The International Biomedical Research Alliance, a non-profit organization which provides programming and funding support for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program, announced that Harold Varmus, MD, is joining the Alliance’s board of directors. Dr. Varmus, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes, stepped down as director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 2015; previously, he served as president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and as director of the NIH. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at the Meyer Cancer Center of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center.
“The International Biomedical Research Alliance’s goal is to help train a new generation of top biomedical researchers who are better equipped to investigate human diseases and develop new preventions, treatments, and cures,” said Stephen M. McLean, chairman of the Alliance Board of Directors. “We want to increase the speed at which medical research occurs and also the efficacy of outcomes for patients. We warmly welcome Dr. Varmus to our Board.”
Dr. Varmus has had a long association with the Scholars Program, has met with many of its students, and has said that he is joining the board “to promote the development of the scientific careers of these remarkably talented young people.”
The NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program was created in 2001, through collaboration between the NIH and Oxford and Cambridge Universities, to revolutionize the way in which the most talented biomedical PhD and MD/PhD students in the United States and the European Union are taught. Participants in the Program receive accelerated training, work on collaborative projects that address critical biomedical research problems, and graduate approximately two years early with a PhD degree from either Oxford or Cambridge University. They spend an equal amount of time with a mentor in a laboratory at either Oxford or Cambridge University and an NIH Intramural Laboratory.
“The NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program has exceeded our expectations in training the next generation of biomedical researchers and in fostering international research collaborations,” said Michael Gottesman, MD, deputy director of intramural research at the NIH and chief of the Laboratory of Cell Biology at the NCI. “I can think of no one better than Harold Varmus to help the NIH-OxCam Program maintain its hallmark characteristics of intellectual freedom and flexibility that have made the program the success that it is.”
Dr. Varmus’ joins a board that includes scientists, physicians and business leaders. Fellow board members include Ralph Snyderman, MD, chancellor emeritus and James B. Duke Professor of Medicine at Duke University, and John Niederhuber, MD, executive vice president of Inova Health System and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Inova Translational Medicine Institute. P. Roy Vagelos, MD, retired chairman and CEO of Merck & Co., Inc. is also an emeritus board member.
Further information about the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program can be found at http://oxcam.gpp.nih.gov.
Rick Fairhurst, MD, PhD – an NIAID physician-scientist and director of the NIH MD/PhD Partnership Training Program – has now trained seven NIH-OxCam students in malaria research, in collaboration with seven different professors at the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge. Recent graduates include Jeanette Beaudry, MD, PhD, who just matched into her top choice pediatrics residency program at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, Michael Krause, DPhil, who is completing medical school at Case Western Reserve University, and Aaron Neal, DPhil, who is currently completing a post-doctoral fellowship in the Fairhurst laboratory and applying for positions at the CDC. Current students include Jessica Hostetler, Kimberly Faldetta, Megan Ansbro, and Erin Coonahan. All of these PhD and MD/PhD students have challenging projects, such as discovering new mechanisms of antimalarial drug resistance or identifying new malaria vaccine candidates, and the opportunity to work in remote malarious areas of Mali and Cambodia. On some days, these students are spread across four continents. In the Fairhurst laboratory, every day is World Malaria Day!
Photo courtesy of the Fairhurst Lab shows Michael Krause, an NIH-OxCam student in the Fairhurst laboratory, as he helps to enroll 1500 children into a four-year cohort study of malaria risk in Kenieroba village, Mali. The findings from this study were later published in Lancet Infectious Diseases, the world’s top-ranked Infectious Diseases specialty journal
The Lasker Lessons in Leadership lectureship series provide strategies for developing essential leadership skills to MD/PhD students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows. The series is a collaboration between the International Biomedical Research Alliance, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and the National Institutes of Health NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program.
Craig Thompson, President and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center was the keynote speaker for the Lasker Lessons in Leadership event on March 31, 2016. His talk entitled “The Difference between Leadership and Management’ can be viewed below.
Distinguished young researchers seeking to pursue a PhD or MD/PhD arrived last week at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland for activities surrounding the Class of 2016 candidate interviews. These interviews, conducted by panelists of principal investigators from across various laboratories at the NIH, was the next stage in advancing toward an offer to earn a highly coveted seat in the Class of 2016 NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program and MD/PhD Global Doctoral Partnerships Program. The program is an accelerated, individualized, doctoral training program for outstanding science students committed to biomedical research careers.
The program is based on the British system, in which students perform doctoral research without required formal courses. Established at the NIH in 2000, the concept of NIH-U.K. partnerships was developed specifically to address some of the observed limitations of the American graduate education in biomedical sciences: excessive time to completion of a PhD (7.8 years per National Research Council studies); limitation of programs to a single university, department, or discipline; inadequate preparation for the global nature of contemporary science; and limited experience in collaborative research.
Chief among these problems is the length of time to completion in the traditional program, which, even at the best universities, has resulted in young scientists emerging to begin their independent research careers at the age of 35 or even later. The awareness of these limitations inspired the vision to develop a more efficient training experience, which incorporated global collaboration and interdisciplinary biomedical research. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were an obvious selection for partners, due to their outstanding biomedical science and clinical schools. With their participation, the vision evolved into a doctoral program that enables students to pursue collaborative thesis research with minimal course work and rotations and a completed PhD in an average of 4 years. In 2006, the program also established a platform for students to pursue a combined MD/PhD. The Rhodes Trust, Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission, Churchill, Gates, and Fulbright Scholarship programs have also contributed to individuals seeking their PhDs in biomedical research through this program.
Several of the events surrounding the candidate interviews were supported by the International Biomedical Research Alliance. The Alliance, established in 2005 as a unique public-private partnership, is comprised of a group of dedicated private citizens with the shared aim of training a new generation of top biomedical researchers who are better equipped to investigate human diseases and develop new preventions, treatments, and cures. Emergent BioSolutions, a pioneer in its support for the Scholars Program through the Alliance, generously sponsored the Class of 2016 Candidates’ Dinner on the evening of February 16, 2016. “Emergent BioSolutions is honored to be a longstanding partner of the Alliance and the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Program,” said Tracey Schmitt Lintott, Emergent’s SVP Global Public Affairs. “As a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to protect and enhance life, supporting our talented scholars and fueling their innovation and passion in biomedical research is an investment not only in their future, but also in the scientific workforce of tomorrow.”
Scholars chosen for the Class of 2016 will be notified prior to the end of February. Each scholar receives the equivalent of $300,000-$550,000 in funding. To learn more about the Scholars Program visit http://oxcam.gpp.nih.gov/.
Often called “The Father of Personalized Medicine,” Dr. Ralph Snyderman, Chancellor Emeritus, Duke University, and James B. Duke Professor of Medicine in the Duke University School of Medicine and a member of the Alliance board directors was the recipient of the PMWC Pioneer Award at the 10th Personalized Medicine World Conference held in Silicon Valley, California, January 24 -27, 2016. The PMWC Pioneer Award is given on occasion to a rare individual who presaged the present day excitement regarding personalized medicine at a time when only less evolved technology and less encouragement by peers existed, but nevertheless made major advances in the field.
Dr. Snyderman has been a passionate supporter for personalized medicine that advocates for a predictive, proactive, preventive, and patient-participatory approaches. He has lectured extensively on this new model of care, sighting that converging technologies have allowed medical professionals the ability to predict events, determine risks for disease, track health, and enhance the well-being of their patients, thereby mitigating health risks.
PMWC International is dedicated to transforming healthcare through the global adoption of personalized medicine. Launched by Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs in 2009, PMWC International holds conferences in the U.S. and abroad to forge connections and drive innovation. You can learn more about PMWC 2016 at http://2016sv.pmwcintl.com/
The International Biomedical Research Alliance, a non-profit organization which provides programming and funding support for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program, announced that Harold Varmus, MD, is joining the Alliance’s board of directors. Dr. Varmus, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes, stepped down as director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 2015; previously, he served as president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and as director of the NIH. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at the Meyer Cancer Center of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center.
