BUSM Students Named American Cancer Society Research Fellows

Two first year Boston University Medical School students spent this summer as Betty Lea Stone-American Cancer Society Research Fellows. Derek Yecies studied a potential cancer treatment drug at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and  Matthew Cohen studied how cancer resists drugs at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

The cancer treatment drug Yecies researched targets a protein called CRM-1, whose function may play an important role in the ability of cancer cells to divide and survive. While the drug’s target is known, the exact mechanism by which the drug kills cancer cells is not. The goal is to uncover the mechanism by which this drug kills cancer cells, with the hope that this information can be used to help predict which patients might respond best to the drug.

Cohen studied how cancer resists drugs. Often, tumor cells become resistant to therapy, and his research is exploring ways to prevent that from happening in order to make future chemotherapy more effective. This is especially true with kidney cancer, which is often difficult to treat.

The Betty Lea Stone-American Cancer Society Research Fellowships were established in 1980 by the family of Betty Lea Stone in honor of her 80th birthday. Mrs. Stone was a longtime volunteer and generous supporter of the Society’s research program. The grant enables selected first-year medical students from New England medical schools to work for ten weeks over the summer with a principal investigator on a cancer research project. Nearly 100 medical students have benefited from this unique experience in the last 30 years.