As an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Amanda Herzog worked in a number of different research laboratories where she studied everything from cartilage growth to pediatric tonsillectomy techniques to fruit fly behavior. So, when she started medical school at UW’s School of Medicine and Public Health in 2007, she figured she’d keep up with her research activities. Yet, other than a three-month stint assisting oncologist Mark Albertini in his melanoma lab for a summer research program between her first and second years, Herzog has struggled to fit research into her schedule. “I had to devote my time to my studies,” she says.
Herzog’s passion for lab work inspired her to apply for a unique research program funded jointly by the US National Institutes of Health and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She succeeded, and became one of the 42 students chosen from hundreds of applicants for the program’s 2010-2011 academic year. As a HHMI–NIH Research Scholar, she was able to defer her third year of medical school and instead study an experimental head and neck cancer drug in cellular and animal models at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland.
For Herzog, the experience was a first step to fulfilling her budding career ambitions. “I would love to have my own lab down the road,” she says, “and this program will help me get my foot in the door.” But other aspiring medical researchers might not be so lucky. On 30 August, the NIH announced plans to replace its existing medical training programs with a new education initiative that, at least initially, will only offer around half the number of spots as were previously available.
HHMI had funded the Research Scholars Program—also known as the Cloister Program because the participants are housed in an old convent on the NIH campus—since its inception in 1985. But the goal all along had been simply to help get the program off the ground, notes William Galey, director of graduate science education program for the Chevy Chase, Maryland-based non-profit. A quarter-century later, with that mission accomplished, HHMI decided to pull its support and invest in other training efforts, such as its international student research fellowships, offered for the first time this year . “It was really time to hand the keys over to the NIH,” Galey says.
Going forward, HHMI will continue to sponsor seminars for students enrolled in NIH training programs. But the loss of major financial support made it impossible for the NIH to keep the program going in its current form. So, agency officials decided to combine the Cloister Program with the 30-student Clinical Research Training Program (CRTP), a more applied research apprenticeship established in 1997 at the NIH Clinical Center. The combination results in what’s known as the Medical Research Scholars Program, which spans both clinical and more basic research, and will begin in the 2012-2013 year.
“It will really be a melding of the two [programs],” says Fred Ognibene, Clinical Center deputy director for educational affairs and strategic partnerships who currently directs the CTRP and will oversee the transition. “By realizing the strengths of both, we’re hoping that somehow the sum will be a little bit better” than each individually.
As finances currently stand, however, the combined program will only be able to support 40 students, instead of the 72 funded between the two programs in past years. The NIH is looking for public and private funding to boost the number of students, but raising the necessary cash will prove challenging, especially as the NIH faces tough budget lines.
“In the late 1990s, there was a huge enthusiasm about the problem of attracting clinical investigators with MDs into translational research,” says David Nathan, former president of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston who chaired the NIH Director’s Panel on Clinical Research in 1996 that evaluated the Cloister Program. The idea of training students at the NIH “came through in the era of expansion,” he adds, “and I would hate to see it go.”
Image courtesy of Amanda Herzog