Dr. George Sandusky serves as the Director of the IU Simon Cancer Center Tissue Bank and as a professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the IU School of Medicine. His lab has capabilities to analyze whole slide digital images for clinical and research cases.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, his colleagues in the Center for Regenerative Medicine knew exactly who to reach out to when they needed post-mortem sample collection on COVID-19 patients. Dr. Sandusky’s lab was well-positioned to react and was able to set up protocols and hit the ground running in about a week.
Alexis Bloom and Max Jacobsen are former LHSI interns who were trained and approved as essential personnel to continue working throughout the pandemic in Dr. Sandusky’s lab. Their team worked with the Marion County Coroner’s Office to obtain samples of blood and lung tissue from deceased patients who were positive or suspected positive for coronavirus.
“These students were deemed essential and were able to stay on campus. They had gone through all of the training and are very careful,” Dr. Sandusky said. “We didn’t have time to train someone new; these students were able to transition easily.”
Dr. Sandusky and the students analyzed these tissue samples and reported the findings from the positive cases, which included necrosis of epithelial cells in the bronchial tubes, scattered patches of interstitial pneumonia, lymphocytic infiltration around the blood vessels and airways, small blood clots, severe congestion in the lungs, and pulmonary edema. Dr. Sandusky said that the pathological changes were very severe in these lungs.
The pathology research into COVID patients in Dr. Sandusky’s lab will continue as they are in the process of securing grant funding. LHSI student interns will continue to help analyzing samples, even if the work must be done remotely. Dr. Sandusky’s lab digitizes the slides, so they can be shared and analyzed from anywhere.
Alexis completed her LHSI internship in a different lab, but then approached Dr. Sandusky about possible opportunities available in his lab. She was offered a position through an alternate on-campus internship program, and she spent the 2019-20 academic year working in his pathology lab.
“LHSI is a really good experience to have under your belt, especially if you get a site that you are very interested in and that you connect well with,” Alexis said. The LHSI experience allowed her to learn more about the research setting, get acquainted with doctoral students, and make connections for post-graduation.
Dr. Sandusky has been working with LHSI to host student interns since 2012. “These kids are highly motivated young learners,” he said. “A lot of the things they learn during the internship are things they will learn in the first two years of medical school, so the experience helps a lot. They get that hands-on experience through LHSI and it makes life so much easier for them when they get in a really hard science course.”