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Summer program gives students a taste of research
Research Institute gives students a taste of research
BY ERIN FAIRCHILD
The best way to lure the brightestyoung minds to biomedical research is to give them the opportunity to work in the laboratories of some of the nation’s top scientists, in the most exciting and growing fields of medicine.
Let them participate in solving the mystery of why cancers metastasize or let them image the brain and shed light on what makes a grandmother develop Alzheimer’s disease. Let them taste the excitement of seeing how their education affects the real world, real patients and real diseases. The Methodist Hospital Research Institute has created just that environment for students from around the country, who participate in the Research Institute Summer Internship Program. “Through this experience, our interns really see how their field of study can affect patients, whole populations and the world,” said Dr. Patricia
Chévez-Barrios, ophthalmic pathologist director of the program. “They better appreciate the importance and the value of what they’re learning in school.
Jim Elder, a sophomore at Rice University, was one of 22 students who interned in The Methodist Research Institute’s Summer Internship Program.
“It’s all theory in their studies. Here, they get to experience first hand the issues that are stumbled upon in translational and clinical research as we’re trying to solve the mysteries of a disease process.”
In the program, they see from a different point of view, so they might have a different — better, more realistic, more enthusiastic — approach to their field when they return to school.
“I’m interested in research, and this gives me hands-on experience in proteomics — the cutting edge of science,” said Jim Elder, a sophomore Rice University bioengineering student. Elder, who interned in the lab of Dr. John Baxter, said he wasn’t just following someone around with a clipboard. “I was on the front line, seeing where it all starts.”
Baxter, who arrived at the Research Institute earlier this year, is one of the world’s most prominent pioneers in hormone action. “Textbooks will one day show pictures of what’s going on at the Research Institute today. I got a thrill out of being part of it if only for a few weeks,” Elder said. “Plus, it was a paying job, so my mom was happy.”(See Leading Medicine, volume 4, #4 for more information on Baxter’s work.)
Elder applied to the intern program because The Methodist Hospital Research Institute is at the forefront of medical exploration. Dr. Michael Lieberman, director of the Research Institute and founder of the intern program, has brought in heavy hitters, and it’s been “wildly successful.” Major research teams from Harvard, The National Institutes of Health, University of California at San Francisco and UCLA have all gravitated here to Methodist.
“Not many kids at major universities get to do this stuff,” Elder said. “These are the all-stars.”
The program had 22 students from renowned undergraduate universities this year including Rice, Johns Hopkins, University of Texas at Austin, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Emory University, Rhodes College, University of Houston and others.
Five participants were medical students from Monterrey Tec
(Tecnológico de Monterrey), the MIT of Mexico, whose medical school is one of the most highly rated in Mexico. They are working towards a dual M.D./Ph.D. degree granted by Monterrey Tech and The Methodist Hospital Research Institute.
“We want to give these students a real research experience,” said Baxter, program mentor, director of the Genomic Medicine Program and co-director of the Diabetes Research Center at the Research Institute. “We expect that several of our interns — who are only undergraduate students and medical students — will have publishable scientific results from their participation in this program. That’s the holy grail for many M.D.s and Ph.D.s over their entire careers.”
Baxter is no stranger to highprofile published research. His lab cloned several of the first classes of genes and demonstrated the power of DNA technology for developing treatments for diseases. He was recently recognized for his efforts in the development of compounds to treat obesity, atherosclerosis and diabetes.
This summer’s class worked in the labs of pathologists, cardiologists, radiologists and specialists in infectious disease, diabetes, various cancers and bioinformatics (the use of applied mathematics, informatics, statistics, computer science and other related disciplines to solve biological problems usually on the molecular level).
Each week, the students heard presentations and interacted with some of the most prominent physicians and researchers in their fields, such as Nobel laureate Dr. Ferid Murad, who lectured about his discovery of the way nitric oxide helps blood vessels dilate.
Diabetes expert Dr. Willa Hsueh (pronounced Shoy), founder and former head of the NIH-sponsored Diabetes and Endocrine Research Center at UCLA and University of California-San Diego, discussed the ties between obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, and the process by which diabetes damages the heart, blood vessels, liver and kidney. (See Leading Medicine, volume 4, #4 for more information on Hsueh’s work.)
“The laboratory is the best place to give talented young people a taste of research,” Lieberman said. “For many, it becomes their life passion. I suspect that’s how many of our investigators got their start.”
