If you drove past Integrated Laboratory Solutions, you wouldn’t be able to tell that the unassuming facade in quiet Southern Pines was actually a state-of-the-art testing facility. So color me a shade of suprised when our guide for the day, Dr. Sean Zhong, whisked us through rooms brimming with humming and whirring machines that I still can’t probably pronounce the names of.
After, of course, donning personal protective equipment–lab coats and glasses–we embarked on our first adventure for the day: a high performance liquid chromatogarphy (HPLC) machine. Dr. Zhong explained that this fine invention is utilized to process urine samples from patients, separating the constituent parts and checking them with a list of common prescription medications. This process is twofold: one, it can make sure that complex compounds are being metabolized and excreted correctly; two, it can ensure that certain addictive medications like opiates aren’t being abused, leading to patient accountability. At the same time, we stared in awe at the fully automated process–the robot arm of the HPLC could even close the drawer filled with patient samples!
Our second quest involved scrutinizing the mass spectrometer (MS), which was a big box with tubes entering and exiting like the veins and arteries of the heart, along with a dashboard of blinking lights. It really seemed like something out of Star Wars. Dr. Zhong performed a demonstration some hemp samples on hand–ILS also works in conjunction with Integrated Hemp Solutions to create medical hemp products–and pointed out how the MS calculates the proportion of compounds within a given hemp oil sample.
After a quick lunch at a local bakery, courtesy of the Dr. Zhong and the other great folks at ILS, we headed back to our workstations as the mass spectrometer was finishing up. Fortunately, the sample we saw being tested was legal because the MS detected a less than 0.3%–the legal threshold–of THC, or the part of the cannabis plant that leads to the “high.” Dr. Zhong pulled up some linear regression curves to model the compound concentrations, which I understod thanks to what I learned this year in ADV Stats (shoutout to Mr. Lazarski)!
I had a great first day and I’m looking forward to what will unfold in the next 3 days! Dr. Zhong had to leave today for a conference in California, but I’m sure we’ll meet some more awesome scientists over the coming few days.