Week 2 - Andrew

Last week was somewhat frustrating, as I didn't pursue my mentor forcefully enough to be kept up to speed on her activities (my mentor being Dr. Susan Pannullo). While this is partially my fault, in my defense I hadn't needed to send repeated emails or anything like that during week 1 to stay informed, so it took me a little while to determine how much force was necessary ... and to figure out that it was better to circumvent the administrative assistant. However this week wasn't a waste, in terms of clinical experience I sat in on "Tumor Board" and made some strides with my research project. Tumor Board is an interdisciplinary meeting on tougher neurooncology cases, where the imaging (largely MRI) is analyzed by many, along with the pathology and a brief patient history. From this information, the doctors determine what the next steps in treatment should be. In a few of the cases, clinical trials are identified that the patient is eligible for that the patient's doctor was not aware of. I have heard a call for the need of a list of all of the clinical trials in the neurooncology department, of which there are dozens, so that doctors will not be able to be unaware of what is going on, even if they are not involved in a particular trial. I wonder why this list hasn't already been created, its necessity is pretty apparent to me. I would like to help with this, I will talk to my mentor to find out if anyone is working on this, and if not how I might help.

My research is moving forward. As a bit of restatement, my project is to create, or at least begin to create, an inflatable polymer balloon that will have radioactive cesium-131 beads studded to its outer surface for brachytherapy. The challenge I have been working on is the logical first step: finding an appropriate polymer for this device. This polymer must be soft enough to be expanded into a cavity in the brain by hand, strong enough to keep its shape and so maintain the position of the radioactive beads within the cavity, biocompatible, and biodegradable within the correct timeframe. I had previously believed that I had found an appropriate polymer in poly-4-hydroxybutyrate, based on a few papers I had found in the literature. See my previous post for more details. However I hit a serious snag when I attempted to move ahead with purchasing this polymer. It turns out that all of the papers on P4HB use in medical devices are co-authored by someone from the company Tepha, and Tepha seems to be the only manufacturer of this polymer. When I went to the Tepha website there was nothing there about actual products for sale. I contacted the company about P4HB a few times, and ultimately they told me that yes, they are the only manufacturer of P4HB, and no, I could not have any. After such friendly and helpful remarks, I have decided to go back to the literature and identify another option or two for polymers for this device.