Unlike many traditional internships, Endeavor Health’s Personalized Medicine (PMed) Summer Camp provides a rare and rewarding opportunity for students to conduct real genomic translational research and complete a published manuscript.
Three students recently completed the exceptional 10-week program, the third year of the PMed Summer Camp, and had the valuable experience of working with leading researchers under the direction of Jianfeng Xu, MD, DrPH, the Ellrodt-Schweighauser Family Chair of Cancer Genomic Research and Vice President of Translational Research at Endeavor Health.
“Students have the unique opportunity to engage in sophisticated research that has really important clinical utility,” said Dr. Xu, who added that the students’ fresh perspectives also helped the research teams.
The program is open to all students — high school, college, graduate school and medical school — and the hope is to broaden awareness of the novel internship and attract even more students from a broad range of backgrounds including minorities and those from underserved communities.
“By design our students don’t have a background in research. They have to be capable, motivated and work hard,” said Dr. Xu, and this year’s group met those criteria and more, asking good questions and challenging the team.
This year’s research projects explored estimating personalized risks of genetic mutations related to hereditary breast and ovarian cancers (HBOC), and Lynch Syndrome related cancers, and refining risk for lung cancer based on smoking status and polygenic risk scores.
“It was great to know that the work we were doing really mattered,” said Patrick Titzer who is a Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience major at Villanova University.
In addition to learning an incredible amount about research and trends related to stratifying personal risks for lung cancer, Titzer said he appreciated discovering the depth of the medical research field. “It was really helpful for me to see there are so many different career options.”
And training the next generation of personalized medicine physicians and scientists is one of the main reasons Endeavor Health offers the program, explained Dr. Xu.
Brendan Prassas, a senior at Loyola Academy high school, admits he was a bit nervous going into the program, but found a personal connection to the HBOC research as all four of his grandparents have diseases related to genetic mutations. “The work was like a tribute to them,” said Prassas.
“I am so grateful for this opportunity and for Dr. Xu and the team who gave us so much time,” said Prassas, who like Titzer was thrilled to discover such a broad range of potential careers. “I was able to learn so much.”
The students made the most of the opportunity to develop skills in personalized medicine research from conducting thorough literature reviews and interpreting data to writing peer-reviewed manuscripts for publication.
“I was impressed with how hard-working they were. They showed amazing dedication to their projects and it was really inspiring,” said Research Study Coordinator Annie Ashworth.
