Hhmi Award Increases Clinical Experience For Phd Students
A new grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will soon help PhD students at CUMC gain experience outside of their research laboratories and develop a better understanding of medical problems faced by patients and their physicians.
“We believe having more contact with patients will enable our students to see new opportunities to improve clinical treatments when they return to the lab,” says grant director Ronald Liem, PhD, professor of pathology and cell biology and director of the Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine graduate program.
Starting in the fall of 2010, students will be selected to participate in an enhanced training program (supported by the HHMI grant) that integrates coursework in medical concepts with real clinical experiences, including medical rounds and specialized tutorials in a clinical area of their interest.
In addition to Dr. Liem, Howard Worman, MD, professor of medicine and of pathology and cell biology, and Steven Spitalnik, MD, professor of pathology and cell biology, will direct the program.
More and more PhD students are interested in clinical experiences and in ‘translational science’ that clearly makes the connection between basic research and disease. It also is increasingly common for PhD graduates to have appointments in clinical departments, accentuating the need for them to be comfortable working in a clinical environment.
All students in the graduate programs in Molecular Basis of Health and Disease, which includes Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine, make that connection between basic science and patients in the first-year “Mechanisms of Human Disease” course, which incorporates clinical experiences.
“This year we’ve already brought in patients with sickle cell disease, and it’s been a real eye opener for the students,” Dr. Liem says. “As laboratory scientists, we think of the disease as a problem with protein structure, not as a person. For PhD students, it’s a completely new experience.”
The HHMI initiative will further enhance the experience and provide students with a deeper understanding of disease-related concepts that will enable them to see new opportunities to improve clinical treatments and diagnostics.
The HHMI’s “Med into Grad” Initiative began in 2005 as part of a broader effort by HHMI to increase the number of researchers who can turn basic science discoveries into improved treatments. This year the initiative selected 23 institutions, including Columbia University, to receive up to $700,000 over four years.