Student Research Day 2017

When fifth-year medical student Charles Li was looking for a research study to deepen his understanding of genomics, he reached out to a giant in the field: former chair of the Department of Genetics, and now president of Rockefeller University, Richard P. Lifton, M.D., Ph.D. Lifton connected him with a project that examined the genetics of chemotherapy response in patients with triple negative breast cancer. The result was thrilling: “We found a very promising signature for chemotherapy response,” said Li. If the method that Li outlined in his poster at Student Research Day is validated, physicians will be able to determine whether certain patients will respond to chemotherapy before they even begin.

Li and his fellow students presented 105 posters on their findings at The Anlyan Center on May 2. This annual tradition celebrates the research accomplishments of M.D., M.D./Ph.D., and M.P.H. students, and includes, in addition to the poster presentation, oral presentations of prize-winning student theses. The day culminated with the 30th Farr Lecture, given this year by the nephrologist Eric G. Neilson, M.D., the Lewis Landsberg Dean of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

In a tradition that dates back to 1839, Yale is one of a few medical schools that require students to complete a thesis based on original research. Presenting this research to an audience of faculty and fellow students is an integral part of medical education at Yale, said John N. Forrest Jr, M.D., director of the Office of Student Research. “A crucial aspect of presenting a poster is learning how to talk to people, explain your results, and articulate your ideas,” he said. In his lecture, Neilson underscored that research such as Li’s is not only beneficial for its own sake, but has an ultimate real-world impact. As he embarked on his research career, Neilson said, “I began to see that everything we do at the bedside started out as an experiment. With that understanding, I came to realize, as Holly Smith, M.D. at University of California, San Francisco, once said, that the most pressing health care problems of our time are the diseases for which we have no answers. I like to I repeat that sentiment as often as I can because it is important. Imagine today if the delivery of health care were free and completely accessible. People would still die of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. So there still is an enormous amount of work to do.”

For students contemplating their careers after Yale, Neilson relayed his own “creation story,” recalling his decision to pursue medical research. As a first-year med student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), “I was pretty naïve. I didn’t even know that physicians could do research.” At UAB he met Steven Hebert, M.D., a clinical renal fellow who later became the chair and C.N.H. Long Professor of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale. “He would religiously go to the library after bedside rounds and read biophysics journals,” he recalled fondly of his late colleague. It was early interactions with scientists like Hebert, Neilson, said, that helped spur his interest in scientific research. His career in nephrology, he said, has since focused on discoveries in the nephritogenic immune response in autoimmune renal disease.

In closing his lecture, Neilson recalled that he has had more than nine mentors throughout his career. “I guess I’ve needed a lot of help from time to time,” he joked. As both a mentee and a mentor for the past 30 years, he said, “I’ve had all kinds of connections with people with different views of the world. A month doesn’t go by when someone I have mentored in the past doesn’t call me with a new problem they are trying to solve.”

In addition to the poster presentations, five students were selected to present their prize-winning theses in a plenary scientific session following the poster presentations: Jake Wang, UV-induced somatic mutations elicit a functional T cell response in the YUMMER1.7 Mouse Melanoma Model; Jason Weed, Development of an in vitro platform for screening target molecular agents for cutaneous T cell lymphoma; Ravi Gupta, Generic drug policy in the U.S.—Impact on drug prices and shortages; Jack Turban, Transgender youth: Evolving treatment paradigms; Muhamed Hadzipasic, Cell and circuit studies in a mouse model of ALS.