Hematology Award Supports Budding Physician-Scientist

He reasoned he’d rather be bedside, helping patients hands-on. 

Now, as the recipient of a prestigious ASH award, he’ll get to fulfill both roles — physician and scientist. 

Kent recently received an American Society of Hematology (ASH) Medical Student Physician-Scientist Award, a national award given each year to support hematology research and mentorship. As part of this year-long research fellowship, Kent will study therapies for cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) while treating patients with this rare form of skin cancer.

The award provides $42,000 for salary, research supplies, educational expenses, and travel support to the ASH annual meeting. Kent says that this year’s three other physician-scientist student winners hail from Duke University, the Cleveland Clinic and Yale University.

At the Jacobs School, first-year pediatrics resident Burak Yuzuguldu, MD, also recently received a prestigious ASH HONORS (Hematology Opportunities for the Next Generation of Research Scientists) Award, which provides research funding to support the next generation of hematologists. He conducts pediatric oncology research at Rowsell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center with mentor Lisa N. Niswander, MD, PhD, clinical assistant professor of pediatrics. 

Kent became interested in cancer research as an undergraduate student at Columbia University, helping to conduct research on HPV-related cancers in the lab of Vincent R. Bonagura, MD.

At the Jacobs School, Kent deepened his focus on cancer research. Seeing some patients respond to therapies while others didn’t aptly demonstrated how much we still don’t know about cancer, he says. 

During the fellowship, Kent will take a year off from medical school and travel back to New York City to work alongside Larisa J. Geskin, MD, and Teresa Palomero, PhD, at Columbia to study cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. He’ll then return to Buffalo to complete his final year of medical school.

“As a medical student, I’ve been both really interested in the genomic research behind cancer and also taking care of patients. This particular award is a mixture of those things,” Kent says.

Kent describes CTCL as a disease at the crossroads of hematology and dermatology. CTCL represents a heterogenous group of non-Hodgkin lymphomas with cutaneous manifestations, he says. Most treatments for CTCL aren’t curative, Kent adds, and this type of cancer, when it progresses, can quickly become resistant to therapies.

Previous research has shown that inhibitors targeting the JAK-STAT signaling pathway, which influences cell division, cell death, and tumor formation, have effectively treated some patients with CTCL, Kent says.  

“The problem is that not all cancers are responding to the JAK inhibitors,” Kent notes. “And the ones that do respond aren’t usually cured; they usually go into remission and then come back more resistant to the JAK inhibitors.”

Using CRISPR, high-throughput RNA sequencing and other genetic tools, Kent will seek to identify mutations within CTCL that may respond better to JAK inhibitors and then potentially combine these inhibitors with immunotherapies to enhance treatment.

In New York City, Kent will get to see new patients. He’ll get to know them. And, most importantly, he’ll get to help them. After taking patients’ cancer samples, he’ll head to the lab across the street, analyze the samples, and work to develop improved therapies, he says.

“Being able to follow the process from patient to bench and back to patient — seeing the cancer respond to treatments in real time — makes the research deeply rewarding," Kent says. “This combination of being both a physician and a scientist is exactly the type of work I am passionate about, and it aligns perfectly with what this award represents.”