This morning we met with Sulaiman, our translator, and we worked on recording and translating our course videos from English to Krio so that we can make them more accessible to the community. We also got the quiz questions translated and worked on updating the videos with our refined content. We will continue working to […]
Day 1: Arrival + Making Connections
After a long flight, we finally arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone on August 6th at around 6 pm. Fortunately, all of our luggage was waiting for us when we arrived at the international airport in Freetown. After a short time spent gathering our belongings and finding Khanjan and Kelley outside, we piled onto the bus […]
Week 6: Further Developments
This week we focused on the creation of the workshop we plan to hold at healthcare oriented schools in Sierra Leone in August. The workshop gives a relatively in depth overview of sickle cell disease, going over topics like symptoms, treatment and diagnosis. We met with some of the other team members going to fieldwork […]
Week 5: More Conjugation Experiments and Fieldwork
Dialysis We’ve had a number of experiments planned for the summer, all focused on optimizing specific aspects of our device. Part of this batch of experiments was implementing a less taxing/time consuming procedure for the dialysis of our antibodies. We’ve found a suitable alternative in column purification of our antibodies instead. It takes a fraction […]
Week 4: Conquering Challenges – Bead Conjugation Success, Device Standardization, and IRB Progress
OraSure Experiments On Wednesday, we were able to perform the first bead conjugation of the summer. To recap, bead conjugation is the process by which we attach, or conjugate, our color indicator “beads” to our secondary antibody. This process is complex and likely the main source of failures for the project. In order to effectively […]
Week 3: Buffer Production and Conjugation Experiments at OraSure”
Buffer Making and Void Volume Test Over the course of the week, we made more of three of our buffers, MES buffer, Conjugate Release Buffer (CRB), and running buffer. In addition to this, we conducted a void volume experiment with individual strip components, similar to the experiment we conducted last week. Essentially, we dipped the […]
Week 2: Wicking Test
This week in lab, we began our series of experiments to optimize our device. Our first experiment aimed to determine the amount of liquid that the absorbance pad on our test strip can absorb. By doing this, we can determine what volume of buffer to use when running the device. For the experiment, we pipetted […]
Week 1: A Summer of Research and Impact
Imagine a world where diagnosing Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) in low and middle income countries (LMICs) is no longer a complex and inaccessible process, but as simple as utilizing a single test strip. This is exactly what the SicklED team hopes to achieve in Sierra Leone and its surrounding countries. Our fundamental goal is lowering […]
Day 14: A Clinic and an Adventure
Today, we went to clinics with members of the documentary and diagnosing autism teams. We went a little further out of the city than normal and the views were absolutely amazing. After dropping off other teams along the way, we visited Kamabai Clinic. We started off with a tour of the facility as a whole […]
Day 12 and 13: Our First Few Days Back Out!
Day 12 we went to three different types of health facilities: two private clinics, a public clinic, and a pharmacy. Branda Hospital was our first stop, and there we interviewed the head doctor and a nurse. The head doctor informed us of the logistics of the hospital and informed us that it was self funded. […]