Week 6: MJ

This week,  I attended HSS Rheumatology grand rounds, where Dr. Christopher Mecoli, an Associate Professor at Hopkins University, presented on the intersection of cancer and rheumatic disease. He described the possible association between cancer inducing autoimmunity in scleroderma and myositis. He notes the high correlation between these rheumatic diseases and contemporaneous cancer, which occurs when cancer is diagnosed within 3 years of being diagnosed with the rheumatic disease. He then describes autoantibodies that are associated with both the rheumatic diseases and contemporaneous cancer. This week, I also attended the immersion weekly meeting, where Dr. Michelle Bradbury talked about using C dots as a treatment tool for clinical cancer care. I did not work in the clinic this week as Dr. Fernandez is out on vacation. In the lab, I continued to work on analyzing the bulk RNA-sequencing dataset that I have from a lab collaborating with the Donlin lab. This dataset is from CD8+ T cells isolated from mice to model inclusion body myositis (IBM), a rare inflammatory muscle disease that causes muscle degeneration. In IBM, there are specific mutations that many believe relate to IBM pathology. One such is in STAT3, which is a gene that plays a role in cell growth and survival as well as inflammation. To make this dataset more applicable to clinical IBM, mouse Stat3 was knocked out and human STAT3, with various mutations, was knocked-in. The first thing I did was validate the knock-out of mouse Stat3. Then, I ran principal component analysis, plotted volcano plots with specific mutant gene expression data, and ran and plotted pathway analysis data. I compiled my work into a presentation for my upcoming immersion meeting presentation on July 22nd.