School is now in full swing, and the CARLOW Center for Medical Innovation is buzzing with students and excitement for the upcoming year. Rewinding back to summer, we were busy bees entertaining our partner school from Oregon and running our middle school summer camp. In late June, our partner school from Medford, Oregon, St. Mary’s School, came down for a fun-filled week of learning. We kicked off the week with an overview of Human Anatomy and Physiology, followed by a fetal pig dissection. Two of our parents graciously set up tours of their work facilities; we got a VIP tour of both Kaiser Permanente’s Bernand J. Tyson School of Medicine and the Jet Propulsion Facilities. Our group was fortunate enough to be able to go into the Deep Space Network Control Center, where we got to stand at the “Center of the Universe.” To top off the week, we held a White Coat Ceremony for our St. Mary’s guests, where they received certificates and a white lab coat.

After our St. Mary’s guests departed back for Oregon, we had our first middle school summer camp session. In total, we had three sessions with kids from all over the Pasadena area, where they got to experience the CARLOW Center offerings. The group learned how to perform CPR and administer basic first aid, take patient vital signs, perform dissections, learn to suture, practice patient scenarios with our Acadicus virtual reality platform, and learn to design 3D models. Overall, this was a great experience for our La Salle students and the community.

As summer started winding down, we began our tissue culture experiments investigating the effects of electrolytes and heart medications on the differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells to cardiomyocytes. This project was done by Mohuli “Pammi” Ganguly, a senior here at La Salle who has been diligently working to get results for her project presentation at the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Pammi is set to depart for Brazil in late September to represent La Salle at the symposium; she is the only high school student chosen to be a part of this conference. We wish her the best of luck! It has been a busy summer and start to the school year, but we are so thankful to have the opportunity to do all of these great things!

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By: Elizabeth Parga M.S. Chemistry