Massing and Mixing

Hi everyone,

Over the past week, I have come up with my research plan (listed below) and have begun my project.

I will examine the effects of different acids and salts on the release of vancomycin. The salts I will be using are sulfate (SO4 -2) and chloride (Cl-), while the acids I will be using are H2SO4 and HCl. I will also hopefully use thiocyanate (SCN-) (a salt), which the lab just ordered. The reasoning behind the selection of these salts is the Hofmeister series, which, according to Wikipedia, is “a classification of ions in order of their ability to salt out or salt in proteins”. Although the gels are not proteins, the salt out and salt in principles are still applicable. Simply, salting in causes an increase in solubility, while the opposite is true for salting out.

After gels are created and mixed with the vancomycin and a specific salt or acid, the release of vancomycin will be recorded at multiple time points and hopefully, this analysis will result in a specific trend that states that a particular salt or acid alone can affect drug release a certain way.

With that in mind, this week, I created a polymer solution that contained the gel in a solvent and a drug solution that contained vancomycin and a salt or acid. This was accomplished Monday and Wednesday. On Friday, I mixed the solutions together by placing each solution in a syringe and linking the two syringes with a coupler (something that links two syringes). However, when I did this, I realized that I was left with a very small amount of gel. This is probably because when drawing up the solutions into a syringe, I have to use a specific tip. Some of the solution was left in the tip, which I threw away, causing a deficit in the amount of gel I needed. Because I did not have enough polymer or gel solution to add sufficient mass to the syringes, I had to make even more solutions. This I accomplished after realizing my mistake, and I hope to finish mixing the gels on Monday.

This is my first week where I really performed lab work (last week was mostly planning). Having not been in lab for so long, I was clumsy, lost, and confused often. I did not know where to find certain materials. It took me a very long time to perform simple tasks such as getting a certain mass of a material. Furthermore, I made a mistake that requires me to redo hours of my work. Nevertheless, the more time I have been in lab, the more I’ve comfortable I become, and hopefully, I will make less mistakes in the future.

Russell