APSA 7th Annual Meeting
APSA Members Present Their Research to ASCI and AAP Members
The Clinical and Translational Science Network (CTSciNet) is a joint project of Science Careers, AAAS, and several partner organizations including the American Physician Scientists Association (APSA).
Unlocking the Genome's Secrets to Long Life - Posted May 6, 2011
Postdoc Liz Cirulli started out in plant genetics but now co-leads Duke's Centenarian Project, which aims to find gene variants that account for longevity.
"Surviving to 100 means that you have avoided or made it past all of the diseases that might have killed you at a younger age. Therefore, discovering genetic variants related to longevity may provide information about general health at all ages." -- Liz Cirulli
If you're trying to discover the secrets to long life, studying people who live to age 100 and beyond -- centenarians -- is a good place to start. Recent research on centenarians, including a paper published in Science last year, has pinpointed numerous genetic variants that might account for their extra years.
The ability to sequence a person's...
Q&A: Taking Mathematics to Heart - Posted April 29, 2011
Mathematician John Wesley Cain works with clinicians, physicists, and engineers in a field called cardiac electrophysiology.
"The mathematics is very rich and ... there is just absolutely no end to the types of questions you can pose about dynamics in cardiac tissue." -- John Wesley Cain
John Wesley Cain, 34, started graduate school with a mathematician's aversion to biology. He took a course in his first semester at Duke University with
David Schaeffer, an applied mathematician who was just beginning to study models of cardiac rhythms. In the class, Cain had to choose from a list of projects and ended up working on mathematical models of cardiac action potential. "I think that was secretly his favorite project," Cain says.
Cain himself took quickly to the work. "I thought the mathematics was...
Content Collection: Careers in Clinical and Translational Research - Posted April 15, 2011
Learning How to Conduct Cancer Clinical Trials, by Karyn Hede, 25 March 2011. Training courses outline the challenges and opportunities in conducting cancer clinical trials.
Q&A: Finding and Exploiting Cancer's Weaknesses, by Kate Travis, 25 March 2011. Clinician-investigator David Solit studies the genetic basis of cancer tumors and looks for novel therapies that target specific mutations.
Transcript: An Interview With Clinician-Investigator David Solit, by Kate Travis, 25 March 2011. Read the full transcript of an interview with clinician-investigator David...
Learning How to Conduct Cancer Clinical Trials - Posted March 25, 2011
Training courses outline the challenges and opportunities in conducting cancer clinical trials.
In an era of targeted cancer therapy, treatments that help some patients may not benefit others. Parsing data requires a sophisticated trial design that includes laboratory work. Such work, often called "translational medicine," is considered the forefront of modern clinical trial design.
In 2001, Howard "Jack" West was in his final year as a medical oncology fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, when he wanted to develop a clinical trial to test a molecularly targeted therapy for advanced bronchioloalveolar lung cancer. He knew that making the transition from clinician in training to lead investigator running a clinical trial would require expertise he lacked and an infrastructure he was...
Q&A: Finding and Exploiting Cancer's Weaknesses - Posted March 25, 2011
Clinician-investigator David Solit studies the genetic basis of cancer tumors and looks for novel therapies that target specific mutations.
"I thought it would be best to stay in the lab and to try to actually develop some better treatments that we could bring into the clinic." -- David Solit
Oncologist David Solit, 41, has some close professional role models: His father was a surgeon and his grandfather a family practitioner. Like many doctors who pursue oncology, he became interested in the disease after a relative died from breast cancer. But it was a laboratory rotation during his oncology fellowship that sealed his interest in cancer research.
"My interest was not to stay in the clinic and try to use the drugs that we had, which, in my opinion, were not very good," Solit says. "I thought it would be best to stay in the lab and to try to actually develop some better...
Transcript: An Interview With Clinician-Investigator David Solit - Posted March 25, 2011
Read the full transcript of an interview with clinician-investigator David Solit of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
"I think it's an exciting time to be in cancer research. ... There's a huge amount of opportunity to try to sort through ... questions in the lab. And what's exciting to me is that you can directly potentially use that information to impact and improve the care of patients with cancer." - David Solit
Q: Can you introduce yourself?
David Solit: I'm Dr. David Solit. I'm a medical oncologist but also run a translational research lab at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. I do see patients. I see patients with advanced cancer, primarily genitourinary cancers like prostate cancer. And then I focus in the lab on cancer...
A Zigzagging Path Points Straight to Success - Posted March 4, 2011
Patricia Beckmann's career is one long lesson in how to succeed in science.
"She's a fantastic mentor to early-career scientists, for sure. And she has the uncanny ability to recognize the value of early-stage research." -- Robert Jordan
Nearly anyone with 25 years of biotech experience would be happy to have a resume like Patricia Beckmann's. It hits many desirable highlights: postdoc experiences as a Fullbright scholar and a visiting scientist at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), many dozens of published papers and patents, and a long list of impressive job titles from drug companies to law and venture capital firms to state economic development organizations. Beckmann is also among the inventors of blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug...
Sharing Data in Biomedical and Clinical Research - Posted February 11, 2011
It's not always clear how or where to share clinical data in a way that protects patients' privacy.
"I firmly believe that openness and transparency is in the best interests of science. And it's in the best interest of scientific careers as well." -- Andrew Vickers
There has been vigorous discussion in the scientific literature about the need and value of sharing full data sets from biomedical and clinical research, but it's rare to see the issue get headlines in the mainstream media. In August, an article in The New York Times put the spotlight on a $60 million clinical study of Alzheimer's disease because of its innovative approach to data management: Clinical and imaging data collected in the Alzheimer?s Disease...
More Than Words - Posted February 11, 2011
Biomedical ontology is growing as an informatics specialty, and ontologies are proving to be powerful software and data-mining tools.
"It's getting to be impossible to do work in bioinformatics without knowledge of biomedical ontology." -- Mark Musen
Most biomedical research laboratories make up their own private language to describe their particular techniques, materials, and measurements. Even medical practitioners have more than a hundred ways to describe a simple fact such as a patient's blood glucose. Talking to other scientists about data is like having a conversation without agreeing which words to use, or what they mean. With no lingua franca, how can biomedical researchers make the most of the vast amounts of data out there?
Over the past decade, a bioinformatics specialization called biomedical ontology has grown up around this question. Most biomedical...
A Loyal Fan of Women's Health Research - Posted January 28, 2011
Physician-scientist Rebecca Jackson's enthusiasm for research is matched only by her passion for Ohio State football.
"You really have to be open to listening to people from areas that are outside your own discipline. There are often ideas that catalyze a different line of inquiry because of that knowledge." -- Rebecca Jackson
Rebecca Jackson launched her first formal physiology study in the eighth grade. With the support of her rodent-tolerant family, she studied the effects of varying thyroid hormone levels on the physical characteristics of a small rat colony she housed in her living room.
The project taught her an early lesson about unexpected results in scientific research: "I learned from that study ... that when you are very hypo- or hyperthyroid, you are infertile," Jackson says. As soon as her experiments ended, the rats' natural fecundity kicked in and the colony...
From Elephants to People: A Veterinary Scientist's Unique Career Path - Posted January 14, 2011
D.V.M.-Ph.D. Laura Richman's discovery of a novel elephant herpesvirus led to a career in human translational medicine.
Laura Richman advises early-career scientists interested in translational research to look beyond the training of a basic biomedical Ph.D. "Take all opportunities, and ask questions of everyone," she says.
In 1995, Laura Richman was working as a veterinary pathology resident at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., when she and her colleagues faced an unusual case. A 16-month-old elephant named Kumari had died mysteriously after a 5-day illness. Richman and Richard Montali, one of the zoo's veterinary pathologists, did a detailed necropsy and noticed swelling, signs of pain, and a strangely purple tongue. When they looked at heart, liver, and tongue tissues under a microscope, they...
From Elephants to People: A Veterinary Scientist's Unique Career Path - Posted January 14, 2011
D.V.M.-Ph.D. Laura Richman's discovery of a novel elephant herpesvirus led to a career in human translational medicine.
Laura Richman advises early-career scientists interested in translational research to look beyond the training of a basic biomedical Ph.D. "Take all opportunities, and ask questions of everyone," she says.
In 1995, Laura Richman was working as a veterinary pathology resident at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., when she and her colleagues faced an unusual case. A 16-month-old elephant named Kumari had died mysteriously after a 5-day illness. Richman and Richard Montali, one of the zoo's veterinary pathologists, did a detailed necropsy and noticed swelling, signs of pain, and a strangely purple tongue. When they looked at heart, liver, and tongue tissues under a microscope, they...
The Best of Science Careers, 2010 - Posted December 24, 2010
It was a difficult year for careers in science but another good year for Science Careers.
In 2010 there were lots of awesome stories to tell.
In science-career terms, 2009 -- that is, last year -- was a year of private-sector layoffs and canceled faculty searches, of basic-research downsizing in industry and postdocs hanging on until the job market improves. 2010 was mild by comparison; it seemed like not much happened, economically (though much great science was done). The problem with 2010 is -- or was -- that the job market just didn't improve fast enough. It still felt like doldrums. We kept waiting and wanting to be hopeful, but things refused to look up.
In fact, things were looking up all along, even if it was hard to notice. According to one metric -- the number of science-relevant job ads posted online, as measured by...
Engineering Solutions to Biomedical Problems - Posted December 17, 2010
There are many ways that classically trained engineers can work at the interface of engineering and medicine.
"Engineers are not going to replace biologists, nor should we try to. ... The value of having engineers in medicine is that we're trained in a different way and approach problems in a different way." -- Mark Levenston
Biomedical engineering plays a crucial role in translational research, and degree programs in the discipline are now offered at universities around the world. (See, for example, the June Science Careers article " Designing a Career in Biomedical Engineering.") At the same time, many classically trained engineers are working at the interface of engineering and medicine. Science Careers spoke to five such...
Perspective: Residency 101 for Physician-Scientists - Posted November 26, 2010
Future physician-scientists should ask three questions when choosing a residency: What field? What type of residency? Which program?
You need to be a well-informed consumer and you need to start early. Above all, you need to find a program that will facilitate the development of your research-oriented career and provide the appropriate mentoring to assure your success as a physician scientist.
For a young physician-scientist seeking a career in academic medicine, choosing a residency can be stressful and difficult. But the decision can be eased by breaking it down into three questions: Which clinical field(s) should I choose? Should I consider a "research" or short-track residency program? And finally, what specific programs should I consider? Answering each of these questions in turn will help you assemble a residency short list that, hopefully, contains your perfect-fit...
Working With Industry Under a Microscope - Posted November 12, 2010
Regulations seem to discourage academic scientists from partnering with industry, but such collaboration is essential to translational research.
"The relationships which I think are really working for both sides -- that is, for the people in my lab and for the people in industry settings -- are the ones which have been evolving over years of good communication. Long-term relations and some sort of trust have to be built up, and that takes a while." -- Roman Giger
A biomedical researcher might be excused for feeling confused about the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) attitude toward its grantees' relationships with for-profit companies. On the one hand, NIH has invested billions in translational research and is expected to launch the new $50 million Cures Acceleration Network in 2011. On the other hand,...
Ghostwriters in the Medical Literature - Posted November 12, 2010
Despite new disclosure requirements, ghostwriters remain a threat to the integrity of the scienti???c literature as well as careers.
"Some of it is just na??vet?? on the physicians' part," she says. "But there's also the fact that this is so common that it's not considered unusual. There's no shame attached to it." -- Adriane Fugh-Berman
When physician Adriane Fugh-Berman of Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., was asked to write a review article on interactions between herbs and warfarin, she said maybe. A clinician and expert on herb-drug interactions, Fugh-Berman thought the information could be useful to clinicians who prescribe warfarin as an anticoagulant.
A few months later, a finished manuscript arrived on her desk. All she needed to do was read and approve it. She was intrigued and...
Ghostwriters in the Medical Literature - Posted November 12, 2010
Despite new disclosure requirements, ghostwriters remain a threat to the integrity of the scientific literature as well as careers.
"Some of it is just naivete on the physicians' part," she says. "But there's also the fact that this is so common that it's not considered unusual. There's no shame attached to it." -- Adriane Fugh-Berman
When physician Adriane Fugh-Berman of Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., was asked to write a review article on interactions between herbs and warfarin, she said maybe. A clinician and expert on herb-drug interactions, Fugh-Berman thought the information could be useful to clinicians who prescribe warfarin as an anticoagulant.
A few months later, a finished manuscript arrived on her desk. All she needed to do was read and approve it. She was intrigued and...
Opening New Research Avenues in Epigenetics - Posted October 29, 2010
Epigenetics provides a common theme to Spanish cancer researcher Manel Esteller's broad interests in basic and translational research.
"When I see a cancer cell, I see [it] as something that's very bizarre, that has genetic lesions, that has DNA methylation alterations, that has histone modifications, that has noncoding RNA aberrant expression." Manel Esteller
Spanish cancer researcher Manel Esteller, 42, has the temperament of an explorer. "There are some people [who] like to stay in their niche, but I'm not made this way," he says. "I like to start many things, to make one of the first discoveries, and then switch gears." The young, expanding field of epigenetics has proved to be an ideal platform for his style of science.
Trained as both a medical doctor and a research scientist, Esteller was attracted to epigenetics after stumbling upon a research question that...
Opening New Research Avenues in Epigenetics - Posted October 29, 2010
Epigenetics provides a common theme to Spanish cancer researcher Manel Esteller's broad interests in basic and translational research.
"When I see a cancer cell, I see [it] as something that's very bizarre, that has genetic lesions, that has DNA methylation alterations, that has histone modifications, that has noncoding RNA aberrant expression." Manel Esteller
Spanish cancer researcher Manel Esteller, 42, has the temperament of an explorer. "There are some people [who] like to stay in their niche, but I'm not made this way," he says. "I like to start many things, to make one of the first discoveries, and then switch gears." The young, expanding field of epigenetics has proved to be an ideal platform for his style of science.
Trained as both a medical doctor and a research scientist, Esteller was attracted to epigenetics after stumbling upon a research question that...
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