Welcome to Our Blog
Thank you for visiting our website. We are a relatively small lab with big ideas. We are part of a much larger group of investigators known collectively as the LLUMC Molecular Radiation Biology Laboratories. It is our hope that this website will educate, communicate, and incite scientific debate. As the PI of our little group, I hope to post our data and discuss potential mechanisms, consequences, and countermeasures. With a bit of luck we'll all learn something. The links to the left include our merry band as well as collaborating investigators and laboratories. The links to the right include our archive and blogroll. The banner above will always bring you back to the main page page. Take a look around and please feel free to leave a comment on our blog (try to keep it civil and constructive) or shoot us an e-mail. - Michael " Ubertramp " Pecaut
Lab Update
Posted by: Ubertramp on 2009.07.06
Categories & Tags: Brookhaven National Laboratory,Gamma Radiation,Grant,Grant Proposal,Microgravity,New Publication
Comments: None
I seem to have a distinct lack of content, don’t I? Which is sad because quite a few things have been going on lately.
Most importantly, Farnaz graduated. Yeah, team! Her oral defense went well, despite her butterflies and the committee was impressed. She’s off studying for her MCAT over the summer, but she promises me that she’ll come back in the fall and convert two chapters of her dissertation into two manuscripts. She better because she put a ton of work into those studies and dataz must be published! Heh. She was also awarded a travel grant for the upcoming Radiation Research Meeting in Savannah, Georgia. In fact, they selected her abstract for an oral presentation so they must have thought she did something worth hearing.
Although I am not officially a member of the Radiation Research Society (my work tends to be more spaceflight oriented than clinical), I will be joining her in Savannah. I was asked to give a short overview of spaceflight effects on immunity. I’ll probably be sandwiched between talks about space psychology and space osteoimmunology.
We’re also working on submitting a few more radiation manuscripts. One will be some old data from BNL that we are finally getting around to publish. This study looked at the effects of iron radiation on immune parameters in two different strains of mice (C57BL/6 and CBA/Ca) and at two different time points (Day 4 vs Day 30). We found some rather interesting strain x radiation interactions on liver mass that looked remarkably similar to changes in RBC/hemoglobin levels. The second paper is based on some old behavior data from our former student, Cara Zuccarelli. She looked at the effects of gamma and proton radiation on the acoustic startle response. And lastly, we are working on another set of data from our last space shuttle experiment. This time we are reporting on spaceflight effects on lung; specifically on changes in the extracellular matrix. We are hoping that all three papers will be accepted by the end of summer. Cross your fingers.
As for grant proposals, I am currently working on rewriting an NIH proposal that is due on July 16th. We are proposing that the long term behavioral deficits seen in hematopoietic stem cell transplant patients are partially due to radiation-induced inflammation. We hope that once we have found the mechanisms behind these deficits, we will be in a strong position to develop immune-based countermesures (e.g. cytokine management).
Earlier this year, I collaborated with Ted Bateman at Clemson on another proposal in response to Obama’s Challenge Grant RFP. That one was a radiation and osteoimmune proposal, focusing on NADPH oxidase and reactive oxygen. It makes sense for our lab because osteoclasts are basically tissue specific macrophages. It should be interesting work if we get funding. Wish us luck!
Last but not least, we have a summer high school student working with us. His name is Cory Pan and he’s looking at the effects of radiation on one of our macrophage cell lines. Specifically, he is looking at gamma radiation-induced changes in background and induced ROS expression. If he gets through that in time, we’re planning on looking at phagocytosis as well. He seems pretty enthusiastic and, theoretically, is learning from his frequent mistakes. Hahaha. At some point, I’ll put up a link with more info on the left side of this page.
I guess that’s it. One of these days we’ll have to start throwing data onto this page for comments. But that requires that I get my act together. Ha.
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