March 2, 2006
Bringing a medical perspective to Ph.D. programs
The UW is one of 13 institutions around the country that have won grants from a new program at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) aimed at introducing Ph.D. students in the basic sciences to clinical medicine. Applications were received from 82 institutions.
“We, like many others, are concerned by how difficult it is becoming for scientists to harness the explosion of new biomedical research information and translate it into medical practice,” said Dr. Thomas Cech, HHMI president.
“At a time when science and medicine must work hand in hand to solve problems of human health and disease, we want to help change graduate education to increase the pool of scientists who are doing medically oriented research.”
Called the Med into Grad Initiative, the HHMI program is splitting $10 million among the 13 institutions selected. The UW has been awarded $850,000.
At the UW, Dr. Nancy Maizels, professor of immunology and of biochemistry, is the program director, with Dr. Peter Byers, professor of pathology and of medicine, as codirector.
“We started working on this several years ago,” Maizels said, “when a group of faculty members began talking about how we could bring some knowledge of patient-care medicine to our graduate students.
“Many of us were working on interdisciplinary projects, or projects focused on specific medical problems or questions. But this wasn’t reflected in the way our students were trained.”
With the exception of students who earned both M.D. and Ph.D. degrees, those in a clinical medicine path and those who earned Ph.D.s in the basic sciences were speaking different languages and had different ways of looking at biomedical problems.
The faculty group developed ideas for a course, eventually called “molecular medicine,” that would be offered as an elective to all basic science graduate students.
The curriculum is taught by considering case studies of specific patients, and by identifying the molecular defects that contributed to disease. Students also have the opportunity either to take a medical school pathology class or to participate in a human genetics clinic.
The third element of the UW program adds a mentor with a clinical background to each student’s thesis committee, to facilitate Ph.D. work, in addition to the basic science Ph.D. faculty member.
The HHMI grant will provide support for four years.
Among other goals, Maizels said, the group plans to expand the program to offer an interdisciplinary Ph.D. degree in molecular medicine by 2010, and also to develop an undergraduate honors course in molecular medicine.
