Abstract Submitted for Presentation

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While I did not create slides for this campus presentation, The Environmental Colaboratory had student groups on campus that were awarded grants last year to present their progress. My group was awarded $5,000 to set up a secondhand clothing store on campus that would facilitate the redistribution of unwanted clothes, the downcycling of unwearable clothes, educational events to promote sustainability within fashion, and collect data on campus clothing habits. We have had a successful partnership with Westphal's Reworn store, which has allowed us to grow within this year and have much to talk about during this event. The presentation occured Thursday the 28th from 6-7:30pm in PISB lobby and our presentation was titled Impact of Second Hand Campus Storefront On Reducing Textile Landfill Waste.

Title: Does Diagnosis Moderate the Cognitive Correlates of Driving? A Transdiagnostic Approach to the Cognitive Demands of Complex Driving Behaviors

Using a Virtual Reality Driving Simulator (VRDS), this study explores how stopping and turning behaviors differ among adults with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and those without neurological conditions. The research aims to identify the cognitive demands associated with these driving behaviors, providing insights into driving safety and performance.  

Title: Exploring Barriers to Healthcare for Sexual Minorities by Place of Residence  

Background: Despite demonstrated benefits of sexual and gender minority (SGM) specific health care resources in cities throughout the United States, SGM specific resources exist in lower quantities in communities outside of urban centers. In addition to the lack of resources, SGM individuals are often exposed to harassment, discrimination, and abuse in healthcare settings leading to worse health outcomes for SGM individuals. This is exacerbated for sexual minorities living in suburban or rural communities compared to sexual minorities living in urban areas.  

Objective: Given existing research on health disparities among sexual minorities living in non-urban areas, the objective of this research was to examine the association between place of residence and access to health care among sexual minorities. 

Methods: Nationally representative data collected from the 2021 wave of the National Health Interview Survey was used to conduct descriptive and logistic regression analyses. Place of residence was operationalized as urban, suburban, or rural, according to U.S. metropolitan statistical areas and the total population in the respondent’s county. Respondents were categorized as either straight, lesbian/gay, or bisexual according to their self-reported sexual orientation. The dependent variables assessed access to care across various dimensions including usual place of care, whether the respondent delayed care due to cost, financial barriers to care (e.g., needing but not affording medical care, skipping medications to save money), and trouble paying medical bills. Additional covariates included race/ethnicity, age, education, income, employment, and health insurance.  

Results: Preliminary results confirmed the hypothesis that sexual minorities living in suburban and rural areas had lower access to care compared to sexual minorities living in urban areas. Examining access to care can help further explain health disparities among sexual minorities living in non-urban areas.   

Name of Conference: College of Arts and Science Research Day 2024
Location of Conference: Drexel University - Behrakis Grand Hall 
Dates of Conference: 6/4/24
Funding: N/A 

Title: There are no mistakes, only happy accidents: Deviation from phage amplification protocol yielded high titers of the novel Actinobacteriophage OldNelly (EA1) 

As part of the 2023-2024 SEA-PHAGES program, freshmen students from Drexel University used the host Microbacterium foliorum NRRL B-24224 to isolate 34 novel bacteriophages. Among these, one phage was generated in a slightly unconventional manner. A soil sample was collected from a garden along a nearby Drexel University building in Philadelphia, PA. The subsequent isolated phage was named OldNelly. During amplification, an unintentional deviation was made from the standard procedure while trying to increase the overall lysate volume. Instead of properly flooding a webbed plate with phage buffer, the plate was flooded with a previously collected lysate of the same phage - a technique resembling “lysate double-dipping”. As a result of this protocol deviation, the resulting augmented lysate yielded almost a four-fold increase in titer compared to the original lysate, and recovered a high DNA concentration with minimal contamination ratios. Having demonstrated positive results from the flooding with lysate protocol, it was replicated by other lab groups whose lysates were below the required titer concentration of 5x10^9 pfu/mL to proceed. As expected, they also were able to increase their titer concentration considerably, past the minimum titer threshold for archiving and DNA extraction. Subsequently, OldNelly and 5 other phages (following standard protocol) were sent to be sequenced at The Pittsburgh Bacteriophage Institute using Illumina Sequencing: OldNelly (subcluster EA1), Pharpay (cluster EF), PHISB (cluster EB), Phiderman (subcluster EA1), SoilGremlin (subcluster EA1), and Delphidian (subcluster EA1). The latter 2 were submitted to the genome exchange and have been adopted to be annotated by 2 other institutions. There appeared to be no irregularities with generating a genome or during bioanalysis, which showed that OldNelly is a lytic phage, with 99% similarity to other archived EA1 subcluster phages. Collaboratively, the several sections of our cohort worked to produce and ensure accurate genome annotation. While the technique did not appear to introduce contamination in the case of OldNelly, further extensive studies can be performed to be certain whether phage purity is being affected. We propose that this technique can be widely adopted to significantly help other students in the SEA-PHAGES community, as well as further expand the existing phage archive. Additionally, students have begun planning independent projects which may focus on OldNelly. Examples of possible studies include to test UV (ultra-violet) coupled with temperature deviation or dye exposure (with or without UV), exposures to Zinc and Iron, nicotine, and EDTA. These will lend greater insight into its and other phages’ behavior and morphology.

Academy of Natural Science - Research Day, December 5, 2024
"Methods Comparison for Assessing Ocean Acidification Through Pteropods"
Type of Presentation: Talk-style? I presented on stage at the Academy's auditorium

Opening 
Thank you, ____. My name is Maven Mercado, and I am a fourth-year environmental science student here at Drexel. I am here to talk about some of the research I am involved in at the Invertebrate Paleontology department.  

Introduction 
One of the effects of climate change is ocean acidification. Our oceans absorb about a third of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide, so an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to an increase in carbon dioxide absorbed. This reduces the pH of the ocean and reduces calcification rates in calcifying organisms, such as mollusks and corals. These organisms use calcium carbonate to build their skeletal structures. Two species of calcium carbonate are aragonite and calcite. The former is the more soluble of the two, making organisms that utilize aragonite over calcite more vulnerable to the effects of ocean acidification and thus more valuable as bioindicators of ocean acidification.  One of these aragonite-dependent organisms are pteropods, which are teeny tiny mollusks that are known as “sea butterflies”. Pteropods are commonly used as bioindicators of ocean acidification since they will display symptoms earlier than most other organisms. While there are many studies that use them for this purpose, there are few studies that look at the efficacy of different dissolution analysis methods. This research looks at dissolution trends among three species of pteropods from different ocean systems to increase accessibility of this work to groups with less funding availability and more time constraints.   

Dissolution Analysis Methods 
We looked at three commonly used metrics for analyzing pteropod shells: the Limacina Dissolution Index (or LDX), the Scanning Electron Microscopy (or SEM) Dissolution Index, and micro-Computed Tomography (or CT) thickness heatmaps. LDX is a semi-quantitative method that places pteropods shells on a scale of 0-4 based on their luster and opacity, where 0 is pristine and 4 is highly dissolved. It requires the least amount of training, time, and money to use effectively. This scale can be seen here, where the shells in this image get more dissolved as we move from left to right. SEM is a fully quantitative method that ranks shells on similar sort of scale based on the surface layer and the underlying shell layer. This scale is represented at the bottom of this slide, where patches of dissolution become increasingly severe moving from left to right. CT data was used to create heat maps that visualized shell thickness, with the idea that more dissolved areas may be thinner than pristine areas. In the graphic at the upper right, blue represents the thickest shell material and red represents the thinnest shell material.   
These three methods vary drastically in terms of their costs. LDX would technically add no additional equipment costs since all that is needed to utilize this scale is a standard light microscope, which facilities that undergo this kind of monitoring would already have. The other two methods rely on higher resolution technology (scanning electron microscopy and computed tomography) that would have a hefty cost per specimen examined, as well as the possible licensing costs for the relevant 3D visualization software used to create thickness heat maps.   

Prevailing Methods 
We found that LDX and SEM are highly correlated, which means that LDX can be used as a more cost- and time-effective substitute. This is in the graphs, where each species showed a strong relationship between what percentage pristine shell is present and what LDX rank that shell was given. However, due to its high resolution, we do recommend using SEM to analyze minor and very specific areas of a shell. In the figure on the left, the blue arrows indicate dissolution that is seen throughout all methods, while the red arrows indicate dissolution that does not show up in the thickness heat map. Due to this, CT wasn’t found to be an effective method to look at pteropod shell dissolution since it only presented extreme dissolution. However, in other studies, CT has been found to be effective at looking at other impacts of ocean acidification on pteropod shells, such as rate of calcification.   

Conclusions, Future Work, & Acknowledgements
This table summarizes the cost and time per specimen we found for each analysis tool. This is ongoing work. Ultimately, we would like to promote these methods to make this kind of ocean monitoring more accessible to people who aren’t pteropod specialists. Some of our future work includes developing a manual that can be used to visually compare pteropod dissolution state, looking into more quantitative methods that would be as accessible as LDX, and expanding our sample size to further analyze SEM best practices.  
And that’s all I have. I would like to thank everyone on this list who has helped on various aspects of this research. I am happy to take questions if there are any, thank you.  

Name of event: Drexel Particle Group Presentation 

 Date of presentation : Sep 7th , 2023

Type of presentation : Research talk (in-person)

Title & Text of abstract:

Understanding Neutrino Activity through Muon Histogram Analysis with the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment

No Abstract for talk 

Title: Particle- and drug-screening for macrophage phenotype control
Abstract: 
Macrophages, integral to the innate immune system, are involved in numerous disease and injury models due to their unique ability to interact with neighboring cells (Watanabe et al., 2019). Consequently, macrophage cell therapy has become a promising approach for various medical conditions, including inflammatory disorders, autoimmune diseases, tissue regeneration, and cancer immunotherapy (Na et al., 2023). However, these cells can quickly alter their phenotype in response to local cues, often assuming an undesired state. Thus, maintaining their phenotype becomes critical in cell therapy. Our laboratory uses poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) microparticles to intrinsically control macrophage phenotype, even against external stimuli. In this work, we explored the effects of particle size on drug release kinetics and macrophage phenotype as well as screened potential therapeutic drug candidates for macrophage cell therapy in fibrotic models. We determined the effect of particle size on drug release kinetics and subsequent effects on macrophage phenotype. In addition, we identified Drug G as a promising macrophage modulator for cell therapy in models, like volumetric muscle loss and pulmonary fibrosis. Future work will focus on evaluating particle size and drug on tissue regeneration in vivo. By elucidating these interactions, we aim to develop specific and tailored strategies for enhanced macrophage-based cell therapies in fibrotic conditions. 

Name of event: Week of Undergraduate Excellence

 Date of presentation : May 20th-24th , 2024

Type of presentation : Poster presentation (virtual)

Title & Text of abstract:

Identification of novel ACSS2 inhibitors in regulating breast cancer brain metastatic growth Triple-negative breast cancer accounts for about 15% of all breast cancers. The overall survival rate of these patients is 77% but drops to 12% once tumors metastasize to the brain which equates to less than 6 months. There are currently no effective drug treatments for patients with brain metastasis, thus there is an urgent need to develop novel treatment strategies. Breast cancer cells that have metastasized to the brain depend on acetate for growth and survival rather than glucose. The acetyl CoA synthetase 2 (ACSS2) enzyme converts acetate to acetyl CoA which is critical for the fatty acid production and gene regulation in tumors in the brain. Our lab has previously shown that genetically targeting ACSS2 can reduce the growth and survival of breast cancer brain metastasis cells in the brain. Further, we have identified novel ACSS2 inhibitor analogs that can cross the blood brain barrier to treat breast cancer brain metastasis. Here, we tested novel secondary analogs of ACSS2 inhibitors for anti-cancer effects using breast cancer brain metastatic (BCBM) cells in vitro and whether they blocked downstream targets of the ACSS2 metabolic pathway. Here, we show that treating BCBM cells with inhibitors 2749, 7033 and 4855 was able to block cell growth measured by crystal violet staining with 4855 having similar effect as first-generation analog 8007. These results suggest a crucial role for ACSS2 in the regulation of breast cancer brain metastasis and identifies ACSS2 inhibitor 4855 as a potential and potent novel ACSS2 inhibitor of BCBM cell growth In the future, we hope to test these novel inhibitors through western blotting to see if they result in the reduction of downstream proteins of the ACSS2 metabolic pathway.