Translational Cancer Research
Program Overview
Summer Research Opportunities for JMC Students
Program Director: Scott Waldman, M.D., Ph.D.
The objective of this program is to attract highly qualified medical students to careers in translational/clinical cancer research. The program will accomplish this objective by providing summer research opportunities in active, ongoing, and contemporary biomedical research laboratories whose research focus is the transfer of information from the laboratory to treatment of the patient. The program aims to stress the notion that it is possible to have a meaningful, rewarding career doing clinically relevant cancer research by matching medical students with a core faculty which consist predominantly of clinical scientists. Furthermore, the core faculty been carefully selected to reflect the breadth of clinically relevant cancer research so as to make clear that cancer research is not limited strictly to the research bench. Student participants in the program will attend meetings of relevant Clinical Research Groups, and will be encouraged to make rounds with their preceptors. This emphasis on the patient as the focus of the research activity sets this program apart from traditional training programs that focus more on the cellular and molecular aspects of cancer. Such focus, and the careful selection of faculty who are excellent clinical scientist role models, is designed to entice exceptional students into a career in clinical cancer research.
Specifically, the program will aim to:
- permit student participants to develop insight into the process by which results from the research laboratory are translated into diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to cancer,
- provide initial experience in the design and execution of experiments that validate the potential of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to cancer,
- foster constructive views as to the role of clinical scientists in an academic research center,
- enhance the perception that the clinical scientist plays a meaningful and rewarding role in the development and application findings from the cancer research laboratory in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer,
- bring student participants into regular contact with role models who are enthusiastic about research in cancer, and
- underscore the importance of the role of the physician as an intermediary between the basic science research laboratory and the clinic. This aim is the notion that the physician who understands research can best translate it into the problems of patient care, can formulate and test hypotheses, and is more likely to provide ideas for further investigation.
For program information contact:
Aveniel de Lorenzo, MS
Research Coordinator, Special Programs
Office of Scientific Affairs
Telephone: 215-503-8990
E-mail: Aveniel.deLorenzo@jefferson.edu