In 2013, the Board of Directors of the International Biomedical Research Alliance initiated yearly science recognition awards to honor scholars whose work has been of an extremely high caliber and deserving of merit. These awards have traditionally been announced at the Annual Scientific Research Workshop held each year in June at a location rotating between the NIH, Cambridge, and Oxford. This year, the workshop was held at Keble College at the University of Oxford June 22-23, 2016.
The NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program conducts an in-depth yearly review of the progress of all scholars in the program. During the review, the NIH Scientific Directors, led by Academic Dean Dr. Jim Sellers, assesses the progress and scientific accomplishments of the scholars from each class year. Scholars in their third and fourth years in the program with significant research accomplishments were selected for award consideration. The chosen scholars’ accomplishments included the publication of first-author papers with significant findings and presentations made at conferences. Prizes are awarded in three categories; Basic Science, Translational, and Innovation.
The award consists of an engraved statuette and, commencing in 2016, a modest monetary prize. The Alliance was pleased to announce that this year the award for Basic Science has been permanently endowed by Dr. Michael Lenardo, Co-Founder of the Scholars Program, in loving memory of his brother Gregory Paul Lenardo.
The winners of the 2016 International Biomedical Research Alliance awards are as follows:
THE GREGORY PAUL LENARDO BASIC SCIENCE AWARD for discoveries of fundamental cellular, molecular, or genetic processes using model systems that advance scientific understanding of biological processes in higher organisms was presented to Michael Chen.
Michael Chen is an OxCam Class of 2012 scholar, whose mentors are Dr. Adrian Ferre D’Amare of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and Dr. Shankar Balasubramanian of the University of Cambridge, Department of Chemistry. Michael recently published his elaboration of the mechanism by which DHX36, a G4-quadruplex helicase unwinds substrates in the context of nucleic acid biochemistry. While previous research focused on substrate stability through the alteration of the substrate nucleic acids, Michael’s work clarified the effect of the composition of the G4-quadruplex helicases themselves on the stability of the substrates and their role in controlling gene expression.
The TRANSLATIONAL AWARD FOR ADVANCES IN MEDICAL SCIENCE in the field of medical science that move fundamental discoveries from the bench to the bedside was presented to Brennan Decker
Brennan Decker is an OxCam Class of 2012 scholar and MD/PhD student at the Medical College of Wisconsin, whose mentors are Dr. Elaine Ostrander of the National Human Genome Research Institute and Dr. Douglas Easton of the University of Cambridge, Department of Oncology. Brennan recently published his identification of a mutation in the canine BRAF gene associated with bladder cancer that is identical to the mutation commonly found in several human cancers. His research opens up the possibility to develop a canine model to study the tumor in a naturalistic microenvironment that reproduces tumor heterogeneity. Brennan’s approach holds great promise for a better understanding of the molecular events leading to BRAF mutation-associated cancer.
The INNOVATION AWARD FOR NOVEL SOLUTIONS IN BIOLOGY OR MEDICINE for discoveries of unusual importance, application, or magnitude that make use of new or unusual methods, paradigms or approaches to solve important problems in biology or medicine was presented to Steven Witte.
Steven Witte is an OxCam Class of 2012 scholar and MD/PhD student at the University of Alabama – Birmingham, whose mentors are Dr. John O’Shea of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases and Dr. Allan Bradley of the Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge. Steven investigated the role of super enhancers during cell activation and differentiation through the analysis of p300 binding. His work has established that p300 ChIP-sequencing data can be used to reveal key nodes in genetic regulatory networks that govern cell fate and determination, and to uncover potential targets for anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer therapeutics.
Congratulations to the International Biomedical Research Alliance 2016 Scientific Research Awards winners and best wishes for continued success.
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/.
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.
