Akshay G. Patel, MS, MD, PhD

At age 11, I decided to watch some TV instead of do the chores my mom asked of me. Instead of typing the numbers to cartoons, I ended up watching a documentary about how a young physician used cutting edge research to guide novel therapies against epilepsy.

I was hooked.

Throughout my training, I've strived to figure out what makes diseases "tick" to find new ways to treat them. At Villanova, I joined a cancer immunology lab to study the mechanism that described how cancer cells cause apoptosis of T cells. During a summer, I did a research fellowship at Drexel University to study the mechanisms that confer resistance to multiple sclerosis in mouse models.

I joined the MD/PhD program at SUNY Upstate interested in further studying the immune system. In Dr. Andras Perl's lab, I set out to study endosomal trafficking in SLE, but was fascinated by metabolism and the liver. I ended up with two thesis projects: Defining mechanisms of oxidative stress-mediated hepatocarcinogenesis and investigating endosomal trafficking-mediated hepatotoxicity in SLE, the latter of which was funded by an F30 from NIDDK, Upstate's first.

Yale's PSTP drew me for a few reasons. The internal medicine training is top-notch, the research here is world-class, and our Liver Center is funded by a P30 from the NIDDK. My research interests focus on how our environment can impact our organ systems, with the liver as the interface. For example, can the food we eat predispose us to anxiety depending on how healthy our liver is?

I've had to be very careful throughout my training. Making sure I put in the right orders for my patients, pipetted the right samples in the right tubes, and picked the right answer on the exam...but I still change the channel without looking at the remote. Who knows what I'll come across next.