Today was day 2 and Integrated Pain Solutions. It was another really interesting day, and I learned a lot yet again. Yesterday, I learned a lot of general things about mass spectrometers with Dr. Sean Zhong. Today I s
pent a lot of time with Adam and we worked a lot on toxicology testing.
To start off our day we learned about Immunoassays and how they work. Another employee (whose name is a secret) introduced us to a couple of videos about Immunoassays and then Adam ran a couple of test trials with us. If you ever have had a prelimin
ary drug screening, your urine gets tested for signs of tampering (also known as a validity test). We learned about how these signs of tampering can be discovered/tested for. First, pH matters. If someone tampers with their urine, the pH might be affected, possibly indicating prob
lems. Also, creatinine is an indicator of whether the sample is actually human urine. This chemical is almost uniquely found in human urine (as opposed to dog urine) and its presence proves that the sample is at least partly urine. Next, the presence of oxidizing agents such as bleach is tested. This is important because sometimes people can try to tamper with their urine by pouring in Clorox or some other chemical. Lastly, the specific gravity of the sample is tested. If it falls within the range that urine should fall into, it’s good. Otherwise, again, the sample fails the test and is rejected.
After a good pizza lunch, we headed to a mass spectrometer. First, we shadowed Adam as he prepared the samples. This included pipetting, incubating, centrifuging, and a couple other steps. Then, we put the samples into the mass spec, ran one sample, and looked at the readings. Again, this was really cool.
One more thing that really interested me was the office environment at Integrated Pain Solutions. It was very friendly, and everyone
knew each other really well. We would have conversations about education and college, and we received a lot of good advice from the professionals in the labs and offices.