Well, no, that's not true - it was a very interesting meeting for the parts that I was there.
Let me back up - this weekend (as I've mentioned numerous times in the last few weeks) was the 7th annual American Physician Scientists Association Annual Meeting in Chicago. It was going to be my first meeting with this organization, and (more importantly) my first chance to even attend a national meeting and present a poster. I was excited and nervous about it, because it would be my first meeting and because I was going to be going essentially by myself. This meant that I would have to make at least a little small talk with others, perhaps even make some contacts with folks so I would have someone to sit with at lunch, etc. The confounding factor in this case was the fact that my family would be in town, so I wouldn't necessarily be there for everything. Unfortunately, this did in fact affect my attendance and how enthralled I became with the conference, but it didn't affect my enjoyment!
Friday morning I drove up to Chicago, intent on getting there at roughly lunch time so I could be there to attend the afternoon sessions. The morning session was a business meeting that, while open to all APSA members, was more geared toward school representatives (i.e. not me). Unfortunately I was far too astute and concerned about my arrival time, and I ended up getting to Chicago about 10:30 in the morning. This left me, of course, with the conundrum of what to do. I met up with another MD/PhD candidate who arrived early, and we spent some time chatting (and I tried not to scare him, me being a 5th year and him being a first year). Since his hotel room and expenses were paid for, he coerced me into going to the hotel restaurant, which had salads at ~$15 a plate and entrees at higher prices than that. I should have just gone to Subway. ::: sigh :::
The conference proper began in the afternoon with a number of talks given by different faculty and professional MD's and PhD's. For example, Elizabeth Lawlor from University of Michigan gave a great talk about her path throughout the US, from post-docs, to clinical positions, to residencies, to... well, a lot of stuff. She offered a lot of great advice about following your passion in research and medicine and finding people who are supportive and offer good wisdom. I have a lot of notes from her talk that I intend to follow. Her talk was followed up by Catherine DeAngelis, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, who talked about conflicts of interest in medicine. It was a pretty interesting discussion of how financial interests and desire to publish questionable research influences decision-making among physicians and clinical researchers, and how industry and marketers can get in the way of good, ethical research. It's kind of scary to realize that a majority of research funding comes from biotech and industrial firms, and how much of an influence they try to impose on researchers and on the journal. She was the best speaker because of how she handled herself in the face of these influences - she kept her integrity and said take this crap somewhere else!
The following talk was given by Constantine Stratakis of the NIH, who is director of the NICHD (child and human development). He gave a very, very brief talk about the strategic vision of the NICHD and what kind of translational and clinical research questions were being addressed. It was such a quick talk, in fact, that I really didn't even catch what he was getting at for a majority of it (my notes are fairly scatterbrained, actually) but I did note that they are still looking for feedback on the strategic vision here. Following his talk, a panel discussion about women in medicine was conducted by a number of physicians, both male and female (the list is on the conference website). The major themes I took away from this talk mirrored those given by Dr. Lawlor earlier in the morning, including continuing to be passionate about your work, surrounding yourself with people who similar goals, finding good mentors, and, probably most importantly, having short-term and long term plans. One panelist mentioned having 1, 3, and 5 year goals, which I thought was a good theme!
The remainder of the afternoon was with scientific talks as part of the joint conference with the Association of American Physicians (AAP) as well as the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). These included talks by Aaron Ciechanover, a 2004 Nobel laureate who was one of the people to discover ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation; Vishva Dixit, director of molecular oncology at Genentech who talked about death receptors; Webster Cavenee, who talked about developing targeted cancer therapies; and James Downing,who was discussing the genetics of leukemia. They were all very interesting talks! I am planning on looking into several of the speakers for more information on their research topics.
Following these talks, the social activities began... and I went to spend time with the family. That's alright, though... I don't get to see everyone that much!
Saturday, I geared up for my research poster presentation and heard the morning's research talks. A variety of speakers gave talks about their research, with the loose focus being on medical genetics, one of my favorite topics! Harold Varmus, Nobel prize winner and director of the National Cancer Institute, gave an interesting talk about the "state of the NCI" and discussions about how behavior, lifestyle, environment, and genetics influence cancer development, and what types of treatments the NCI hopes to develop. There was also a very provocative discussion about funding for the NCI and NIH, and what needs to be done to increase the funding. The next talk by Helen Hobbs discussed how genetics influence lipid levels in the liver, leading to hepatic steatosis. A particular gene called PNPLA3 has a I-->M mutation at position 148, whose allele frequency follows the prevalence of liver disease. Interestingly, the effects of this allele change are directly effected by whether or not the patient is obese - if you are thin, you won't have these problems! The point - stay thin (or try to, at least).
The following talks continued the medical genetics theme. Janet Rossant discussed the increasing prevalence of stem cells in research and the development of therapies with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells (which, interestingly, have only been developed a few years ago). There seem to be a lot of possibilities for therapy with these stem cells! Jeffrey Whitsett, a neonatologist at the University of Cincinnati, discussed disorders of surfactant homeostasis in infants, and how loss of these surfactants can lead to respiratory distress syndrome. The way he figured out what proteins were necessary for surfactant activity? He dialyzed alveolar cells in buffer... for a month. Just left it there. And you know what? He found the proteins and they worked. How about that for science? Erol Fikring discussed some very interesting research looking at vaccines against Lyme disease. He discussed a protein that coats the infective agent Borrelia burgdorferi, which is activated only when ticks are feeding, and how the lack of this protein prevents transmission of the bacterium. Targeting this protein may help prevent transmission of disease!
The poster session came up next, and I think it went pretty well! I had the chance to speak to a small number of people, including physicians and students. They seemed fairly interested in what I was saying, and I was able to answer questions about my research and precedent for my stuff working in other papers. I would like to say I won a poster award or something like that, but I don't think I did... and I'm not sure if I'll ever know! The good news is that it was a good experience for me.
Following the poster session, I unfortunately stopped attending the conference. The unfortunate part is that I wasn't there, but it was just fine since I was able to meet up with my family for the remainder of the weekend! There were a number of other scientific talks and inspirational discussions with different speakers, all of whom were helping us to find our paths in our careers. I'm sad that I wasn't able to attend everything, but glad that I was there for the parts I was there!
My overall impressions? It was a good experience, and a good opportunity to hear from a number of speakers discussing science, policy, and what kind of career paths we can go down. While the socializing aspect was lacking for me, I was excited about discussing my research with others and hearing about the amazing research being done throughout the country. I hope I get to attend this conference next year... as a doctor (at least one kind of doctor). We shall see!
No, I take that back. I will be done with the PhD by next spring! It will be great!
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