Oncology Research

[barsoum.michael]

I know I repeated this post in the rad onc page but I really didn't know where to post it so I just posted it in both

Hello everyone,

So Im a 3rd year student at a 7 year combined BS/MD in New York and I was wondering how I should go about doing any kind of oncology research? I am currently in my last year of undergrad about to continue into the medical school portion in my program. Every lab I have contacted has said that I do not have enough experience and I understand that I dont have much experience and I am really just willing to learn techniques from the grad students or anyone who does research. I am really beyond interested in oncology and I really do not know where to start.

Can anyone give me advice on what to do? Also if you are working in a lab in NY can you message me so that I can ask more questions?

Thanks so much everyone!

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[Dro133]

I know I repeated this post in the rad onc page but I really didn't know where to post it so I just posted it in both

Hello everyone,

So Im a 3rd year student at a 7 year combined BS/MD in New York and I was wondering how I should go about doing any kind of oncology research? I am currently in my last year of undergrad about to continue into the medical school portion in my program. Every lab I have contacted has said that I do not have enough experience and I understand that I dont have much experience and I am really just willing to learn techniques from the grad students or anyone who does research. I am really beyond interested in oncology and I really do not know where to start.

Can anyone give me advice on what to do? Also if you are working in a lab in NY can you message me so that I can ask more questions?

Thanks so much everyone!

How many labs have you contacted? Are they basic science labs? Have you done any basic science research in the past? If not, it can take a lot of time and resources to train someone with no basic science experience. They might also see that you're a med student who probably won't have a whole lot of time to invest in research, and they might question the return that they'll get on their investment in you.

Are you absolutely set on doing basic science? If you're interested in oncology, there are some oncologists that do policy type research that is less time intensive and has a much less steep learning curve than basic science. These types of projects also take less time than a basic science project, and if you're looking to get some research on your resume, it may be a more realistic path towards getting your name on some papers.

But if you're really set on doing basic science, I'd suggest to keep reaching out to labs until you find something.

 

[barsoum.michael]

How many labs have you contacted? Are they basic science labs? Have you done any basic science research in the past? If not, it can take a lot of time and resources to train someone with no basic science experience. They might also see that you're a med student who probably won't have a whole lot of time to invest in research, and they might question the return that they'll get on their investment in you.

Are you absolutely set on doing basic science? If you're interested in oncology, there are some oncologists that do policy type research that is less time intensive and has a much less steep learning curve than basic science. These types of projects also take less time than a basic science project, and if you're looking to get some research on your resume, it may be a more realistic path towards getting your name on some papers.

But if you're really set on doing basic science, I'd suggest to keep reaching out to labs until you find something.

Thanks for the response!! I've contacted about 10 to 15 labs and many of them have not responded or said I do not have much experience. I honestly dont even mind just watching the postdoc in the lab. I do not want to be a burden on them, I would just like to get myself into a lab. I know that rad onc and oncology in general is very research heavy so I would like to start somewhere plus I would like to start making connections now. What do you mean by policy type research? I did not know oncologists are involved in that type of research.

 

[Dro133]

Thanks for the response!! I've contacted about 10 to 15 labs and many of them have not responded or said I do not have much experience. I honestly dont even mind just watching the postdoc in the lab. I do not want to be a burden on them, I would just like to get myself into a lab. I know that rad onc and oncology in general is very research heavy so I would like to start somewhere plus I would like to start making connections now. What do you mean by policy type research? I did not know oncologists are involved in that type of research.

Re: policy type research, go to the JAMA oncology journal website (New online first articles from JAMA Oncology). You'll see some basic science publications and some clinical trial publications, but you'll also see things like "Patterns in Health Care Access and Affordability Among Cancer Survivors During Implementation of the Affordable Care Act" and "Estimation of the Percentage of US Patients With Cancer Who Benefit from Genome-Driven oncology". I'm currently working on one of these non-basic science projects with an oncologist at my institution; it involves a lot of grunt work, but I can do it on my laptop from the comfort of home or a coffee shop. This sort of flexibility is really nice when you're a busy med student, because you can fit the research around your schedule.

Obviously, if you're really passionate about basic science research, then keep at trying to find a basic science lab. But to me, the practicality of being able to do research from home is really nice. I think that as a med student, you really have to be passionate about basic science in order to justify working in a basic science lab, because otherwise, it just doesn't make sense to do it when you can publish more quickly and more easily doing other, less painful types of research. My suggestion would be to look up oncologists at your school on Pubmed and/or Google Scholar and see if any of them are doing (non-basic) work that interests you, and if so, get in contact with them. If they're not doing work that interests you but you're really only interested in research to pad your CV, then get in contact with them anyway. If you're really dead-set on doing basic science research and your priority isn't first and foremost to get published, then ignore this. I realized basic science wasn't for me before med school and have thus been avoiding it like the plague, so I can't help you much there unfortunately, but hopefully someone else here can.