Tutorial 1 Pharma Written Assignment

(Note: This instruction document must be read in conjunction with the assessment Criteria and Standards given in the learning guide)

Scenario:

NS-009 is a newly developed drug proposed for the treatment of metabolic syndrome. This virtual experiment is to evaluate the effect of NS-009 on type 2 diabetes. You are asked to test this drug by conducting an in vivo study using a suitable laboratory animal model of type 2 diabetes. You are asked to treat the experimental animals orally with NS-009 (100 mg/kg) for 4 weeks. You are asked to collect blood samples at the end of 4-week treatment period to measure serum glucose and insulin levels. During your laboratory investigation, the following raw data is obtained for the experimental groups of animals after analysing the blood samples:

Healthy animal group (n=6)

Serum biomarker	Raw values
Glucose (mg/dL)	102, 100, 98, 111, 109, 105
Insulin (μU/mL)	5, 8, 9, 7, 5, 7

 

Diabetic animal group (n=6)

Serum biomarker	Raw values
Glucose (mg/dL)	214, 230, 239, 228, 240, 225
Insulin (μU/mL)	16, 24, 29, 23, 19, 26

Diabetic animal group treated with NS-009 (n=6)

Serum biomarker	Raw values
Glucose (mg/dL)	132, 145, 134, 125, 104, 110
Insulin (μU/mL)	8, 10, 6, 5, 9, 4

Assignment Task:

The purpose of this task is to provide you with training in data manipulation and analysis, graphical presentation of data, data interpretation and use of scientific search engines, as well as critical review of the literature. The primary goal of this assignment is to prepare a scientific report based on the above investigation. You need to write your report reflecting a real-life laboratory experiment. You need to recognise that this is a piece of scientific writing, but NOT an opinion piece and therefore you must avoid casual language and colloquialisms and the document must be grammatically correct. The assignment has to be in the form of a scientific report with sections including title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, references, tables and/or figures. You are advised to familiarise with the detailed marking criteria and standards provided for this assessment task in the Learning Guide. The assignment must include references according to Harvard Referencing Style as shown in below examples:

o Ghelani, H, Razmovski-Naumovski V, Nammi S. Chronic treatment of (R)-α-lipoic acid reduces blood glucose and lipid levels in high-fat diet and low-dose streptozotocin-induced metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes in Sprague-Dawley rats. Pharmacology Research & Perspectives 2017; 5: 1-11.

o Nammi S, Sun YT & Chang D. (2014). The effects of ginger on metabolic syndrome: A review of evidence. In D. Ghosh, D. Bagchi& T. Konishi (Eds.), Clinical aspects of functional foods and nutraceuticals (pp. 381-397). Boca Raton: CRC Press.ISBN-10: 1466569107; ISBN-13: 978- 1466569102.

o Nammi S, Roufogalis BD. Light-to-Moderate Ethanol Feeding Augments AMPK-α Phosphorylation and Attenuates SREBP-1 Expression in the Liver of Rats. Journal of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences 2013; 16(2): 342-351.

The length of the assignment must be 1500 words (± 5%) (without Title, Abstract, Keywords, References, and Figure Legends).

Submission Due Dates:
1st draft submission: 4th September 2020; 11:59pm 2nd draft submission: 2nd October 2020; 11:59pm Final report submission: 09th October 2020; 11:59pm

Both drafts and final report submission must be made via TURNITIN.

NOTE: Student progress on the assignment will be assessed based on timely draft submission on Turnitin. Failure to submit progressive draft submissions automatically disqualifies for assignment extension request in the event of extenuating circumstances.

https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/118273/00205_200220 _Request_for_Extension-Web.pdf

Description

Length: Maximum 1500 words (excluding Title, Abstract, Keywords, References, and Table Headings/Figure Legends)

Rationale

This assessment aims to assess student understanding of the methods and processes of drug evaluation and to analyse the pharmacological actions and mechanisms of clinically used drugs at the receptor level.

Task

This is a virtual experiment to evaluate drugs that affect the smooth muscle contractility using a set of raw experimental data generated using a simulated computer program.

Criteria

You will be assessed on the following:

• Title: Brief, clear, concise and informative. The title encapsulates what your report is about.
• Abstract: Outlines in no more than 150 words the following areas. The abstract enables the reader to grasp the key points you have discovered, as well as briefly describing the aim(s), methodology, results and discussion.
• Introduction: The introduction must move from the general to the specific. The introduction tells the reader in more detail, moving from the general to the specific, ‘why this study is being done and ends with statement of overall aims/ objectives and test hypothesis’.
• Materials and Methods: Clear, precise description of the experiment that is in enough detail to enable replication by another researcher. This section should be written in past tense third person and should NOT be in dot point format. This section, precisely describes the methods/materials/data use, to complete the study, in enough detail to enable someone else to repeat the exact procedure/study
• Results: Clear, precise description of the findings. This section describes but does not explain the results. It provides a factual account of the findings, for example trends/outcomes noted but not discussed
• Discussion: An informed commentary based on the actual results. This is where to add any explanations of what the data means. i.e. What do the results tell? This section must relate the results back to the literature and finally form a conclusion. This section tells the reader what the results mean in terms of the context/background literature/related research and the test hypothesis. Like the introduction, it moves from the general to specific in the discussion of each result-how does this result support/inform the literature/test hypothesis.

References/grammar check/format (Harvard referencing style required throughout see the University library website)

Resources

Students will receive further information and instructions on this assignment in the Tutorial Manual.

Written Assignment

Weight: 20%

Type of Collaboration: Individual

Due: Week 12 (Friday 09 October 2020; 11:59pm)

Submission: Turnitin

Format: This assessment aims to assess student understanding of the methods and processes of drug evaluation and to analyse the pharmacological actions and mechanisms of clinically used drugs at the receptor level. You will be assessed on the following: - Title: Brief, clear, concise and informative. The title encapsulates what your report is about. - Abstract: Outlines in no more than 150 words the following areas. The abstract enables the reader to grasp the key points you have discovered, as well as briefly describing the aim(s), methodology, results and discussion. - Introduction: The introduction must move from the general to the specific. The introduction tells the reader in more detail, moving from the general to the specific, ’why this study is being done and ends with statement of overall aims/ objectives and test hypothesis’. - Materials and Methods: Clear, precise description of the experiment that is in enough detail to enable replication by another researcher. This section should be written in past tense third person and should NOT be in dot point format. This section, precisely describes the methods/materials/data use, to complete the study, in enough detail to enable someone else to repeat the exact procedure/study - Results: Clear, precise description of the findings. This section describes but does not explain the results. It provides a factual account of the findings, for example trends/outcomes noted but not discussed - Discussion: An informed commentary based on the actual results. This is where to add any explanations of what the data means. i.e. What do the results tell? This section must relate the results back to the literature and finally form a conclusion. This section tells the reader what the results mean in terms of the context/background literature/related research and the test hypothesis. Like the introduction, it moves from the general to specific in the discussion of each result-how does this result support/inform the literature/test hypothesis. References/grammar check/format (Harvard referencing style required throughout see the University library website)

Length: Maximum 1,500 words

Curriculum Mode: Report

Materials and Methods:

The experiment was done on an animal to study how effective the new developed drug           “NS-009”, The experiment was completed over a period of 4 weeks, after getting an approval to do this experiment from the Animal Ethics Committee Australia.

Animal Selection:

We created 3 groups and each have 6 rats in them for a total of 18 sprague-dawley rats.             The temperature was set to 22 + or – 1 °C with 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark environment. For the first week of the experiment the normal laboratory food and water was given to the rats.

Experimental groups and Diet:

Eighteen rats were divided into three groups and these groups are then divided in to three different rube cages, the first week normal diet was given to all of the three groups. In week 2 Group 1 were given normal diet and Group 2 and 3 were given a high fat diet for 3 weeks.          In week 3 and 4 the Group 3 was given the treatment.

There are three groups, Group 1 being the control, Group 2 being the diabetic type and                          Group 3 being the Diabetic type treated with ____________.

Records: Blood samples were collected

Results: After 4 weeks, we collected blood samples of the three groups and we measured their       Serum glucose, Insulin levels.

Animal: The Animals that we will use in this experiment is Rats because they share more then 90% of the genome with humans. Which makes rats more suitable tools for research purposes.

Results

Table 1: Blood samples of the all three experimental groups of mice.

Serum Biomarker	Normal Control Group (mean + SE)	Disease Control Group (mean + SE)	Diabetic treated with NS-009 (mean + SE)
Glucose (mg/dL)	104 + 2.01	229 + 3.93	125 + 6.31
Insulin (μU/mL)	6.83 + 0.65	22.8 + 1.92	7.00 + 0.97