Name: Kyle Balk
Major: Biomedical Engineering on a Pre-Medicine track
Session attended: 2024 summer session
Mentor: James Byrne, MD, PhD
Current status: continuing as an undergraduate researcher in the lab of James Byrne, MD, PhD
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
How do you think you benefited from attending the program?
By participating in the FLASH Program, I was exposed to very high-level research that I got to participate in in a very hands-on manner [and have] this opportunity to perform research and really contribute to a project more than just washing glassware, but actually getting to do the experiments. You know, work with animals, work with cancer cells. Getting to actually do physical research really sparked my interest in research. It was something I knew I wanted to do, but until I actually got in the lab and started performing research, I didn’t know if I would like it or not.
Can you talk a little bit about your research project that you worked on during the program?
My research project as part of the Byrne lab focused on the prevention of abdominal adhesions in a mouse model. So, when patients have ovarian cancer, one treatment option that they have is called hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy, which is when they pump warm chemotherapy directly into the abdomen. This chemo[therapy] can be quite hard on the body, resulting in acute kidney injury and then abdominal adhesions, which are bands of scar tissue that form between the organs and the abdominal wall. This scar tissue can lead to infertility and bowel obstructions. My research focused on preventing the formation of these abdominal adhesions using gas entrapping materials. Gas entrapping materials come as foams or solids or hydrogels, which release gas over an extended period of time. My project looked at using a carbon monoxide foam placed in the abdomen to prevent the formation of adhesions. We tested this out in a mice model, and found that the carbon monoxide gas entrapping material, or GEM, was successful at preventing the formation of adhesions.
What are you doing now, and does it have any relation to your work in the program?
I currently am still working in the same lab that I joined over the summer. I found that it was a really good fit for me. I liked my mentor, I liked my coworkers, and I liked my project. While I am not working on the exact same projects that I worked on over the summer, my research focuses still are on radiation oncology.