Being Constance Bailey

This summer I've been working at a diabetes research lab at UIC medical center. The director of the project is a Swiss transplant surgeon named Jose Oberholzer, and it's really been a great experience so far.

The lab specializes in isloating islets of Langerhans (the part that scretes insulin and glucagon) from the pancreas from donor tissue through a process of ezymatic digestion with a collaginase (it basically eats the connective tissue around the islets and distroys it) and mechanical digestion through shaking the tissue with marbles. Then it goes through a series of centrifuging and other methods that seperate the tissue by density. After the cells are seperated, they are purified and tested and injected into a patient's liver where they embed themselves and function as they would in a pancreas. By seperating the necessary tissue, the doctors can create a much less invasive procedue, which is good for the diabetic patient because there is less tissue trauma and therefore less recovery time.

There are many problems with this entire procedure that could be improved, though. One is that the patient needs to be put on immunosuppressive drugs so that he or she does not reject these islet cells, as with any transplant surgery. The hope is in the future we will be able to encapsulate the cells with a material that will have pores big transfer nutrients and insulin, but small enough so the immune system cannot attack it. Currently researchers are making capsules in Norway, and they ship us encapsulated islets for research.

Barbara Barbaro, the researcher I'm teamed up with is working on an experiment related to apoptosis of cells, or programmed cell death. In the islets, the cells that release insulin also release a number of other proteins, including this one protein called pander, which appears to induce apoptosis. This could further explain diabetes, because once the cells have a greater demand for insulin (as in type II diabetes) they could die at a faster rate. She is testing pander levels compared to levels a protein that is known to cause apoptosis caspase under varying conditions.

But anyway, enough technical biological jargon. Besides the neat research that's being done, I love the team and I the other interns are great kids that are also very self-motivated and fun. There are people from all over the world, and they are used to having students around the lab, and are very friendly (one of the other interns and one of the researchers decided to play tennis after work yesterday, and Barbara tried to teach me some Italian). In addition, I occasionally get to observe surgery. Earlier this summer I got to observe a kidney transplant, which was facinating.

After this experience and after how much I loved my AP biology class my senior year of high school, I've decided that when I get to Reed, I am going to major in either biology or biochemistry, and leave medical school as an option afterwards. I think I might want to go into surgery, but that's a long time from now.

Reed has very good biology program, and they require all their students to do a senior thesis. If you are a science major, you have the option of doing a lab-based thesis and essentially design your own experiment. This seems like it could potentially be another great experience, although again, there is quite some time between then and now.

Overall, I can't wait for school to start and to get to Portland!