Careers and Chemistry

With our presentations creeping closer and everybody else posting their results, the peer pressure feels overwhelming. This prompted me to write a 4 page essay on my results (I haven't done the bibliography yet which is going to be horrifyingly horrible). Such is the fate of observational projects.

This week I got to visit the Alzheimers Institute at Banner. It was a relatively new building so everything looked nice and modern (the PET scanners were in a kitchen-like room with wooden cabinets and floors). I also got to see their MRI machine. It's much more powerful and sensitive than the one used for diagnostics in the hospital. Mr. McCormick tried to explain to me the technical side of MRI's but I couldn't grasp my head around it...

In addition, I got to see the hot lab where they were producing TAU (well more like attaching F-18 to the TAU protein). There was a real glove box (o-m-g) and I laughed at it (inside ochem joke). They showed me the room where the proton accelerator was that they were using to make F-18. They had D2O (heavy water) shields around it because neutrinos would fly off and nothing except D2O can stop neutrinos (I thought D2O was only used for space and cosmic particles). Dr. Dan told me to not stay in the room too long because the radiation meter in the room read it at 2 Curies (SOMEONE GET ME OUT OF THIS ROOM) (for a comparison, thyroid chemo therapy is 60-160 milliCuries which is designed to kill your thyroid tissue).

I then proceeded to watch them tell the computer to make the TAU. TAU is a new drug designed to tell if a person has Alzheimer's or not. The natural TAU protein attaches to certain platelets (I forgot to actual term... might as well just say molecule) when a person has Alzheimer's. Fernando (a co-worker) told me that TAU isn't perfected yet because the presence of the platelets/molecules does not 100% indicate that the person has Alzheimer's but all people with Alzheimer's have platelets/molecules that show up. They are also using TAU to test for concussion damage (that one case study that Zach and Roshan did). The F-18 in the TAU drug has a half-life of 110 minutes, so it needs to be used pretty soon. On the day I was there, they were making a batch to send to Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale (Shoutout to anyone over there :D). They also have charter planes that they fly over to other places like UC Davis.

If you feel like reading on TAU stuff :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702832/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4299725/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2779007/

Random fact : (I read in a Nature magazine that back in 2014, anything funded by the U.S. government were pressured into making their research public before a year was up. Apparently research papers are just as painful to scientists)


I feel myself glowing with pride knowing that the Alzheimer institute has automated chemical reactions (I have no idea where this sense of rivalry came up... I can't even use the machine). They have a computer with all the reactions in it. The ChemoBox (I just came up a name for the chemical reaction machine... I didn't take a picture =(...) has 9 test tubes on a rack in the back and then a bunch of vials in the middle where everything goes on. I spent a good 30 minutes trying to remember organic chemistry and then another 30 minutes trying to find out how they made it. (They added HCl and then dMSO w/ TAU natural protein and then NaOH.... is that even allowed?...). Apparently only the head of the chem lab knew the actual organic chemistry behind the reaction (the reaction isn't released yet but I think it is pretty simple once you have the right stuff.... HUBRIS... it probably isn't simple). I think I've settled on an E2 reaction.

All the machines had a FEDERAL sticker attached to them because it's funded by the government (the government must feel an enormous need to claim equipment that they provide...). I was told that in an actual big chem lab, everyone would usually just be assigned to a single job and that would be it (one guy does part of the reaction and then the other person does the quality check etc. all day). It really made me sad to think that chem work was similar to normal jobs.

Some other things about my project :

Apparently Guanine is the most commonly oxidized nucleotide (easily altered). This is because it has a higher HOMO than the others (ochem kids :D). But if there are 2 G's (guanine) next to each other, then it is more difficult to oxidize them because they will share electrons. But if there are 3 G's in a row, then the middle G will be oxidized (because it is more stable). More factors to put into my project (weeps).

Also Technesium-99 (the radionuclide that I will be using in my project) will be having its production cut in 2016 because the nuclear reactor in Canada will stop making it. There are some other solutions that people have come up to fix the problem but I don't think there has been a lot of progress (they needed 100 million more dollars before they could start (back in 2014)).

Well, until next time! (sorry for the mass of text, I hope my comments made it interesting).