How does the Efficacy Drop as Size Drops
Advisor: John Winchester
Internship Location: Glycosa
Onsite Mentor: Pradeep Karla
Those with diabetes or other blood glucose conditions are recommended to regularly check their blood glucose levels as often as once a day in order to monitor their health, but the current common method for at-home blood glucose monitoring is using a handheld glucose monitor that uses the prick method where it collects a small sample of the patients blood, which unfortunately has certain issues. First, accuracy, as concerns over the accuracy of these sensors has arisen especially in the extremes of the range of blood glucose levels. Along with that, compliance is a factor, with a study showing less than 60% of patients reporting good compliance with Self Monitoring of Blood-Glucose SMBG. However, different alternatives like non-invasive blood-glucose sensors and Continuous Glucose Monitoring devices are either being developed or exist in the market. Their compliancy and accuracy rates are different, and so I will analyze different factors including accuracy as compared with lab tests and patient compliance to determine overall effectiveness of the sensor type. I will do this through trials of the devices to find accuracy rates and surveys of users of the sensors to determine compliancy rates. With this research, I hope to determine which form of sensor best fits the needs of patients recommended at-home blood glucose monitoring based on their needs.
Project Blog
Week 1
This first week my internship had yet to start, so this week was spent mainly working on my project. I did more research about the different kinds of devices, and expanded my scope from the 3 original devices (fingerstick, CGM, non-invasive) to add flash sensor devices. I've been reading google scholar papers to try to gather more sources on the topic.
Week 2
This was the first week of my internship. I was assigned a graduate student to work with this week. He took me around the lab and introduced me with the equipment they had. This week I was mainly observing the work other people were doing. I became more familiar with the equipment they had and their usages.
In terms of the senior project, I asked the grad student I was assigned and learned I should be looking for tech that has FDA approval and I also learned that the manufacturers of this technology themselves often publish their own stats, and I can compare those. I also realized I have to balance different companies that might make the same kind of device, and I have to come up with a way to choose which company I use to compare to other kinds of tech.
Week 3
Unfortunately, this week the system me and the grad student I work with went down, and he couldn't get a hold of the guy meant to fix it. For that reason, I spent the majority of this week working on a paper they were working on about HIV drugs. I was supposed to work on the references, and I was told to find sources on a site called pubmed that include certain keywords that the paper we were working on had. I found around 20 papers that were pretty close in subject matter to what we were looking for and gave it to the grad student for review. I also realized that this site was very good for research for my senior project, and found a few sources on it.
Week 4
Hi, I'm Saaketh, and this is my 4th weekly blogpost for my senior project! This week at the internship was also mainly focused on the HIV paper they were working on. The search for sources continued, but there was also another task of trying to find graphics for the paper. The section I was tasked to find graphics for was a general overview of many of the drugs in research for drug delivery methods for HIV. The challenge was an interesting one as normally when I have to find graphics for something in school, I can simply look to existing ones online since there is rarely the need for an original subject matter, but for this I had to find something for a subject matter based on a brand new list. As such, I couldn't really find much online. I dug through a few papers that had similar stuff, but it was either out of date or not really fitting with the paper. Because of that, I ended up creating original graphics based on the information in the paper. I created 4 of them, but in the end only one was actually used. However, this means that some of my original work might go into an academically published paper, which is very exiting. Thanks for reading, and I wish you a good week!
Week 5
Hello, I'm Saaketh, welcome to my blog post for my 5th week! At this point, the body of the paper talked about in my previous blogs was pretty much complete, but there was still the conclusion section to do. Since this papers role was mainly cataloging existing studies, the conclusion section held less weight than it would for papers focused on a singular study itself, but it was still an important section. I was tasked with summarizing the body of the paper, and although much of it wouldn't make it through to the final paper as the grad student I was working under would change it heavily to fit better, it was still good experience. The paper was following novel drug delivery methods for HIV and looking at their progress through different phases of FDA approval, and although much of the nitty gritty talk about the specific advancements each paper was making went over my head, I learned a lot about the FDA approval process and about current challenges in HIV treatment. Thanks for reading, have a good one!
Week 6
Hi, this is Saaketh! Welcome to my week 6 blog! This week was a rather slow week, as the HIV paper was complete and not much extra work was assigned. There was a small amount of work to find papers relating to nanoparticles but beyond that not much. Unfortunately the system that the the grad student and I was assigned too was still down, so not much could be done there either. Instead, a different person was working with cell cultures, so I took the chance to learn a little about that. She was working on identifying different types of cells within a certain culture, and she was kind enough to teach me how to use some of the microscope equipment and certain identifying features she was looking out for. It was an interesting week since I was doing something completely brand new, and I learned a good amount. I also took this extra time to work on the senior project. I've pretty much gotten all the information I need, and am starting to write the paper. Once I've completed a decent amount of it, I can transition into making a presentation on the topic. I hope to have it done about a week before the presentation, and at this rate I should be able to do that. Thanks for reading, have a good week!
Week 7
Hi, I'm Saaketh! Welcome to my week 7 blog. This week had me getting back into working on papers with the originial grad student I was assigned. The topic of the work this week was about nanoparticles in medicine and drugs. The task I was given was to look into synthesis methods for these nanoparticles, and this was probably the hardest thing I've done in the internship. I found about 5 papers about the topic but I was supposed to condense it all into around 1000 words, which is not a lot of space for the amount of information. The main issue though, was that the information itself often went way over my head. A real compound I had to learn about that acted as a stabilizing agent was cetyltrimethylammonium bromide. That name stuck due to how long it was, but the hardest things were the concepts themselves. Needless to say, I took a lot of help from the grad student I was working under. I got the summary done by the end of the week although I had to do some work at home, and all in all it was a pretty fun and productive week. I also made some progress for the senior project paper, I should have done enough of it to work on the presentation by next week, and then I can spend a week working on finishing both up and have a week to spare before the 22nd. Thanks for reading, were coming up on the end of the project!
Week 8
Hi, I'm Saaketh and this is my blog post for week 8 of my senior project! This week didn't have any new tasks at work, so for the first day I was in the office we looked over and edited the work I mentioned in the previous blogpost, the 1000 word summary on nanoparticle synthesis methods. He helped me understand certain parts of it that I had just parroted into the report rather than understanding. For example, one of the synthesis methods included a "silica matrix" to allow the particles to grow, and although I didn't understand it I put it in my report. I found out that it basically meant they would use essentially a silica net to hold prices of material apart from each other so they can combine with particles in the solution without hitting each other and getting to big or deforming.
The second day I was in the office, there wasn't much to do, but since the grad student I was working under knew that I'm going to college soon, he decided to give me a tour. My office is in one of the buildings in Howard university, in the college of Pharmacy, so he thought I would get something out of touring the college in preparation for me going to Virginia Tech. It was a pretty fun day, and I saw a good part of Howard and how it meshed with the city around it (DC).
Thanks for reading, have a good week!