Week 7 : Adil

This week was heavy on the research side and training/didactic sessions. I started with the downstream analysis of selected RNA seq datasets from the ICSBCS samples. I spent sometime setting up a pipeline to run the deconvolution package on the RNA data using the docker image we got access to last week. We also got the scRNA and TCRseq data back from the core facility for the first trovo pooled sample. I have completed analyzing the single cell data and plan to work on the TCRseq data next week. Looking forward to results from this analysis!. Apart from research, I attended many meetings and didactic sessions this week. This week's MDC tumor board was interesting. Most of Dr. Newman's cases were discussed with the medical oncology team to decide whether to include surgery in their treatment plans or not. Later in the week I attended the 16th ICSBCS Didactic Lecture by Ms. Jennifer Dent from BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH). Ms. Dent spoke about BVGH's efforts towards cancer care in African countries through the African Access Initiative (AAI). Ms. Dent highlighted several programs and projects by BVGH which include technology transfer initiatives and efforts to educate, train medical professionals in African countries. Lastly, I attended a didactic session on Axillary Lymph Node Dissection (ALND) and  sentinel lymph node biopsy procedures by Dr. Newman. She presented results from several clinical trials which, over the years have made the sentinel lymph node biopsy the go to procedure to check for metastatic spread of breast cancer.