Student Experiences

Angela is undertaking her honours year between year 5 and 6 of her medical program. Her honours project is being researched at the Oncology Research Centre, Prince of Wales Clinical School.

Honours Project Title: A fluorescent metastatic model of prostate cancer metastasis

Project Summary: Involves transfection of a prostate cancer cell line with a plasmid carrying a green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene to produce green fluorescing cancer cells, which were injected intravenously into mice to observe cancer spread etc., as well as characterisation of the transfected cells in vitro.

What are you enjoying about your project/Honours year:
What I am enjoying about honours/my project: it's different (to usual clinical medicine), a real learning experience- gives an appreciation of the sheer amount of work involved in research before it reaches the clinician's ears (!). Learned heaps about scientific techniques, writing/presentations, and reviewing biomedical literature. Can meet new people - other honours students from other faculties.

What I am not enjoying about honours/my project: can be tedious, doing the same experiment repeatedly, especially if something goes wrong. Can be stressful. It's a lot more work than I bargained for. Can be lonely, separated from friends who're doing clinical work. I also ended up forgetting a lot more clinical knowledge than I thought I would- but hopefully can re-gain this without too much trouble!

Lily is undertaking her honours year between year 4 and 5 of her medical program. Her honours project is being researched at the Centre for Immunology at St Vincent's Hospital.

Honours Project Title: The Effect of Quinolinic Acid (QUIN) on Astrocyte Apoptosis

Project Summary: Focuses on the effects of quinolinic acid on human astrocytes. QUIN is an NMDA receptor agonist, produced by monocytic cells through the kynurenine pathway (tryptophan catabolism). QUIN has been found to play a role in neurotoxic damage in clinical conditions such as the AIDS-dementia complex, Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease.

What are you enjoying about your project/Honours year:
• Fun
• Challenging
• A change from studying medicine and not doing anything with hands
• Different atmosphere in the laboratory compared with uni and hospital teaching
• Flexible - plan when to do experiments and take responsibility
• Learn to appreciate science from a different perspective
• Frustration - when experiments don't work or don't work consistently
• Meet new and different people through presentations, meetings and seminars
• Satisfaction of completing an experiment from beginning to end

Sivashankar is undertaking his honours year between year 5 and 6 of his medical program. His honours project is being researched at the Gastrointestinal and Liver Unit at the Prince of Wales Clinical School

Honours Project Title: Cytokine Production in Liver Disease

Project Summary: My project involves investigating the role of the gut flora in the pathogenesis of liver disease by examining Toll-like receptor
expression on peripheral blood monocytes. I choose this project because I wanted to do a clinically based project that would allow me to interact with patients and not be confined to a lab for most of the day.

What are you enjoying about your project/Honours year: I have enjoyed this year so far mainly because it is a different intellectual exercise that is more based on problem solving and critical thinking rather than memorising chunks of a textbook. This year has also been me some free time to pursue interests outside of medicine.

There has not been any downside to this year so far but attitude may change as I begin to compile my thesis.

Nicole is undertaking her honours year between year 3 and 4 of her medical program. Her honours project is being researched at the Inflammation Research Unit at the Department of Pathology.

Honours Project Title: Chemokine receptor expression in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Project Summary: My project consists of using a technique of immunohistochemistry (IHC) to look at the expression pattern of certain chemokine receptors in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) tissue. IHC essentially involves taking a microscope slide with a slice of tissue on it and adding antibodies directed against the antigens of interest. The resulting antigen-antibody reaction is then visualised under the microscope and the number of cells positive for it can be counted. Various chemokine receptors are expressed on the surface of all leucocytes and are responsible for the chemotactic migration of these cells around the body and into areas of inflammation. The aim of our project was to analyse the expression level of select chemokine receptors in IBD patients versus healthy controls, with the hypothesis that the inflammation in IBD may be due a preferential recruitment of lymphocytes from the blood that express a certain chemokine receptor phenotype. These candidate chemokine receptors could then be used as therapeutic targets for new treatments for IBD patients, an idiopathic chronic disease with no known cure.

What are you enjoying about your project/Honours year: I have really enjoyed this year in regards to both the research project itself and the experience of working in a lab. I have run into numerous problems along the way and was disheartened for a little while, but I have come to learn that problem solving and failed experiments is what the majority of research is about! This may sound negative but the challenge of working on your one project and being reasonable for what happens is a great buzz, even when it doesn’t work. The support of the other people in the lab has been amazing, they’re a great group to work with and have fun with and I know that they’re a big reason why I’ve enjoyed the year so much.

I think the biggest obstacle of the honours year is the time restraint. I wasn’t really until May time that I started to get positive results from my experiments, and a lot longer before any I got any significant results. The nature of an honours year is very focused research within a focused area of medicine. I have enjoyed the intensity and depth of this, but I feel confident that I wouldn’t want to do research full time, but nevertheless I think the year has been a valuable experience.