Clinical Trials, Week 2

So I started my job at the Asthma Clinical Research Center at Johns Hopkins. I work in an office in Fells Point, far from the ghetto area of the Hopkins Hospital/SPH/Med School (and yes, they have guards on every corner!). Fells Point is an uberquaint colonial maritime community dating to 1726. The building is right on the boardwalk, literally feet from the Chesapeake Bay!

I'm in the Data Coordination Center which manages the large clinical trials from beginning to end. Right now they have two ongoing trials, but two more are coming down the pipeline. As soon as we get NIH funding, I'll be in on a team rushing to develop materials (Protocols, MOPs, forms, online data entry, etc.) to distribute to the participating clinics. But for now I'm just learning the ropes.

Funny thing: our drug/placebo shipment got stuck this week coming from Japan. Someone labeled the placebo as "food" so it got held up in customs!

When I'm not in the office I am either shadowing my boss (I guess I should clarify that he rarely visits our office) or attending lectures at the SPH and medical school. My boss, Dr. Bob Wise, is a Harvard-trained pulmonologist who has been at Hopkins for 37 years. He's a little shorter than me and bald. Think Mr. Magoo with glasses! Anyway, Thursday I suited up and observed my first bronchoscopy. That's where the tube goes down the nose with a scope on the end. They squirted some water down into the lung (I thought he would die the way he was coughing) and sucked it back up to send to the lab. Luckily the guy was in twilight (Fentanyl, Benadryl, Versed) so he won't remember anything about the procedure.

Also, have you guys heard about the new discovery about mosquitos' genes and Dengue? Apparently "a spray containing inhibitory chemicals might be developed that would be used not to kill the mosquitoes but to make them a less-effective carrier of dengue virus." Cool!

Oh and that pano at the top (the only photo I've taken here so far, sorry guys!) is our street in Timonium, MD. Our apartment is the one on the bottom floor of the building on the left. You can see the sliding glass door ajar. This place is soooo green and the trees are tall tall tall!