Med Students Dip Their Toes Into IRP Research

Dozens of Doctors-To-Be Spent a Year Working in IRP Labs

By Brandon Levy

Thursday, June 20, 2024

American medical and dental schools do an excellent job of producing caring and knowledgeable medical professionals, but they don’t always provide opportunities for their students to get a taste of life in the lab. For a few dozen of those students each year, NIH’s Medical Research Scholars Program (MRSP) fills in that gap, welcoming a cadre of future physicians to NIH for a year of research in IRP labs. 

Over the past year, 52 medical students have been getting their feet wet in biomedical research under the guidance of experienced IRP scientists. Whether investigating new ways to detect diabetes or trying to improve ADHD treatment, the 2023-2024 class of MRSP participants received a world-class crash course in how to make new discoveries that will improve patients’ lives. Read on to get your own crash course on some of the exciting research they have been conducting over the past year.

Abhinav Suri: Analyzing Abdominal Imaging to Detect Diabetes

Abhi “sort of grew up all over the place,” he says. Originally born in India, he spent parts of his childhood in Boston, Massachusetts; New Haven, Connecticut; Los Angeles, California; and San Antonio, Texas. All this novelty during his formative years perfectly suited his exuberant curiosity, which quickly expanded from the topics covered in his middle and high school science classes to questions that, he recalls, “the textbook couldn’t really answer.”

Similarly, Abhi’s curiosity about the application of programming to medicine stretched beyond the extent of his medical school curriculum at the University of California, Los Angeles, leading him to spend the past year working with IRP senior investigator Ronald Summers, M.D., Ph.D., on a project that aimed to apply artificial intelligence (AI) to abdominal scans performed via computer tomography (CT).

“We’re focusing on this area of ‘opportunistic screening,’” he explains. “Let’s say you have a kidney stone and you go to the emergency room. They’ll probably order some imaging, usually a CT scan. The radiologist is going to take a look at that CT scan, but you've imaged basically the entire abdomen to look for this tiny little kidney stone, and in that abdominal scan there's so much other stuff that is just lying unused. We can't ask the radiologist to pick up every single potential finding, but we can use AI to automate some of those findings so that it flags them for the radiologist to review.”

Abhi and his colleagues in Dr. Summers’ lab are specifically taking advantage of the fact that abdominal scans typically produce images of the pancreas and liver, two organs involved in the development of type 2 diabetes. Their goal is to create an AI algorithm that can examine abdominal CT images and accurately identify patients who either already have diabetes or are likely to develop it in the near future. That way, patients who may not realize they have the disease or are at high risk for it can be guided toward appropriate diagnostic tests and treatments.

“I think at least in this initial set of results that I’ve been working on over the past year, the tool seems pretty promising,” he says.

Having never done full-time research before coming to NIH, Abhi is a great example of the reason the MRSP was created. Now that he has had a year to focus solely on research without having to balance it with schoolwork, he has decided that it is something he does not want to be without when he eventually dons his white coat as a fully-fledged physician.

“I think that overall this year has been really helpful in terms of helping me decide that, yeah, I do want to do research in my future career and have it take up a significant portion of my time,” he says. 

“In general, this year has taught me what it was like to be a really rigorous scientist,” he adds. “It also has taught me that with all research projects, there are a number of setbacks, and helped me learn how to systematically go through these setbacks and then really come out on the other side and make that project better.”

Fun fact: Inspired by his interest in both medicine and programming, Abhi wrote and published a book titled Practical AI for Healthcare Professionals. “This is essentially the book I wish I had when I was learning about computer science and medicine,” he says.

Megan Jiao: Addressing ADHD With Virtual Reality

Like many future medical students, Megan pursued a major in biology as an undergraduate, but her coursework also differed from many of her pre-med peers in a significant way. While many pre-med students share Megan’s interest in the humanities and social sciences, relatively few of them take classes on video games.

“I took several game studies courses that introduced me to the concept of applying media technologies traditionally associated with entertainment, such as video games and virtual reality, to serious causes, such as healthcare,” Megan says. “As someone with a multidisciplinary background, I was immediately enamored with the idea of leveraging emerging technologies to improve health in creative ways, especially as technology becomes increasingly pervasive in our lives.”

That interest in how the digital world can help improve real-world health led her to work with IRP senior investigator Philip Shaw, Ph.D., and IRP associate investigator Susan Persky, Ph.D., on evaluating a virtual-reality based, ‘gamified’ cognitive training experience for children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Past studies have established that cognitive training exercises can improve ADHD symptoms and help patients with daily functioning, but the training “can be tedious and requires prolonged concentration,” Megan says. She and her IRP colleagues hope to improve cognitive training’s weak points by making it more engaging and immersive, and they are also using brain scans to see how the training alters brain networks in children with ADHD.

“Our intervention targets multiple domains of cognitive functions, which differs from past studies that have mostly targeted just one cognitive skill at a time,” she adds. “It’s also personalized, so it responds to the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of each participant.”

The study of the ADHD intervention is still ongoing, so final results are still pending. However, preliminary results so far show that the training hasn’t caused any unexpected side effects for participants and is enjoyable, and there are also signs it seems to help ADHD patients’ behavioral symptoms.

“Though we are still in the early stages of this work, it could pave the way for future research using virtual reality for many other conditions that affect cognition or behavior in children and adults alike,” Megan explains. “Also, the brain imaging could help uncover how training activates brain networks, if at all. If the intervention ultimately demonstrates efficacy, it could become a viable, accessible, and engaging way for children with ADHD to manage their symptoms and improve their cognition.”

Megan describes the opportunity to participate in IRP research through the MRSP as “a great privilege” and “fantastic experience.” The best part, she says, has been getting to know her mentors, labmates, and fellow Medical Research Scholars, who have been “an invaluable source of support and encouragement while navigating this year of research, learning, and personal growth.” She has also enjoyed taking advantage of what NIH has to offer outside of the lab, particularly relishing the natural beauty of the NIH campus.

“I’ve really enjoyed the diversity of learning opportunities available to me this year,” she says, “and as someone used to the urban sprawl of Houston, it’s also been especially lovely just walking to work every day on campus amidst plenty of greenery and spotting the occasional deer or goose.”

Fun fact: As an undergraduate, Megan took a beginner’s fencing class and had the opportunity to fence against a former Olympian who was brought in as a guest. “I lost very quickly,” she recalls, “but it was a very special experience nonetheless!”

Maame Amoako: Dissecting Racial Differences in Thyroid Function

For Maame, the desire to practice medicine is firmly rooted in a passion to serve people like her own Ghanaian family in the U.S. and abroad. Unfortunately, people with certain cultural and ethnic backgrounds receive inferior healthcare compared to people of more common backgrounds, both because of biases their healthcare providers harbor and because of cultural factors that impair communication between patients and their doctors.

“My interest in medicine stems from my desire to promote equitable health care for families,” Maame explains. “Growing up in a Ghanaian household, I learned a lot about the importance of all aspects of our culture in making decisions, and hope for this to be at the center of what I do. I also hope to prioritize health disparities in all areas of my work, as they are embedded in all aspects of medicine.”

Consistent with her interest in addressing health disparities, her time in the lab of IRP senior investigator Janet Hall, M.D., was spent on both research and working to increase the diversity of participants in Dr. Hall’s studies. The latter effort included establishing collaborations with community organizations and nearby universities and creating recruitment materials with clear, easily understandable language. Meanwhile, on the research front, Maame spent the year studying differences in how the thyroid functions in Black and white women, along with how changes in fuel reserves due to diet or exercise influence those differences. She and her colleagues in Dr. Hall’s lab found that there are indeed differences in thyroid function between individuals with different racial backgrounds, but these differences disappear when energy is scarce due to reduced food intake or increased exercise. 

“This opens discussions of differences in the sensitivity to environmental changes in energy availability between Black and white participants, and probes at the question of why the difference in thyroid function exists,” Maame says. “We hope to increase the power of the study with our enhanced recruitment strategies to better answer these questions and more.”

Beyond fueling her own passion to learn more about health disparities, Maame’s participation in the MRSP also connected her with many like-minded individuals. The relationships she has forged over the past year made her time working at NIH all the more rewarding — and she also picked up some handy scientific skills to boot.

“I have loved the friends that I have made in the MRSP program and at NIH,” she says. “I have also learned a lot about different statistical analysis methods and evidence-based research approaches. Although learning so many different research processes has been challenging, I know it will be beneficial in my future career.”

Fun fact: Maame loves to dance and choreographed Northeastern University’s African dance team as an undergraduate there. She has also done choreography for her medical school’s musical, an annual collaboration between students and faculty in her medical school aimed at raising money for local non-profits. Past shows, all of which Maame contributed to, include a Legally Blonde spoof called Medically Blonde in 2022, a Mamma Mia adaptation called Doctor Mia in 2023, and a 2024 take on The Greatest Showman titled The Greatest Med Student.

Brady Greene: Investigating Our Internal Perceptions

Brady was an extremely curious child — sometimes to his own detriment. 

“My family fondly recounts that I always loved asking ‘why’ questions growing up,” he says. “On one occasion when I was a child, I even stuck a spoon in an electrical socket. This was not the brightest of my scientific ideas, but we all have to start somewhere.”

Later in life, a particularly influential high school chemistry teacher inspired him to study that subject in college, eventually leading to a particular interest in ‘medicinal chemistry,’ which Brady describes as “improving the health of individuals by playing ‘molecular legos’ to identify ideal drug candidates that can benefit humans.”

“I absolutely loved this field, but felt a bit disconnected from the patients that these treatments were being developed to one day help,” he recalls. “This was a big reason behind why I decided to go to medical school, where I would get to continue to learn about all of this amazing science and would also be tasked with the art of translating this to the bedside to help patients.”

This passion for moving treatments from the bench to the bedside, plus a budding interest in psychiatry, was a perfect fit for the IRP lab where Brady spent his time in the MRSP. Under the guidance of IRP senior investigator Carlos Zarate, Jr., M.D., Brady helped investigate potential ways doctors could gauge how patients with treatment-resistant depression are responding to the drug ketamine, a promising new treatment for the condition. At the same time, he also worked on another research project examining how psychiatric conditions like depression and anxiety affect patients’ sense of ‘interoception,’ which he defines as “the process through which our nervous system senses and processes internal stimuli from our body,” including not only physiological processes like heartbeat and appetite but emotional experiences as well. In the end, his study on the topic suggested that problems with interoception might occur in both depression and anxiety disorders rather than being a particular feature of one disease or the other. 

“It’s early research, so it’s hard to tell how this will ultimately translate to helping patients, but I think this work is helping us further understand the landscape of interoception and differences in interoception across these different disorders,” Brady says.

Through his time at NIH, Brady says he has gained not only scientific skills and friendships, but also an appreciation for the brave patients who participate in clinical trials. He has relished the chance to meet the patients enrolled in the Zarate lab’s studies, and as he attempted to help them with their mental health struggles, they inspired him in return.

“Their altruism, as well as the camaraderie of the many lab members and healthcare workers that I have met over the past year, excites and inspires me to continue my training in this specialty, where I can continue to work with such amazing people,” he says.

Fun fact: Brady likes to describe himself as “a product of the continuous advances of science” because his mother became pregnant with him through in vitro fertilization (IVF). And like many babies conceived through IVF, he has a twin — a sister who works as a physician assistant in cardiovascular surgery.

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