Sarah Henretta/Dr. Cristofanilli - Week 5

This week was slower in the clinic because Dr. Cristofanilli was away. However, this provided me with ample time to make great progress in my research project. This past week I finished the cell analysis pipeline and optimized my code to make it as user friendly as possible. I improved the output of my code, so it now provides the user with an easy-to-understand plot of the cell characteristics and an excel sheet with additional details. Ultimately, this will be used to quantify biomarkers expressed by patient circulating tumor cells (CTCs). We hypothesize that specific biomarkers can be used to predict patient response to targeted therapies. This hypothesis will be studied using patient samples and monitoring response to therapies. I will be presenting my progress on this project and future plans at our lab meeting Monday.  

Since I am close to finishing this project, I also got access to a new set of patient data which I will analyze to determine if the similar backgrounds of a subset of breast cancer patients correlates to the unique circumstances we often see in these patients. 

Next week I look forward to being back in the clinic with Dr. Cristofanilli. I also arranged to work with a surgical oncologist and radiation oncologist and am excited to learn about the two other branches of oncology. 

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