CLINICAL ONCOLOGY RESEARCH CAREER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Program Director: Stanton L. Gerson, MD
Director, Case Comprehensive Cancer Center
Professor of Medicine-Hematology/Oncology

Co-Director: Alvin H. Schmaier, MD
Professor of Medicine-Hematology/Oncology

COMPONENTS

Early advisor and mentor selection:

Each research scholar will be assigned to a member of the Advisory Committee to orient and guide the research scholar in the initial period of career development program and act as a longitudinal advisor during the course of the program. This early advisor will focus the research scholar on the clinical and translational research opportunities at the Cancer Center and provide guidance in developing an individual curriculum.

Individual mentored research experience:

Potential areas of concentration, mentors, and specific projects will be discussed with candidates during the interview process. Once selected, each research scholar will be expected to identify a research project from one of four areas of concentration with the guidance of complementary basic and clinical research co-mentors, and to initiate a research project by the sixth month of the program. An important aspect of the individual research program is that it must involve two mentors, where one mentor represents a clinical oncology discipline (medical oncology, pediatric oncology, radiation oncology, nursing oncology); and a second mentor representing a basic or behavioral science discipline (cancer genetics, cancer biology, clinical pharmacology, epidemiology, health care outcomes and behavioral oncology). This pairing of clinical and basic investigators as mentors fosters a complementary clinical and basic training experience that involves the hands-on exposure to translational research projects involving the clinician and basic scientist.

Interdisciplinary clinical research themes:

• Mechanism Based Therapeutics
• Hematopoietic Stem Cell Therapeutics
• Genetic Oncology
• Behavioral and Clinical Health Services Research

The interdisciplinary clinical research programs at the Cancer Center provide research scholars the opportunity to participate as part of existing collaborative research teams that bring together complementary clinical and basic research scientists whose goals are to translate discovery to patients. These standing translational research programs sponsor weekly program working groups providing rich forums for research scholars to interact with other basic and clinical scientists not directly involved with the research scholar's project. These clinical research programs have established outstanding facilities necessary to conduct leading edge translational research and provide the setting and infrastructure that will enable a research scholar to develop, launch, and complete a clinical research project within a 2 to 3 year period.