Pathway to a Cancer Research

College Majors
1

<p>I posted this in the forum “careers in medicine” but that forum seems fairly ghosttownish.</p>

<p>OK, so I am almost completely interested in a career in cancer research. I would love to work towards finding cures for these devastating diseases, and believe that my life could be very fulfilling.</p>

<p>But I’ll save the rest of the “why I want to” speech. I have questions on the more technical aspects of this type of career, such as money and job stability. Obviously like many others, I am not looking into a career for just the money, but no one can deny that money does play a role in life.</p>

<p>So here are my questions.</p>

<li><p>How many years of schooling will I require, and where will I need to go (eg med school, fellowships)? Currently, I am looking into JHU’s school of Public Health’s Biochemistry department. Would this be a good place for me to start?</p></li>
<li><p>How competitive are the courses/college life? There is a difference between a doctor and a medical scientist, but I am still guessing it is a highly competitive field of study.</p></li>
<li><p>If I ever do make it past my whatever years of college, how is the job stability? There is always going to be a need for doctors, making the job market one of the best. But what about for this type of career?</p></li>
<li><p>What is the pay like? A general range would be fine.</p></li>
<li><p>Where will I be working, or where could I work?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>thanks in advance</p>

2

<p>Well, for cancer research you have two basic types of choices: straight PhD or MD/PhD. If you're just interested in working in a laboratory, a PhD is "all" you need, but for bedside clinical research you need an MD/PhD.</p>

<p>For many of the MD/PhD programs I've seen, you have to get into the relevant school's medical school, then also apply to their PhD program; this makes it pretty competitive, since you still have to go through the whole premed thing. On the up side, you get medical school paid for by the government, which is a pretty cool bargain.</p>

<p>Job stability is fine. If bad came to worse, you could just be a practicing MD. No shame in that. But medical research will definitely be necessary through our lifetimes -- although modern biology has made huge leaps, we're not in danger of making ourselves totally obsolete any time in the near future. Most of the money funding physician-scientists comes from either the medical institution they work for, the college/university they work for, the federal government, or some combination of the above.</p>

3

<p>Thanks for the reply mollie.</p>

<p>Would would be a good major for the career I am looking into? Would biology be the best? I have been looking into undergrad public health programs (eg the one at jhu). Would that be a good choice?</p>

<p>What exactly can you do with an MD vs. PhD? I was talking a friend, and she said that getting both is redundant, since an MD can do anything a PhD can.</p>

<p>And do you know of any schools with MD/PhD programs?</p>

<p>Thanks again!</p>

4

<p>Well... everybody always says to major in whatever you want in order to go to medical school, blah blah. But if you're interested in cancer research, it might be a good idea to major in biology -- courses like genetics, cell biology, and immunology would be useful for a future cancer researcher.</p>

<p>I'm planning to pursue a PhD, myself, so I found this list of schools that offer MD/PhDs for you: <a href="http://www.aamc.org/research/dbr/mdphd/programs.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.aamc.org/research/dbr/mdphd/programs.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>These two sites also look very helpful:
<a href="http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2003/10/29/1%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2003/10/29/1&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.training.nih.gov/careers/careercenter/mdphd.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.training.nih.gov/careers/careercenter/mdphd.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>As for the utility of one degree over another -- it kind of depends on your ultimate goal. If you just want to be an oncologist, obviously you just need an MD. But in order to do research, you need a PhD -- not really for the PhD itself, but for the extended training in laboratory methods. Few MDs have the laboratory experience necessary to be successful researchers.</p>

<p>I hope that helps!</p>

5

<p>One thing I forgot -- JHU would be a great place to start, because it would give you a good science background as well as a good premed background. Try to get involved in research opportunities and clinical opportunities -- maybe a summer internship at the NIH?</p>

6

<p>haha a bit late for that, I'm going to be a senior next year. I'm assuming NIH is only a summer program right?</p>

<p>blah i'm lacking research on my resume. But I guess its too late to worry about that now.</p>

7

<p>Actually, I meant research opportunities in college. It's a lot easier, as you might imagine, to get an NIH job as a college student than as a high school student. They do take people during the year -- when I was there for the summer, this guy who went to Georgetown said he worked there year-round. But I don't know how much of a hike it would be from JHU.</p>

<p>At any rate, I would assume that the labs at the school would be happy to have an undergraduate lab slave (oops, I mean lab tech) around. Some people wait until they've taken a lab class... personally, I just emailed a bunch of professors whose work sounded interesting, got two interviews, and accepted a position.</p>

8

<p>Mollie, are you planning on entering a similar career as I am? you seem to know a lot heh.</p>

<p>Did you email profs before you even started college?</p>

<p>And where do you go to school? jw</p>

9

<p>Yeah, I'm planning to do some sort of cell bio research, and cancer biology might be what I focus in for graduate school. I'm just planning to do a PhD, though... I don't really have any desire to do anything clinical. I'm happy just to work with cells rather than people. :)</p>

<p>I got my lab job at the beginning of sophomore year [in college], so I emailed profs the summer after my freshman year. I had a little bit of lab experience (I had worked at the NIH that summer), which I think helped me. Some labs want undergraduates who have already taken lab classes; I happened to find a lab which didn't care.</p>

<p>I'm going to be a senior this year at MIT -- so I'm going to know everything about the grad school application process pretty soon!</p>

10

<p>woah MIT, nice. no wonder why you know a lot hehe.</p>

<p>Did you do any research in high school? I was thinking of maybe doing something my summer of senior year.</p>

<p>thanks for all your help!</p>

11

<p>another question.</p>

<p>How is BME for cancer research? From what I've heard, it seems like it deals with making tools for medicine...which in my case wouldn't be so interesting to me.</p>

12

<p>I didn't do any research in high school, although I wish I had. I work at my lab job about 15 hrs/week during term (and of course 40 hrs/week during the summer), and I love it. Wish I had gotten started earlier.</p>

<p>I'm not really sure at BME, but I do know that all the BME majors (here) have to take the core set of biology classes with the biology majors -- genetics, cell bio, biochemistry, the intro lab. I guess to some degree a BME program could be seen as a biology program with some engineering education on the side, so it's appropriate so long as it's what you're interested in. Read up and see if you're psyched.</p>

13

<p>I just typed up a really long post, but CC decided to log me out and delete my post just before I could submit it, so here I go again:</p>

<p>I'm going to be a BME freshman at Hopkins next year and I'm working in a research lab at one of the (if not the) top cancer research institutions in the world, so I have some background to answer your questions.</p>

<p>As for education, take a look at this MD/PhD</a> handbook and specifically at the page "Medicine and Science" in the guidebook. It explains some of the advantages and disadvantages of MD vs PhD vs MD/PhD. Also, in addition to the link Mollie gave, look at [url=<a href="http://www.nigms.nih.gov/funding/mstp.html%5Dthis"&gt;http://www.nigms.nih.gov/funding/mstp.html]this&lt;/a> list of MSTP's<a href="Medical%20Scientist%20Training%20Programs">/url</a>. Essentially, they are the same as MD/PhD programs, but they are completely paid for by the NIH for a very limited number of students each year.</p>

<p>Right now, all the people working in my lab are PhD's and I've seen a few MD/PhD's in nearby labs, but I don't think I've seen many MD's involved in research. The PhD fields of the people in my lab vary from Zoology and Botany to Biology and Biochemistry. Of those, I would say that Biology and Biochemistry are the most common.</p>

<p>Hopkins is a great place for undergrads to do research because of its medical school. The JHMI campus (med school) is just a short shuttle ride away and there are tons of people working over there during the summer and even during the school year. The people at Hopkins actually encourage freshman to get involved in research. When I visited JHU, I met with a couple of upperclassman who started research at the Med School their freshman year. Though they skills were very limited when they started, over the last few years, they've been able to get a lot of research work done.</p>

<p>As for after you graduate, you essentially have two options: academia or the pharm. industry. If you choose academia, you will most likely take a Post Doctoral position for a couple of years before you can become a tenure-track professor. As you might expect, pay will be a lot greated in the private sector. My mentor gave me a article on "Careers in the Pharm. Industry" a few days ago, and it said that the average salary (not starting) for Ph.D's in the pharm industry was $110,000 and for MD/PhD's, it was $164,000.</p>

<p>As for BME, it depends on what track you take in BME. Hopkins undergrad program (and many others modeled after it) has four tracks: "Biosystems", "Cell and Tissue Engineering", "Computational Biology" and "Sensors and Microsystems". I'm planning on doing cell and tissue engineering, which I think would provide a good background for getting involved in biomedical research.</p>

14

<p>Thanks for the replies tanman and mollie. They've helped me a lot.</p>

<p>tanman, I know people can apply to BME, get rejected from BME yet still go to Hopkins. How does that exactly work? Would I be considered as an undecided? If I apply ED and do not get BME, would my application be reconsidered in RD or would they give me a decision for admittance right then and there for Hopkins's other schools?</p>

15

<p>
[quote]

Right now, all the people working in my lab are PhD's and I've seen a few MD/PhD's in nearby labs, but I don't think I've seen many MD's involved in research.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yeah... There's one MD in my lab who's doing just research, but all the other postdocs seem to find it very odd. He's German, though... perhaps degrees work differently in Germany.</p>

<p>There are 10 postdocs in my lab, of whom 5 are MD/PhDs (plus 2 graduate students who are working on the PhD part of the MD/PhD). Only one of them, that I know of, practices any sort of medicine.</p>

16

<p>If you apply ED as a BME major and don't get in to BME but get accepted to the university, your ED contract is dropped. You can wait until May 1st (after you get other admissions decisions) before you decide whether to go to Hopkins. As for whether they will reconsider you for admission to BME with the RD applicants, I'm not entirely sure. Try emailing the admissions officer for your state and asking.</p>

17

<p>how do i find out who the admission officer of my state is?</p>

18

<p><a href="http://apply.jhu.edu/contact/staff.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://apply.jhu.edu/contact/staff.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>