Jason R. Mann, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University

Freddy T. Nguyen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Dylan Dodd, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Stephen T. Magill, Oregon Health & Science University

Chirag Patel, University of Texas, Galveston

APSA is excited to announce a new national partnership with the National Student Research Forum. The NSRF is in its 48th year of operation and is held on the campus of The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. This meeting provides a forum for the presentation of research by medical students, residents, and graduate students in the biomedical sciences. Papers may include unpublished research in the basic or clinical sciences that is completed or still in progress. Participants may present their research in either oral or poster sessions. The NSRF offers an excellent opportunity for participants to receive review and recognition of their research efforts by their peers and by established scientists. Primary funding for the meeting is provided by the American Medical Association Foundation and the University of Texas Medical Branch. Over the past forty-seven years, the NSRF has grown from a small regional meeting to a nationally respected assembly of young scientists. Last year, over 48 medical schools were represented, and approximately 100 papers were presented.

Key aspects of our new collaboration include:
• Cross-promotion of our meetings and activities to increase mutual participation.
• Breakout career development sessions for attendees, based on APSA's presentation on "research opportunities for medical students" to the American Medical Association-Medical Student Section and the National MD/PhD Student Conference. APSA would like to present a similar audience-driven presentation to the diverse attendees to the upcoming NSRF Meeting.
• Cross-listing of membership. Plans in development include automatic admission of NSRF attendees to APSA as associate or full members, depending on their training program.

APSA very much looks forward to strengthening this important alliance with NSRF, and to mutually successful joint activities in the months and years ahead.

Daniel J. Kelley, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
Chair, APSA Policy Committee

Like many others who have chosen the physician-scientist training pathway, I took part in the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine (NYLF/MED). The NYLF/MED introduces high school students to medicine early in their academic careers, providing some with their first exposure to medicine. Through conversations with APSA President Freddy Nguyen, and Ray Wright, Deputy Director of the NYLF/MED, I am pleased to announce that NYLF/MED and APSA reached a partnership that enables APSA members to participate as speakers in the NYLF/MED program. We expect that this partnership will serve to introduce high school students to the physician-scientist career, to foster student enthusiasm for working at the interface of research and medicine, and to provide students with a practical roadmap to physician-scientist training programs. The national APSA-NYLF/MED partnership will benefit high school students at multiple sites across the country and will place APSA in a position to shape the next generation of physicians and physician-scientists. To pilot this partnership in 2007, several APSA members have agreed to participate at the following NYLF/MED sites:

Chicago, Illinois
Nathan Herman, University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences
Dan Kelley, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health

Boston, Massachusetts
Sandeep Kishore, Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Richard Wong, Tufts University School of Medicine

Houston, Texas
Chirag Patel, University of Texas Medical School at Houston

The NYLF/MED is equally excited about this partnership. A letter from NYLF/MED Deputy Director Ray Wright about this partnership is included below.

To the membership of the American Physician Scientists Association,

APSA continues to strengthen its relationship with the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine (NYLF/MED), an extraordinary 10-day program offering high-achieving high school students an intense and stimulating exploration of the field of medicine.
APSA has offered to assist in the recruitment of Faculty Advisors, individuals who mentor, guide students in simulations and engage students in discussion. This will be accomplished with the help of APSA representatives posting flyers about the available position in their corresponding medical school, in addition to verbally referring colleagues to www.nylf.org/med for additional information.
APSA has also offered to pilot assisting NYLF/MED in widening its base of speakers who talk with small groups of students one night for one to two hours. This will begin in Boston, Chicago and Houston, with the potential to expand to all nine NYLF/MED cities in 2008.
We would like to thank APSA for its continued efforts. In particular, thanks to both Freddy Nguyen and Dan Kelley for initiating a conversation that has proved fruitful for both organizations!

Thank you!
Ray Wright
Deputy Director
National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine

Jennifer M. Kwan, University of Illinois-Chicago

Human eyes probably never expected to see the very molecules that make it up. The human brain probably never expected to manipulate the very code that directs its development. Together, humans have elucidated, collected, remembered and passed on a conglomerate of knowledge, from which we can draw on to create and accomplish extraordinary feats. As this is especially true in science and in the multidisciplinary realm of medicine, together, we will continue to build our knowledge and expand our capabilities and applications in medicine and beyond.
Individuals are perfectly capable of achieving, but history demonstrates another trend: through collaborative efforts, done and organized properly, we can really channel the power and strength of human ingenuity. These synergies of individual work and talents have enabled us to launch humans into space, they have allowed us to sequence the code of life, and they have allowed us to treat and cure disease.

A good example of the significance of collaboration comes from one representative scientist. The following companies were co-founded by that scientist and they manufacture some of the common tools that we currently use to study biological phenomenon that evade our innate senses: Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Systemix, Darwin, Rosetta, and MacroGenics.

• What inventions gave rise to some of those companies? The first DNA synthesizer, protein sequencer and protein synthesizer.
• Who built them? The same scientist who co-founded the companies. He built and patented them.
• When I say “he” it is actually him along with the work and collaboration of many. [1]

As “he” would address in his commemorative lecture upon receiving the Kyoto award in 2002 in advanced technologies:

I must stress that the work I am discussing here was done largely by incredibly talented young colleagues, many of whom have gone on to be leaders in biotechnology—Mike Hunkapiller, Lloyd Smith, Steve Kent, Ruedi Aebersold, Alan Blanchard, Ulf Landegren and many others. Perhaps this has been my greatest pleasure in science—working with talented and energetic young scientists—undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral fellows.[1]

As acknowledged by this scientist himself, such successes came from the work of many, including the advice and support from his own mentors.[1] He launched many of the ideas, but it was through collaborative efforts that these came to fruition. For those who like numbers: he has 14 patents and more than 500 notable peer reviewed journal publications. He won the 1987 Albert Lasker award for elucidating the mechanism of immune diversity[2] and played a key role in launching the Human Genome Project, a feat that was once attacked as “a waste of time and money . . . and not real science.[1]” Who is he? Despite his impressive individual record, Leroy Hood acknowledges and emphasizes the collaborative efforts behind his accomplishments.

Some 2000 miles away from Leroy Hood’s current domain, in a large metropolitan city in the Midwest, the Chicago Community Trust wanted to continue to promote collaboration to further science, and thus the Chicago Biomedical Consortium (CBC) was established. The consortium was formed to encourage collaboration between 3 strong academic institutions: University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC), Northwestern University and University of Chicago. Again, for those who like numbers and tangible items about this entity called the CBC, shared between the three member institutions include the following:

• A 10 year $50 million grant
• Access to state-of-the-art facilities at UIC that house a new Fourier Transform Mass Spectrometer (FTMS), the world’s most powerful tool for studying protein and biomolecular structure, along with the computing power to analyze massive amounts of data produced by these experiments. Few facilities in the country have such specialized capabilities for proteomics research.
• Access to the Advanced Photon Source at the Argonne National Laboratories.
  Additional, less tangible resources include numerous collaborations and inter-institutional training opportunities stemming from consortium funds.[3]

In the fall of 2006, the CBC held its 4th Annual Consortium at the University of Chicago. One of the keynote speakers agreed to come speak to the MD/PhD students of the tri-institution consortium in a dinner seminar. Students filed into the Lurie Auditorium of Northwestern Medical School to attend. Students from all three CBC academic institutions were represented. This was not your typical seminar and this was not your average speaker. The speaker talked about systems biology, the primary research focus on which he founded the “Institute for Systems Biology” in Washington. The systems biology approach is characterized by computational modeling and experimentation to quantitatively describe interactions and networks between various cellular processes.[2] It aims to obtain, integrate and analyze complex data from multiple experimental sources using interdisciplinary tools to derive patterns of information and knowledge from interdisciplinary sources.
The speaker was Leroy Hood. In just an hour-long seminar, he encouraged collaborative efforts amongst scientists. He offered some reflections and sage advice about his obstacles and how he overcame them as a budding scientist. Other thought-provoking gems were included throughout the talk.

From our example of Leroy Hood to the NIH and academic institutions across the country and world, many realize the significance of interdisciplinary collaboration. Amidst the looming background of competition arises the common goal of scientific advances and the aspiration to study and understand molecular and physiological phenomenon in the hopes of eradicating disease and improving the quality of human life.

To date, the CBC continues to gain momentum toward the overriding goal: how can we use our collaborative efforts and various expertises to further and/or quicken scientific developments? Time, ideas, feedback and further work will tell but the grounds for collaboration are set.

1. Hood, Leroy. “My Life and Adventures Integrating Biology and Technology.” A Commemorative Lecture for the 2002 Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technologies.
2. Systems Biology - the 21st Century Science http://www.systemsbiology.org/Intro_to_ISB_and_Systems_Biology/Systems_Biology_--_the_21st_Century_Science
3. The Chicago Biomedical Consortium
   http://www.chicagobiomedicalconsortium.org/

Image credit: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Chirag Patel and Matthew McCurdy

The Inaugural Texas Physician-Scientist Student Symposium was held in Houston on Saturday, November 4, 2006. The Symposium brought future physician-scientists (at all stages of training) together to listen to and interact with current physician scientists and medical school admissions personnel. The Symposium was spearheaded by Matt McCurdy and Chirag Patel, MD/PhD students and APSA Institutional Representatives from Baylor College of Medicine and UT-Houston Medical School, respectively.

In total, 71 students from across the state of Texas attended the meeting:

• 33 MD/PhD students from Baylor College of Medicine, Texas A&M Medical School, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Medical School, UT-Houston Medical School, UTMB-Galveston Medical School, and UT-San Antonio Medical School
• 1 DO/PhD student from the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine
• 4 MD students from Baylor College of Medicine, UT-Houston Medical School, and UTMB-Galveston Medical School
• 1 DO student from the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine
• 32 pre-medical students from Rice University, Southern Methodist University, Texas A&M University, University of Houston, and University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Thomas Caskey, CEO of the UT-Houston Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases, welcomed participants to the symposium. MD/PhD students from four Texas medical schools discussed their personal pathway within physician-scientist training. Freddy Nguyen, Founder and President of APSA, gave an overview of APSA and presented a number of exciting opportunities available in the coming year. The highlight of the Symposium was the Residency/Career panel, where the audience posed questions to established physician-scientists in the diverse fields of academia, government, and industry. Panelists included:

• Lisa Armitige, MD, PhD (UT-Houston '02) – Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine (Division of Infectious Disease), UT-Houston Medical School [academia]
• Stephen Hewitt, MD, PhD (UT-Houston '96) – Clinical Investigator, National Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Research (CCR) [government]
• Shayan Izaddoost, MD, PhD (Baylor College of Medicine '02) – PGY4 in Plastic Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine [academia]
• Atul Varadhachary (MD, University of Bombay '87, PhD, Johns Hopkins University '92), President & CEO, Agennix, Inc., Houston, TX; Adjunct Professor, Rice University Jones School of Management [industry]
• Tse-Kuan Yu, MD, PhD (UT-Houston '00) – Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center [academia]

Pre-meds and current medical students alike enjoyed the opportunity to engage the panel on issues affecting them. The Symposium concluded with parallel breakout sessions tailored to different stages of training: pre-medical students, MS1/MS2 students, and a PhD-phase session. The pre-med session participants included Admissions Committee representatives from Baylor College of Medicine, Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, UT-Houston Medical School, and UT-Southwestern Medical School. The other two breakout sessions were led by senior MD/PhD students. The day ended with a social/dinner, where interested participants (both students and panelists) continued their discussions over food and drink.

Based on overwhelmingly positive feedback from the attendees, the Symposium organizers believe the meeting was a success. It served as a regional steppingstone toward the national APSA Annual Meeting in Chicago in April 2007. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Matt McCurdy (mccurdy@rice.edu) or Chirag Patel (chirag0@gmail.com).