Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Targeting Neuropeptides To Bone Fractures For Accelerated Healing, Nicholas A. Young, Jeffery J. Nielsen, Philip S. Low

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In patients over the age of 65 especially, bone fractures represent a significant disease burden. Non-invasive drug therapies are not available for bone fractures which represents a problem for this population. Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) and Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide (PACAP), two neuromodulator peptides in the glucagon superfamily, have demonstrated positive regulation of osteoblast proliferation and activity. Using acidic oligopeptides, we have developed ligands that target to and accumulate at fracture sites. These targeting ligands can be synthesized in sequence with bone anabolic peptides to minimize off target effects and increase potency at the fracture site to create safer and …

Targeting Pro-Inflammatory Function Of Microglia Using Small Molecules To Combat Neurodegeneration, Gabrielle C. Williams, Priya Prakash, Gaurav Chopra

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Microglia are the brain’s resident immune cells that are responsible for maintaining homeostasis in healthy conditions. During injury or infection, resting microglia get activated and produce pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1b, IL-1a, IL-6, etc. along with reactive oxygen species like nitric oxide (NO) to combat neuroinflammatory diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Inflammation is characterized by the activation of resident-immune cells in the brain called microglia that respond to the eat-me signals released by the toxic amyloid beta peptides as well as the dying neurons in the microenvironment. Recent studies have shown that activated microglia induce neuronal death by secreting …

Cost-Effective Paper-Based Diagnostic Using Split Proteins To Detect Yeast Infections, Zachary R. Berglund, Kevin V. Solomon, Mohit S. Verma, Moiz Rasheed, Zachary Hartley, Kevin Fitzgerald, Kok Zhi Lee, Janice Chan, Julianne Dejoie, Makayla Schacht, Alex Zavala

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The common yeast infection, vulvovaginal candidiasis, affects three out of four women throughout their lifetime and can be spread to their child in the form of oral candidiasis (thrush). This disease is caused by the fungal pathogen Candida albicans, which is also a major cause of systemic candidiasis, a rarer but deadly disease with up to a 49% lethality rate. Current widely-used diagnostic methods include cell cultures, pH tests, and antibody detection, to assist effective treatment. Despite availability of various diagnostic methods, there is no inexpensive, rapid, and accurate way to detect C. albicans infection. This project aims to …

Polyrotaxane Variants And Their Effects On The Cholesterol Efflux In Patients Suffering From Niemann Pick Type C, Sydney Smith, Zach Struzik, David Thompson

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Niemann Pick type C disease (NPC) is a rare lysosomal storage disorder characterized by a progressive accumulation of cholesterol in the late endosomal/lysosomes compartment leading to cellular dysfunction and organ failure. Symptoms include ataxia, dysarthria, cognitive dysfunction, and seizures. Although average life expectancy is below 20, there are no FDA approved treatment available making it a serious unmet medical need. Clinical trials with 2-hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (HP-beta-CD) has shown promise in cholesterol normalization within NPC cells. However, HP-beta-CD treatment has been shown to cause ototoxicity in NPC patients at high dosages. Supramolecular complexes known as polyrotaxanes have been synthesized in hopes of …

Tissue Clearing As A Mechanism To Identify Changes In Fibronectin Structure During Breast Cancer Metastasis, Maryam Nuru, Kelsey Hopkins, Luis Solorio

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

With metastasis accounting for approximately 90% of breast cancer deaths and an alarming number of over 300,000 new breast cancer cases to be diagnosed by the end of 2018, there is growing need to understand the process of breast cancer. Changes in the extracellular matrix (ECM) of the tumor microenvironment play an essential role in this deadly tumor progression. Specifically, the glycoprotein fibronectin (FN), has been identified to be up-regulated in patients with worse clinical outcomes. During tumor progression fibronectin undergoes conformational changes that aid in metastatic dissemination. In order to analyze the dynamic changes in FN expression and evaluate …

Identifying Factors That Contribute To The Prevalence Of Obesity Among Nurses In The Acute Care Setting, Jennifer Anderson

Grace Peterson Nursing Research Colloquium

Abstract

Background: Obesity is the most prevalent, yet most controllable health problem threating society’s health and well-being. Nurses are a first line defense to address this pandemic, however, nurses exhibit higher incidence of obesity than the general population. When nurses are not a role model for the message they are delivering, patient care and outcomes are compromised.

Objective: The purpose of an literature review is to explore current research to evaluate the prevalence of obesity among nurses in the acute care setting, identify its causative factors, determine the potential impact on patient education, and recommend possible evidenced-based solutions for the …

Combatting The Opioid Crisis On College Campuses: A Harm Reduction Approach, Corey L. Lepoudre

Celebration of Learning

College aged people are at a high risk of opioid misuse due to several risks including: an increased opioid misuse in people between the ages of 18-25, those who experience daily elevated stress, and those who live in metropolitan areas or in the Midwest region of the United States. Due to these risks, a harm reduction initiative geared toward college populations is beneficial to prevent a further increase in opioid misuse and overdose. A harm reduction approach was used to develop an educational toolkit for Quad City Harm Reduction to conduct a one-hour workshop for college faculty and students. Harm …

The Path Of Stroke Care: Nurse Education Materials For Unitypoint Health Trinity Medical Center, Nicole Montgomery

Celebration of Learning

Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States. About 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke every year. National best practice measures regarding stroke care are promoted through the quality and education department at UnityPoint Health Trinity Medical Center. Trinity’s nurses are encouraged to update their skills at the annual Spring Fling informational fair. Through working with the quality and education department, informational materials regarding the care path of a stroke patient were created and delivered in order to educate nurses about these national best practice measures. This project utilized interpersonal communication models to …

Homeruns For Health: An Intervention Using Sports To Increase Physical Activity In Kids Attending An After-School Program, Nicholas D. Phalen

Celebration of Learning

This health behavior intervention targets the physical activity of kids (ages 6-14) at the Boys and Girls Club of the Mississippi Valley in Moline, Illinois. This intervention was developed with the application of the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) during a 10-week long internship at the Boys and Girls Club of the Mississippi Valley’s (BGCMV) facility. A trend of lengthy “screen time” and a lack of emphasis on the importance of physical activity were both noticed during said internship. To address these observations, help was sought out from varsity athletic programs at Augustana College, a private institution in the area. The …

Exploring Standardized Patients’ Perspectives On Working With Medical Students, Samantha Starr, Margaret M. Plack, Karen Lewis, Benjamin Blatt

GW Research Days 2016 - 2020

Little is known about how working with emerging medical professionals affects Standardized Patients’ (SPs’) professional identities, yet understanding the SP-medical student interaction could be useful for screening SPs, supporting SP professional identity formation, and bridging the SP and medical student cultures. This project provides the unique perspective of SPs involved in the growth of medical students into physicians.

Qualitative methods were used to understand the SPs’ perspectives. Two researchers, without evaluative relationships with the SPs, conducted 2 one-hour focus group interviews (n=3; n=9) using a semi-structured interview protocol. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Three researchers independently analyzed the transcripts …

Investigating Sports Drinks. Are They Worth The Money?, Ross Winter, Jamie Burnell

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Investigating Sports Drinks. Are they worth the money?

The sports drinks industry is a huge global business which shows no signs of slowing down. The inspiration to conduct this investigation came from an observation that there is an increasing consumption of sports and energy drinks within our community, particularly amongst children. The message from the advertisers is clear- athletes should replace lost body fluid with drinks that contain electrolytes, such as sports drinks. However, there are conflicting suggestions from conducting literature reviews; that, not only are these drinks unhealthy in terms of the high sugar content, but instead water …

Classification Of Intensity-Modulated Proton Therapy Plans, Alice Liu

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Abstract

Title: Classification of IMPT Plans

Purpose:

Create a method to aid physicists and dosimetrists in the classification of Intensity Modulated Proton Therapy treatment plans.

Method:

A Python program was developed to read structure sets and dose grids from radiation treatment plans. The program outputs field-specific histograms of the number of voxels within the planning target volume that received dose and normalizes each histogram to the percent volume of the target that received each field’s contribution of the total dose. It then determines the number of Gaussian distributions in each histogram, which serves as an initial classification metric, and calculates …

The Effect Of Hyperthermia On Liver Cell Viability, Jada Grant

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Hyperthermia is a treatment for liver cancer where the tumor is exposed to a relatively high heat temperature. This process is designed to make the tumor more susceptible to chemotherapy. My thought process was that if hyperthermia can kill cancerous cells, then there will be negative long term effects on the noncancerous cells surrounding the tumor. The project experimented on Kidney cells because the Kidney and Liver both go through the process of filtration. This means that the Kidney cells should give similar results that Liver cells would. Kidney cells were heated at 40 degrees Celsius for time amounts of …

The Effect Of The Oxytocin Hormone In Cocaine Addicted Rats Suffering From Abstinence Syndrome, Juan Padilla

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Rehabilitation from a history of drug abuse is a very difficult and life changing process. Abstinence syndrome forces the rehabilitating patient to go through anxiety like symptoms. The Oxytocin hormone has been believed to be a potential facilitator in the rehabilitation process. This hormone is very present during interactions of affection (hugs) and birth, it foments trust while it associates to a feeling of calmness. Oxytocin would theoretically be a calming agent to the anxiety like symptoms such as craving. The experiment aimed to test the calming effects of the hormone, consisted of a five-day systemic cocaine injections treatment schedule …

The Effect Of Kalanchoe Pinnata On The Cell Migration Of Astrocytomas, Jorge Rosa

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Astrocytomas, from cell line 1321N1,are cancerous astrocytes. These are a type of glial cell in the brain which is responsible for maintaining synaptic contact and the signaling capacities among neurons. They also represent a fundamental element in controlling blood flow and defining brain micro structure. Due to the fact that this variant is cancerous, a condition commonly described as an abnormal cell cycle and uncontrolled reproduction of cells, they have the ability to metastasize.

In the metastatic process of cancer cells the initial phase is know as tumor invasion. This stage consists mainly of the cells migrating away from the …

Cloning Of An Overexpression Vector For The Rare And Uncharacterized Kras Mutant R164l, Julliane Jeanne Negre

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Mutations in the coding DNA of KRAS, which encodes for an active protein in the Ras signaling pathway regulating cell proliferation and growth, may be critical in the development of lung and colorectal cancer in humans. Clinical tests and therapies for cancer specifically target mutations, some of which may cause erroneous prognosis and prescription of cancer therapy posing more danger for patients with unique mutations. Therefore, characterization of non-hotspot mutations is becoming more important, where, KRAS R164L is an existing uncharacterized mutation identified through the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC). The project aimed to clone a pTarget overexpression …

A Humanized Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Model To Elucidate Molecular Mechanism In Disease Pathology, Ragavi Vijayakumar, Maxine Hong

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), that clinically manifests as an enlarged heart is a highly prevalent cardiac disorder with propensity towards arrhythmia-induced sudden cardiac death. The mechanism of HCM remains poorly defined, necessitating further understanding of the disease for improved therapeutic strategies. As it is challenging to obtain cardiac biopsies from human subjects, using induced pluripotent stem cells technology, we generated cardiomyocytes (CMs) in a dish from HCM patients. These HCM-CMs presented the clinical manifestation in that they were significantly larger in size in comparison to control (healthy)-CMs. Furthermore, gene expression profiling of cardiac ion channels revealed increased transcripts encoding for calcium …

The Effect Of Kalanchoe Pinnata In Astrocitome Metastasis, Jorge Rosa

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Astrocytomas, from cell line 1321N1,are cancerous astrocytes. These are a type of glial cell in the brain which is responsible for maintaining synaptic contact and the signaling capacities among neurons. They also represent a fundamental element in controlling blood flow and defining brain micro structure. Due to the fact that this variant is cancerous, a condition commonly described as an abnormal cell cycle and uncontrolled reproduction of cells, they have the ability to metastasize.

In the metastatic process of cancer cells the initial phase is know as tumor invasion. This stage consists mainly of the cells migrating away from the …

Investigating Sports Drinks. Are They Worth The Money?, Ross Winter, Jamie Burnell

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Investigating Sports Drinks. Are they worth the money?

The sports drinks industry is a huge global business which shows no signs of slowing down. The inspiration to conduct this investigation came from an observation that there is an increasing consumption of sports and energy drinks within our community, particularly amongst children. The message from the advertisers is clear- athletes should replace lost body fluid with drinks that contain electrolytes, such as sports drinks. However, there are conflicting suggestions from conducting literature reviews; that, not only are these drinks unhealthy in terms of the high sugar content, but instead water …

Glucosamine From Hydrolysis Of 3d Printing Chitosan For Osteoarthritis Treatment, Ruj Dansriboon, Laphon Premcharoen

The International Student Science Fair 2018

This project aims to introduce a new way for osteoarthritis treatment which is expected to increase in the future. Glucosamine is the main subject for a treatment, which can be derived by hydrolyzing chitosan. This project also includes extraction of chitosan from shrimp waste to make a worthy use of food waste from industry. In this project, 3D printer is applied to print chitosan gel since 3D printing is adjustable to form various shapes of the gel.

The research process begins with the extraction of chitosan from shrimp shells. For the next step, the percent of deacetylation of chitosan was …

Cellphone Usage And The Risk Of Cancer, Mia Ye

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Introduction: As the use of cell phones have increased immensely in the last two decades, so has public concern regarding cell phone and its relationship to cancer. Cell phones emit radio frequency waves, a type of electromagnetic energy. Theoretically, these radiofrequency waves are considered as a form of non-ionizing radiation, and do not contain enough energy to damage DNA. However, human and animal studies on cell phone use and cancer risk have shown mixed results. The Danish cohort study, one of the largest long-term studies to date, compared everyone in Denmark with cell phone subscriptions between 1982 and 1995, and …

The Effect Of The Oxytocin Hormone In Cocaine Addicted Rats Suffering From Abstinence Syndrome, Juan Padilla

The International Student Science Fair 2018

This study aimed to understand the effects of oxytocin in cocaine-addicted rats to prove its ability to help recovering drug addicts overcome the extreme anxiety and craving that makes them relapse during their rehabilitation.

The Effect Of Hyperthermia On Liver Cell Viability, Jada Grant

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Hyperthermia is a treatment for liver cancer where the tumor is exposed to a relatively high heat temperature. This process is designed to make the tumor more susceptible to chemotherapy. My thought process was that if hyperthermia can kill cancerous cells, then there will be negative long term effects on the noncancerous cells surrounding the tumor. The project experimented on Kidney cells because the Kidney and Liver both go through the process of filtration. This means that the Kidney cells should give similar results that Liver cells would. Kidney cells were heated at 40 degrees Celsius for time amounts of …

Cloning Of An Overexpression Vector For The Rare And Uncharacterized Kras Mutant R164l, Julliane Jeanne Negre

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Mutations in the coding DNA of KRAS, which encodes for an active protein in the Ras signaling pathway regulating cell proliferation and growth, may be critical in the development of lung and colorectal cancer in humans. Clinical tests and therapies for cancer specifically target mutations, some of which may cause erroneous prognosis and prescription of cancer therapy posing more danger for patients with unique mutations. Therefore, characterization of non-hotspot mutations is becoming more important, where, KRAS R164L is an existing uncharacterized mutation identified through the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC). The project aimed to clone a pTarget overexpression …

A Humanized Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Model To Elucidate Molecular Mechanism In Disease Pathology, Ragavi Vijayakumar, Maxine Hong

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), that clinically manifests as an enlarged heart is a highly prevalent cardiac disorder with propensity towards arrhythmia-induced sudden cardiac death. The mechanism of HCM remains poorly defined, necessitating further understanding of the disease for improved therapeutic strategies. As it is challenging to obtain cardiac biopsies from human subjects, using induced pluripotent stem cells technology, we generated cardiomyocytes (CMs) in a dish from HCM patients. These HCM-CMs presented the clinical manifestation in that they were significantly larger in size in comparison to control (healthy)-CMs. Furthermore, gene expression profiling of cardiac ion channels revealed increased transcripts encoding for calcium …

Irs Supporting Acgme Accreditation, Kristine Petre

DC+MED

Learn how institutional repositories can support ACGME accreditation and reporting.

Agenda (Pdf), Department Of Orthopaedic Surgery

Dept. of Orthopaedics: Robert D. D’Ambrosia Lectureship & Research Day

No abstract provided.

A Mathematical Model Of The Immune System Response To Leishmania Parasite, Ephraim Agyingi

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Regulation Of Cellular Patterning Through The Extracellular Matrix, Lewis Scott, Lauren Griggs, Vani Narayanan, Daniel Conway Phd, Seth H. Weinberg Phd, Christopher Lemmon Phd

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Optimal Control Applied To A Visceral Leishmaniasis Model, Buddhi Pantha

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.