Buenos días,
How is everyone doing? I just completed my first week interning with MicroVention, a neuroendovascular medical device company focused on developing minimally invasive products to treat vascular diseases in the brain, such as aneurysms, strokes, and malformations. Wow, that’s a mouthful. Let’s now break that down now in simpler terms, first defining what neuroendovascular means. Neuro is a term referring to the nerves or nervous system, specifically the brain in this case. Endo is a term meaning “within” or “inside”, and vascular is a term referring to the blood vessels. Thus, MicroVention focuses on creating minimally invasive devices to treat diseases within the blood vessels of the brain. Now you may be wondering, what type of diseases could one have within the blood vessels of the brain? Aneurysms, strokes, and malformations are the most prevalent types of diseases. Let’s now quickly define these terms so everyone understands each disease and their effects. First, aneurysms are a bulge/expansion in an artery, usually caused by high blood pressure, genetic vessel weakness, or atherosclerosis (buildup of plaque in arteries). If untreated, these bulges could rupture/burst and lead to a stroke. Strokes are a permanent injury to the brain caused by the interruption of blood supply either due to vessel blockage (ischemic) or burst (hemorrhagic). Without blood supply, brain cells quickly begin to die, losing one’s abilities controlled by that area of the brain such as movement, speech, or memory. Finally, malformations such arteriovenous malformation (AVM) are abnormal connections between the arteries and veins which disrupts the blood flow and oxygen circulation. If untreated, these malformations can weaken and rupture blood vessels (hemorrhagic stroke).
Types of Aneurysms
Types of Strokes
Atrioventricular Malformation
Now that I got all the technical jargon out of the way, let’s talk about how my first week went! I first met the other three interns and my cool supervisor Karthik. They gave me a tour of the facilities and I learned how the products were built in the cleanroom. For those of you who don’t know what a cleanroom is (it’s okay I didn’t know either), it is a controlled environment where airborne particles are minimized, and people are required to wear garments to minimize contamination (i.e. gown, mask, hair/beard net, gloves, safety goggles). You can use the image below for reference.
Typical Cleanroom Setup
I then proceeded to read a lot of training documents to learn more about the brain anatomy, diseases (discussed previously), and treatment methods available in the market, highlighting MicroVention’s products. I found these documents to be extremely interesting as I had never learned about the brain in so much depth before, and really enjoyed it! I also went through the usual training new employees receive to learn more about the company itself and read through other required documents to access their working platform. Finally, I got to see some MicroVention commercial products which I also found really cool.
Over the weekend, I went with my GMI friends to explore Costa Rica, and took a tour to Volcan Poas and the Hacienda Alsacia, Starbucks first and only coffee farm according to their website (which I found hard to believe). It was really cool seeing the volcano, even though it smelled like rotten eggs due to the sulfur (hydrogen sulfide gas) produced by the volcano. Here are a few cool pictures we took while we were visiting the volcano and coffee farm this past weekend
Hope you guys had a great week as well, and I’ll stay tuned to continue learning about my Costa Rica summer experience 🙂