugging me? Well, there was a bad contamination case in the lab, and most of our cells had to be thrown away. We sprayed them down with CaviCide and autoclaved the flasks. It was due to a fungi that had been growing the in the back of the CO2 incubator for quite some time. Evoking the image of Han Solo being released from carbonite, we will unfreeze some human breast cancer cells for me to cultivate next week.

Is there such a thing as a good news bear? The good news bear is that I completed significant work on my detailed outline this week, focusing on nanoparticles, their mechanism of effect, and current applications. I also had the opportunity to complete a short interview with WTOP about my project! The segment will likely run soon.

An interesting observation: when adherent cells become confluent (fill up all available space to grow on a surface), certain kinds tend to release dislodged cells, called spheroids (they become spherical in solution). Since I had left my mouse mammary cancer cells for a while (before we culled them), they released a number of spheroids. At first I thought it was contamination! It was so fun to see them fling about when I moved the flask under the microscope. 😀

Last bear news: I watched Cocaine Bear. Thoroughly unsatisfying movie. Too much people stuff. They should be focusing on the bear. Un-bear-able.