Poster presentation fun

Hello

Today was interesting. After the bureaucratic chores of yesterday, today I got to sit in for a neonatal discussion meeting in the morning. That's when cases of newborn babies that appear to have some clinical abnormalities are discussed by a team of obstetricians, paediatricians, radiologists, nurses and researchers. Together they try and come up with the best possible medical management strategy for the little ones. First the doctor primarily responsible for looking after the baby describes the situation and the response of the parents. The rest of the team then asks questions, and if the baby has had some scans then these are talked through by one of the radiologists. After another round of questioning, the group then decides what would be the best step forward. It was a fascinating hour. I got to revise diseases like Sturge-Weber syndrome and Dandy-Walker syndrome, but also learnt about how some parents try and cope with these.

In the afternoon, I went back to South Ken, for a Graduate School of Life Sciences and Medicine poster presentation evening. I only new two other people, and since all the other grad students began at the start of the last academic year, I was the only one without any work of my own. Felt like I right chump. It was definitely worth going though. One very interesting poster was about the capacity of cells within Wharton's jelly to express neuronal cell markers. Wharton's jelly is a connective tissue matrix that surrounds and protects blood vessels within the umbilical cord. Stromal cells from Wharton's jelly appear similar to mesenchymal stem cells. However, the presenter's data suggested that the cells may be multipotential, and could be induced to develop into neuronal and neuroglial cells. The guy argued that if we collected Wharton's jelly during pregnancy, we could have a ready source of neuronal precursor cells, which could be used in certain neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease. Since umbilical tissue is discarded after pregnancy this would eliminate have the ethical and moral dilemma surrounding the use of embryonic tissue as a source of neuronal stem cells. There would also be no problems with tissue rejection, since these would essentially be autologous cells. It's an exciting piece of research and I'm waiting to see what happens.