Published: May 01, 2008 12:10 pm            

GJCTC, Lampire a winning team

BY GEORGE MOSCHGAT

GJCTC SENIOR

As a senior at Greater Johnstown Career and Technology Center, I have worked with Lampire Biological Laboratories for three years, participating in research projects and internships.

In our first research project with Lampire in 2006, I worked with Lampire’s cell culture bag to find the performance characteristics, such as cell viability and growth over time.

The results were presented to the president of Lampire, Gregory F. Krug, along with the producers of the bag.

A presentation was made to senators and legislators at the Career and Technical Education week’s opening ceremony in Harrisburg.

This school year the students are working on a second project with Lampire.

My research team is working to find the optimal conditions for purifying and concentrating rabbit immunoglobulin.

A plan to present data to researchers at Lampire who specialize in this field is set for May.

Last summer, I worked at Lampire as a full-time intern and have been accepted for an internship again this summer.

Lampire allowed me to work at the animal facility and the biological laboratory.

At the start of the internship, I went through a week at the human resources center learning company procedures.

Then, I rotated through the animal facilities.

At the animal facilities, my duties included the care and feeding of the animals.

For the remaining weeks, I rotated through the small and large animal-processing labs.

The duties in these labs included running hematocrits, centrifuging, processing and packaging the animals’ serums.

The final rotation was in the biochemistry department, where I discovered what I wanted to do with my future career.

There, I was able to do test runs for ELISAs (Enzyme Linked Immuno-Sorbent Assays), which uses antigen-antibody reactions to tell if a specific antigen or antibody is present.

Also, I helped run protein chromatography to separate proteins out of a chemical mixture such as serum.

This internship not only helped me decide on a career, but also gave me a head start on achieving this goal.

I have been accepted at IUP, where I will major in biochemistry.

        

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