So the weeks are ticking by, a little too quickly for my liking.

I am definitely all settled into my position at work, the routine of getting up at 6am everyday and trying to use my weekends as wisely as possible. Such as going to Cape Cod, doing a Duck tour, getting out and about in Boston…which leads me on to our plans this weekend…spending the time in New York. We have all been able to get a half day of work today so that we can travel down to New York by bus during the late afternoon. We have many things planned for our time in New York, although being able to organize all 6 of us together is definitely a challenge in itself. I am very excited about this trip as I think we have all considered this as the “big one” of them all.

This week at work I feel that my project has been progressing well. After running numerous tests on varying degrees of gel mixes my supervisor was able to select 4 mixes that appeared suitable for further analysis for the aim of this project. We are looking to find a gel that has higher longevity and lower viscosity than some of the products that are already on the market, such as Juvederm 18 and Juvederm 24 by Allergan (formerly

Corneal) and Belotero Soft/Belotero Basic by Merz, Hylaform/Hylaform Plus by Genzyme and Restylane/Perlane by Q-Med. In order to do this I have made up a number of different mixes of gels from the use of hyaluronic acid and hylastan, as fluid, Prevelle and DGE, which are both dermal filler gels. I then took each of the gel matrices and ran rheology tests in order to determine the elastic modulus, the phase angle and the viscosities, which as a whole provides information about the properties of the gel that are of interest. With the 4 selected mixes, this week, I have been running degradation studies to determine how fast the gels will degrade once injected into the skin. Products that are on the market currently have lifetimes that range from 6 to 12 months and so my job is to figure out if any of these gel mixes will be able to maintain a lifetime as long as this if not longer. I met with my supervisor and another colleague to discuss how the project is going and the results that I have been producing. I was feeling quite nervous about the meeting as I was a little unsure as to whether or not the results would be useful, but I only got positive feedback, which has given me more confidence in the work I am doing.

In the up coming week I will be working alongside Elizabeth, who has been training me to use each of the machine required, as she will be continuing this project after my time here has finished. Elizabeth is also going to give me the opportunity to use other pieces of analytical equipment in order to expand on my experiences within the labs. Throughout my time here I feel I have gained a great deal of knowledge and experience with analytical techniques and a greater understanding of standard laboratory practices. I am going to be able to return to Scotland with these new skills and competencies and apply them to my fifth year research project that will commence from September and continue throughout the year.