Study Tour to London

Tomorrow, my Biomedicin class is traveling to London for the week in order to visit biotech companies. We have at least one visit a day and we are lucky enough to travel to oxford for an entire day as well. During the trip we are also working in groups to make a powerpoint presentation on a research topic of our choice. My group is looking into how advancements in technology have changed the biotech industry with respect to home care and home diagnostic tools. Almost every company visit we had on the short study tour talked about the new applications they had developed for their clients to aid in the use of their products. Whether it was apps to remind patients to take their medicine or smart glucose meters that automatically deliver insulin when your body needs it. My group decided to look into how these technology developments changed the biotech industry and the job market. We realized that if everything in the biotech field is being automated, then job loss could be a concern for the future. Another cause for this is that companies have begun to outsource their drug development. While we haven't done much research on this topic yet, we are looking forward to asking the companies we visit this week about this topic.

Visit to Malmo, Sweden

Another trip my family took was to Malmo, Sweden which is a short 30 minute train ride away over a beautiful and iconic bridge. While Malmo isn't quite as large as Copenhagen, it was a nice change of pace. I am also 1/8th Swedish, which isn't much but it is still nice to say I've officially been to Sweden now! My mother is 1/4th Swedish so she was even more excited to be there. We saw a beautiful church-St. Peter's church and the King's Garden. At the end we had an awesome meal at a small pub off the shopping street in Malmo- we all got different types of fish and they were all amazing!!!

odd statue in Malmo town square

St. Peter's Church

Hamlet Castle Visit

About an hour away from central Copenhagen Station lies Kronborg castle where the famous play "Hamlet" is set by Shakespeare. I went there with my family on a beautiful day and it was a great experience. The castle was much older than most castles in the Copenhagen area- last used in 1600s. It had a large ballroom that at the time was the largest ballroom in Northern Europe. Our tour guide was kind enough to inform us that long ago, month long parties would happen in that ballroom and it was a custom to make yourself vomit so you can continue eating and drinking all day long... The other story we heard was about Holger Danske, the fictional Danish hero that sits in the casemates of Kronborg waiting to rise in the next war and lead Denmark to victory. I included a picture below:

Holger Danske

my sister and I in front of Kronborg Castle

Second Biomed Test

Today, I had my second Biomed test. Apparently in Denmark as well as much of Europe, most schools have just one grade the entire semester- the final exam. This concept seems overwhelming to me considering I am used to a participation grade, a homework grade, and test grades. Luckily most of my classes here have adapted to the American system to help our transition here. While my first test went very smoothly, this next one was a bit more difficult. The topics covered were stem cell research, gene therapy, proteins as drugs, and genetics. I found the test to be much more specific than the previous test, but luckily with all my experience in Bio-Engineering, I have previously learned a lot about these subjects and managed to do fairly well (I think). Luckily all my classes here are pass/fail anyways but I think I am still in the mentality of trying my hardest- although its a relief when taking my exams that if its a beautiful day in Copenhagen, its OK to take a break and enjoy the sun and being abroad!
I am mostly excited to be done with my test because my parents and sister are visiting today for the next week! I haven't seen my family in over 2 months so I am very excited! While I have been to many tourist attractions already, I am still happy to do it all again with them!

Liplasome Company Visit

My visit to Liplasome was a huge success! The company has developed a very successful drug delivery system for a common drug Cisplatin. They are about to move to phase 2 trials- they are just waiting on finding the right patients. I really enjoyed this visit because I got to learn about how you develop drugs for terminal diseases-obviously the phase 1 drug studies can't be done on healthy volunteers as the side effects are so toxic. I was able to learn that they recruit terminally ill cancer patients to try their drug making it a sort of "last resort" for patients. Impressively, out of the 6 cases (all of which had improvement), 2 patients finally responded to the drug and had significant reduction in tumor size. While we never fond out about their current status, we were able to see images pre and post drug and the results were astounding. For example, a man with a tumor on his head had a gaping wound that was reduced to a red scar, significantly improving his quality of life. Further, I learned a lot about dosing for these kinds of drug. I assumed that since the drug was more targeting, dosing could be reduced and therefore this product could be cheaper; I was wrong. Instead, since the drug is more targeted, you can give patients more of the drug at a time before the toxic effects begin. This means that dosing would increase, hopefully increasing the benefits of the drug as well. While I asked if this means less treatments would be required, the CEO honestly responded that due to lack of extensive clinical trial results, they cannot know as of yet, but it is a goal of theres as it would also improve a patients quality of life. Overall I learned a lot about the challenges companies face when trying to develop a new product and I look forward to seeing what this company does in the future.

Trip to Madrid, Lisbon, and Barcelona

I was lucky enough to visit Madrid, Lisbon, and Barcelona over the past week. I have to say that Lisbon was my favorite city out of the three- probably because there were so many different unique neighborhoods that were so close to each other- it didn't hurt that I was able to go to the beach one day either. I didn't get to do everything I wanted to do either, so I will definitely be going back! Barcelona was beautiful though, the Sagrada Familia was breathtaking and Park Guell was a must see (pictures below). Of course the weather was also beautiful there everyday so that didn't hurt either :)

churros and chocolate in madrid!

royal palace in madrid

beach day in Portugal! (Cascais)

Cascais- Portugl

cliffs of inferno in Cascais (Portugal)

Sagrada Familia (Barcelona)

sagrada familia (Barcelona)

sagrada familia (Barcelona)

Parc Guell (Barcelona)

Parc Guell (Barcelona)

Biomed Company interviews

Tomorrow my boomed class will be interviewing professionals at several different pharma companies. We were split into 4 teams and we each are required to interview someone from a company to learn more about a product they are producing. My assignment was to Liplasome- a company that has been developing a new Drug delivery technique for chemotherapy. Their hope is that is the drug can be more targeted to cancerous tissue, then patients would experience less side effects and enjoy a better quality of life. A big question I am interested to know is how the dosing levels would change if the medicine becomes more targeted. If so, could this new medicine be less costly for patients? (and insurance companies?) Further, their product of interest is about to enter phase 2 clinical trials and since this is a chemotherapy, we are interested to learn more about how they handled their phase 1 trial. Normally, phase 1 trials involve about 10 healthy volunteers who test to see if the medicine is harmful; in this case, however, the side effects are too harmful that healthy patients shouldn't be taking it. (for cancer patients, the side effects are better than dying- i.e. benefits outweigh the cost). I am definitely excited for my trip tomorrow!

Medical Ethics Field Study

I recently had a field study in which my Medical Ethics Class took part in a "Game" developed by a Dane. In it, we were split into 4 groups and each given a case study. Each one entailed 3 patients seeking to be picked for some sort of treatment and we had to choose who would receive it. In all cases we only knew the background information of the patient and had to assume the prognosis for each (if they received the treatment) was the same. My case was a liver transplant case in which a 30 year old with an organ failure disease-about to have a child, an retired elderly widow (only 62 in reality) with children and grand children, and a 40 year old alcoholic with 2 young children all needed the liver. While our group all agreed on the 30 year old receiving the liver because he still had so much life to live and didn't cause his liver failure since it was hereditary, deserved the liver most. After that, we were in a heated debate. "The alcoholic will just relapse and need another liver" "no I have faith in him! he deserves a second chance" "but the older women doesn't have anyone depending on her like the alcoholic does". These were all thoughts we had in the case. While we settled the matter making the alcoholic second in line and the woman last, we still felt uneasy. The next part of the game was that each group would receive a shortened case review (aka not all the facts the original group got) of all the other groups cases and we compared answers. Not surprisingly, everyone picked the 30 year old to be first- but everyone else had the same issue with the alcoholic and the older woman. We had all tried looking up relapse stats- but in the end, it comes down to each person and we didn't know enough. Luckily we didn't actually have to decide since the whole process was already stressful enough; but it was a very educational exercise that our class plans to do again!