Brandon Larsen Selected as Finalist for Postdoctoral Scientist Best Abstract Award
Jan. 2008 CVC UPBEAT - Brandon Larsen, an MD/PhD candidate in the College's Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), has been selected as one of two finalists for the annual American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Division of Cardiovascular Pharmacology's Postdoctoral Scientist Best Abstract Award. The finalists will present their work at a special awards session during the Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego in April, and one winner will be chosen following the presentations.
Dr. Larsen's abstract, 12- and 15-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acids may function as endothelium-derived hyperpolarizing factors in the human coronary microcirculation, summarizes his studies in the laboratory of Dr. David Gutterman, in which he identified a new class of chemical compounds that may regulate blood flow to the human heart's muscular wall. The heart tissue used in the investigation was obtained from patients undergoing bypass surgery, and the work suggests new drug targets that may be used clinically to improve heart function in patients with cardiovascular disease.
David Gutterman, MD, is the Medical College's Senior Associate Dean for Research and the Northwestern Mutual Professor of Cardiology. Dr. Larsen has worked in Dr. Gutterman's laboratory for the past four years while completing the doctoral portion of his training as an MD/PhD candidate in the MSTP.
The MSTP is a rigorous career track that allows highly motivated students who desire to become biomedical research scientists as well as competent clinicians to complete a seven-to-eight year course of study that leads to the dual degrees. Traditionally, candidates complete their first two years of medical school and then focus on their research training culminating in the PhD, followed by clinical training.
However, "Dr. Larsen is pioneering a new MSTP program that better integrates the clinical and research rotations," according to Dr. David Gutterman, " in part to provide greater translational content, but also to give the students a taste of what it is like to be a faculty member who performs research and clinical duties together."
Dr. Larsen completed his doctoral work last August, but decided to continue working in Dr. Gutterman's lab as a postdoctoral fellow while continuing his clinical training as a third year medical student this year.
"I am interested in cardiovascular pathophysiology and pharmacology, and how fundamental studies and discoveries translate to clinical practice," said Dr. Larsen. "I would like to remain in academic medicine and have a basic science laboratory like Dr. Gutterman's, while maintaining an active clinical practice."
Since his selection for the MSTP program in 2002, Dr. Larsen was awarded the Student Research Fellowship Award from the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America in 2005; the Predoctoral Fellowship Award from the Greater Midwest Affiliate of the American Heart Association in 2005; the ATVB Merit Award for Young Investigators from the American Heart Association in 2006; and numerous young investigator best abstract and travel awards. He was recently selected to be a manuscript reviewer for the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology.
Prior to beginning the MSTP program at the Medical College, Dr. Larsen earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Human Biology at Brigham Young University in 2001.