Thea Nikolaou/ Dr. Solomon - Week 1

 My first few days of immersion have been very exciting! I have been getting to know a lot about what happens in the Molecular Pathology department starting from sample reception, preparation, and testing to getting the results and annotating what the genetic mutations detected mean for the patients' diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment selection. Dr. Solomon showed me slides of various tumor biopsies under the microscope and how to determine tumor content. We started reviewing a few cases together and he is teaching more about the types of testing and how to read and interpret genomic data to come to clinically relevant conclusions. I have also sat in a few meetings where multiple pathologists review and discuss cases in order to gain a consensus before reporting their interpretations of the results. 

Earlier today, we also discussed a project that I will be working on which will help revive some of the analysis methods for finding mutational signatures which were previously worked on in the molecular pathology lab but not verified. Over the next several weeks, I will be working on verifying some of these methods with newly available data and my work will serve as a preliminary step for a larger project for a mutational signature analysis pipeline the bioinformatics team will continue. 

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