Season 2 – Episode 25: ColoTech: Engineering Students Tackle Early Colon Cancer Detection

In this episode, we hear from the winners of the 2024 NCI Technologies for Cancer Prevention, Diagnosis, or Treatment Prize, which is part of the Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge managed by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering: three biomedical engineering alums from Stanford, Gabriel Seir, Shreya Garg, and Kelly Lopez-Cid, who developed ColoTech, a novel non-invasive screening technology for colorectal cancer. They discuss their project's ideation process, the medical experts' positive feedback, and the importance of accessibility in cancer diagnostics. The conversation also explores their personal journeys into STEM, their future career aspirations, and advice for aspiring professionals in the field.

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Episode Guests

Kelly Lopez-Cid

Kelly Lopez-Cid was born and raised in Long Beach, California before starting her undergraduate education at Stanford University in 2020. She graduated in 2024 with a B.S. in Bioengineering and is currently a Clinical Anatomy Scholar, where she teaches anatomy to Stanford undergraduate students, conducts anatomy research, and engages with the local high schoolers in the community interested in pursuing a career in medicine.

At Stanford, Kelly has worked with her team, ColoTech, on developing a diagnostic tool for early colorectal cancer detection among vulnerable patient populations. Additionally, she was involved in research studying the mechanisms of human embryo implantation, and clinical research that focused on developing an AI model for triaging patients in the Emergency Department or via video visits.

Kelly will attend medical school in 2025, with special interests in oncology, pediatric surgery, and health equity. She remains committed to caring for underserved populations, particularly Latino and Black communities who face many health disparities.

Gabe Seir

Gabe Seir grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan before beginning his undergraduate education at Stanford in 2020. He recently graduated with a BS in Bioengineering and is currently completing an MS in Computer Science with a focus on AI and Machine Learning.

During his time at Stanford, Gabe was a part of the Agnieszka Czechowicz lab where he worked on developing novel genetically engineered human immune cells for targeting leukemia. He was awarded the Firestone Medal for excellence in undergraduate research for his Senior honors thesis work, and the Terman Engineering Scholar award for excellent scholastic achievement. For his Senior capstone work, he and the rest of his team (ColoTech) worked on developing a non-invasive pro-diagnostic molecule for colorectal cancer screening. ColoTech was recently awarded the NCI’s Cancer Innovation Prize for undergraduate design.

His future plans include pursuing an MD/PhD with research interests in developing novel cancer screens and treatments specifically leveraging novel AI advancements to facilitate discoveries.

Shreya Garg

Shreya Garg is a Ph.D. Student in Bioengineering at Stanford University.

Show Notes

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Episode Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute where we explore all the different ways people fight cancer and hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI Center for Cancer Training.

Today, we're talking to three biomedical engineer alums from Stanford who recently won the NCI Technologies for Cancer Prevention Diagnosis or Treatment Prize, which is part of the Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams or DEBUT Challenge here at NIH.
Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make some interesting recommendations and where we invite you to take your turn. And of course, we're always glad to get your feedback on what you hear and suggestions on what you might like us to cover. The show's email is NCIICC@nih.gov.

Hello to our guests today, Gabriel Seir, Shreya Garg, and Kelly Lopez-Cid, members of Team ColoTech! Welcome.

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Thank you.

Gabe Seir:
Thank you.

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, thank you so much.

Oliver Bogler:
So first of all, congratulations on winning the NCI prize in the 2024 DEBUT Challenge. We were very excited to see your project. And can you please explain what ColoTech is to our listeners and tell us what makes it unique?

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, so ColoTech is essentially our idea for a novel, non-invasive, more accessible screening technology for colorectal cancer patients. So we were looking at this market for diagnostics and we saw that colonoscopies and blood fecal tests were the current standard of care, but there's a lot of issues with specificity, with accessibility in these current technologies. And so we saw that in and then decided to come up with ColoTech.

Oliver Bogler:
It's a pro-diagnostic, you describe it that way, for early detection. What does that term actually mean, pro-diagnostic?

Gabe Seir:
That's a great question. We were kind of basing the term off the terms for pro-drugs, which are drugs that split apart in terms of their mechanism of action. And so our pro-diagnostic works in a similar way where we have an overall chemical compound. And then when it comes into contact with a tumor microenvironment, it splits apart, allowing us to tell the difference.

Oliver Bogler:
So the test consists of a pill that you take, is that right? Which contains this pro-diagnostic.

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Yeah.

Oliver Bogler:
And then please describe what happens. You kind of mentioned it, Gabe, but just what environment needs to be present in the colon for it to be converted.

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, tumor microenvironments are hypoxic or low in oxygen because these cells are rapidly dividing and consuming that oxygen. And so that is a very distinct marker of these environments. So in our technology, we're essentially dosing these patients with this molecule that travels through their GI tract and when it makes it to the colorectal tract, and enteric coding is able to dissolve and expose these molecules to the colorectal environment.

And if it comes across this hypoxic environment, it undergoes a chemical composition shift that will then, as Gabe mentioned, split this molecule apart, allowing us to detect that change in that chemical structure as patients pass our diagnostic through their stool.

Oliver Bogler:
So again, it's a stool test, a little bit like some of the ones that are on the market, which I think test for blood, right?

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, blood, sometimes DNA markers.

Oliver Bogler:
So, ColoTech is probably both more affordable and is it more reliable in the sense that blood could also come from other kinds of diseases or processes?

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Yeah, that's a good question. We haven't really been able to fully test like the sensitivity efficacy of our pro-diagnostic yet because we were only working with a proof of concept molecule. But I think the idea is that right now with the blood fecal tests, they're not accessible for like patients who are high risk for cancer, like those with inflammatory bowel disease, because they already have an increase in biomarkers and proteins that these tests test for.

So by utilizing the hypoxic microenvironment of the tumor itself and kind of doing endogenous biomarkers, we're using the term exogenous biomarkers. And in that way, we can increase the accessibility of high-risk patients and include them in these diagnostics. So in that way, we feel like that's why it's also better than just using a blood fecal test.

Oliver Bogler:
Clearly from the patient point of view or the general public point of view, it sounds like a great idea, right? Especially because you can avoid potentially colonoscopies, which, you know, I'm of the age I've had my first colonoscopy. I would love to avoid the next one. But I wonder what's been the feedback from people working in colon cancer screening, you know, the medical experts, have they, how have they responded to your idea and your concept?

Gabe Seir:
Feedback has generally been very positive. All of the people we've talked to would love to have this sort of extra step in the screening process in place, especially because it allows us to target both younger patients, higher risk patients, patients from marginalized community that don't have access to colonoscopies. So just being able to fit so many more patients within the treatment plan has a lot of people very excited and being able to have another option to look at before just taking random biopsies with a colonoscopy has been a great option for people to think about.

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Just to add on, like we had like a clinical mentor throughout the duration of our project, and he's actually a gastroenterologist that works on detecting dysplasia. But for him, it's like through fluorescent endoscopes. And he's saying like, even like before his patients can get there, like by just doing like a screening method first and like being able to avoid that next like step of an endoscopy or colonoscopy, it would be very helpful to the space.

Oliver Bogler:
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I'm part of what I found exciting about the project was the potential to increase the reach, right. And screen more people, particularly because we're seeing this rather still puzzling increase in incidents in colon cancer, particularly among younger people, right. Who are not eligible or likely to come in for some of the existing screenings. So, yeah, fantastic. So how did you pick this particular project as a focus?

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, so our project, the origins were actually in our undergraduate senior capstone class, where teams are essentially randomly assigned together and given a very general need space and ours was ulcerative colitis, primary sclerosing cholangitis. And by analyzing the space a little bit, we saw that there was this gap in accessible, affordable diagnostics for colorectal cancer.

So we kind of did a shift from our original need space. But this is the one that we landed on. And the way the class works is that there is about 10 weeks of ideation before 10 weeks of prototyping. And so we had a lot of time to really go in depth into this need space and really ideate the solutions that we thought would best address patient needs here.

Oliver Bogler:
So fascinating, tell me more about that. I'd love to learn more about the ideation phase. How do you ideate when you have … are faced with a question like this?

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, it was actually, I think for us, a really fun experience. We hadn't really worked at this scale before of having a general question and then having to go from, you know, not too strong of a background in the field to like honing in on a single idea. And so the way that the course encourages us to ideate is through this Stanford's bio design process where we start with as many ideas as we can possibly think about. And we recommend at least 50.

And then as the weeks go by, doing further research into the need space, talking with as many stakeholders from the field as possible and narrowing those ideas down until we see something that is within the scope of our capabilities, feasible to achieve in terms of costs and resources and just something that really excites our team. And so ultimately through that process is how we ended up on this pro-diagnostic idea. It was really kind of this blend of all of our experiences and our individual disciplines put together to come up with this idea.

Gabe Seir:
Yeah, the whole ideation process was extremely need driven. So we first dove super in depth into the need, trying to understand what's there, talking to as many people as we can. I think we spent four weeks just thinking about the need before we even tried to come up with a solution. And then at that point, like Shreya mentioned, just trying to go into as much breadth as we can, coming up with as many ideas, no matter how wild they are, before then thinking about, okay, let's filter down, let's think about feasibility. Let's think about all these other aspects, but first really just trying to like, how could we solve this problem if we could do anything?

Oliver Bogler:
And then if I remember from your application, you also have to kind of place this notion, this idea that you're coming up with in its space, right? Both in terms of sort of the clinical space, but also the market space, right? What was that like?

Shreya Garg:
For the market for colorectal cancer at the moment, there was definitely this immediate like notion that right now the standard of diagnosis is an invasive surgical procedure. So there is an instant barrier and other non-invasive technologies such as those blood fecal tests that we've mentioned, oftentimes some of them have a high false positive rate or they simply are just contraindicated against these high-risk patients, as Kelly mentioned.
And so the market seemed, in our opinion, quite open, and what it needed was sort of this non-invasive, more accessible solution. And so that's why we really wanted to gear our innovation towards something that could be cheaply produced and massively distributed globally.

Oliver Bogler:
I mean, it sounds to me also like your engineering training was maybe beyond engineering, right? I mean, that almost sounds like, know, what something an economist might do, right? It's not enough just to technically think about the problem. You have to think about the problem very broadly in all these different areas.

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Yeah, and even when like talking to like our professors about like working with like stool samples, like the first thing on everyone's mind was like, okay, well, what about Cologuard? What makes it different from Cologuard? And then like then like honing in even more and being like, well, yeah, Cologuard as well is like inaccessible for high risk patients. And also just taking that like into consideration when thinking about the market space.

Oliver Bogler:
Yeah, so tell me a little bit more about that. The Cologuard is not ideal for high risk patients because it gets a lot of false positives. Is that right?

Gabe Seir:
Yes, because in high risk patients, the colon is turning over at an even higher rate because of all the inflammation. What they're trying to detect in the stool samples just isn't as detectable because there's so much more of everything. So they're unable to detect these differences that they're looking for in non-high risk patients.

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, so Cologuard currently cannot be used for patients with IBD, patients who have had cancers before, patients with a family history of cancers, or any genetic predispositions for cancers, which of course is a significant population if you want better diagnostics, for the people who want better diagnostics.

Oliver Bogler:
Yeah, and a group that you'd want to be screening more regularly more following more aggressively, right? So ColoTech, you believe will be able to screen those patients.

Gabe Seir:
Yes.
Oliver Bogler:
Okay, fantastic. So what's next for ColoTech? I mean, where where's it going? I'm assuming you're all moving on with your careers. You're not devoting the rest of your life to bringing this to market. Is that correct? Or maybe I'm wrong.

Gabe Seir:
A little bit of both actually so we're still currently working on it. We're all still around Stanford in different degrees and so while we're here we're still trying to pursue this idea and push it as far as we can because we're all super interested in it still.

Oliver Bogler:
So what's next for it, if I may ask? Or is that proprietary information?

Shreya Garg:
No, definitely not. We're currently in more of a fundraising stage right now of trying to acquire funding to do a couple more robust tests. We were really fortunate to have gotten a lot of support and resources while working on this project in a class setting. But now we really like to take it several steps further, get more data for … basically create a library of compounds to help optimize our structure for that specificity. As we've been mentioning, we really want this to be something specific that does not get any interference from other diseases or any other conditions from these patients. So working on optimizing our compound and then testing them through various in vitro and vivo testing. So that would really be ideal for our upcoming next stretch.

Oliver Bogler:
So I assume you've protected your IP.

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Yes, we have a provisional patent right now.

Oliver Bogler:
Well, that's exciting. I mean, it's great to do a fantastic project, but it's even more exciting to bring it out into the marketplace or at least work in that direction. That's fantastic. Quick pivot, what was it like to apply for the DEBUT Challenge?

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Yeah, actually our professor, like previous, the past few years, teams have applied to the DEBUT challenge. And so seeing this trend, like our professor decided to kind of revolve the class structure around DEBUT. So, you know, thinking about the market, thinking about the problem, the need space. And in the end, we had to do a final paper that was very similar to like the DEBUT submission and like just needed a few more like weeks of like tweaking. But yeah, so honestly it felt very aligned with what we were already accustomed to because of the class.

Oliver Bogler:
And the DEBUT submission also requires a video, right?

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, so in that similar note, we fashioned that video very similarly to that final presentation that we gave in class. So it really felt like we had been preparing for this application for a while, which was, you know, fantastic to have received so much support and guidance on that. But yeah, honestly, we were our biggest struggle there was to try to condense as much information as possible within the video limit. So we were really excited to craft that submission.

Oliver Bogler:
Well, it's great. mean, it's great to hear that it wasn't burdensome to apply, right? I mean, you already had the material, and that's the way it should be. As a person who participates in the review of these applications, I have to say they're incredibly interesting to review. And the videos are really fun to watch. Reviewers of science don't often get to see videos. Maybe we should do R01s by videos as well. Maybe that'd be more fun.

But it really allows us to get a quick impression of what it's all about. So fantastic. Well, I'm really excited to see where this goes. And I wish you the best of luck with the further work on ColoTech.

Shreya Garg:
Thank you so much.

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Thank you so much.

Gabe Seir:
Thank you.

Oliver Bogler:
We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to be talking about paths, career paths, and career plans.

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Oliver Bogler:
All right, we're back. I'm always fascinated by how people discovered that they want to go into STEM. I wonder what are your stories? When did you know you wanted to pursue a career in STEM and engineering?

Gabe Seir:
Yeah, I can go first. So even back in middle school and high school, I was always super interested in science as many people are that end up in these fields. All those biology and chemistry classes were my favorite types of classes. But when asked like, do you like math? Do you want to be an engineer? My immediate answer was no. Like I do not want to be an engineer. That's not for me. Like I'm going to stick to the more science side of things.

But you know, as I got older, as I grew a little bit into what does it mean to be an engineer? It means to be able to solve problems and not just like ask questions, but then be capable of answering those questions. And so that really drew me to the engineering side. And I think bioengineering and biomedical engineering is that perfect mix of like, okay, you're super interested in biology, super interested in medicine and the human body mayhaps. Then you can also ask questions that you might be capable of solving or know how to find people and find questions in order to arrive at an answer.

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, I think my path was very similar to Gabe's. I grew up actually wanting to be a surgeon. I thought, you know, the biomedical field was super cool. I definitely wanted to go into medicine, but growing up taking more of those classes in chemistry and biology and math made me really appreciate the value of asking important questions. And so from there, I started to grow more interested in just that fundamental science. But I had never had any exposure to engineering until I got to Stanford in college.

And so I actually started taking a bunch of engineering classes all at once because it was all of a sudden I was incredibly excited to have, you know, experience this new discipline and asking questions and then applying engineering fundamentals to that question and directly coming up with an with a solution that you can build with your hands and test. That is where I ultimately found that passion. And so applying those engineering and science principles in the biomedical space still thinking as I wanted to as a kid about helping people, think is ultimately where I found that end goal and passion of mine.

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Yeah, so very similar to Gabe and Shreya. But I did grow up wanting to be a doctor and just through my own journey with illness and just through a bunch of shadowing events and just seeing a lot of inequities within the health care system. I continued to want to be a doctor. So it was very similar to Gabe where I was like, I'm not touching anything engineering.

And I actually went to an engineering high school. I was so focused on that, but then they had like two pathways. They were like, okay, you can do like the engineering side or you can do like the lab science side. And I was like, I'm not taking any of these engineering courses, like totally lab science, just like doing my pipetting.

But eventually like I got to Stanford and similar to Gabe and Shreya, I was like, as I was thinking about my career in medicine, I was also thinking about how I wanted to like advance research, advance science. But in a way that wasn't only for understanding mechanisms, but in a way that could be translational and be brought to the bedside, which is also why ColoTech has always been so exciting to me because I can see that for my future now, especially now that I'm having this experience.

Oliver Bogler:
That's really a different way of looking at the world is not only understanding the science, but also then trying to develop solutions for it. And that's certainly exemplified in your ColoTech project.

Gabe, your LinkedIn profile mentions your interest in the application of AI in medicine and bioengineering, and you're now pursuing a master's in computer science, right?

Gabe Seir:
Yes, that's correct.

Oliver Bogler:
How do you plan to blend these sort of two areas as you move forward. And is there an AI angle for ColoTech?

Gabe Seir:
Great question. I plan to blend these two areas in the future just through I think a lot of medicine is moving towards a place where AI and machine learning can fit into the overall medical process. I think the space is moving so fast that it has so many capabilities to fit into the overall pipeline and not in a sense of like replacing anything, but just enhancing and allowing better decisions to be made just by being able to look at data in a new way. And whether there are AI plans for ColoTech, I would hope so. I'm sure there are many ways that we can fit it in and it's just going to fit in at some point in the pipeline.

Oliver Bogler:
Certainly an exciting area to be in and your timing I think is perfect. Shreya, your LinkedIn profile highlights your passion for making bioengineering research ethical and sustainable and relevant to everyone it serves. And that's certainly also part of the ColoTech vision, right? How will that inform your career path?

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, so I'm currently pursuing a PhD in bioengineering because for me, something that really drives me is not just conducting research, but also teaching. And so I'm really hoping to go to education. And something that really excites me is also science communication, especially in the bioengineering field, where our science is often very misconstrued and ends up, you know, going through all these channels. And then when it reaches the public can be very polarizing.

And so for me, what's important is making sure that people can make informed decisions about how they want to consume science, what science, how they want to let science impact their lives. And so not necessarily as a scientist trying to convince people about our science, but just having better tactics to inform people and creating this culture of, you know, appreciation for science and appreciation for the people that our science serves. And so I think that, you know, going into education and science education is a part of that, but so is creating products that are really need driven and driven by the people that we want to serve. And so, yeah.

Oliver Bogler:
Sounds like an exciting future. Kelly, ColoTech, I'm gonna suggest, guess was your first venture into cancer, you know, as a research area maybe. Have you caught the cancer bug? Will you be devoting your career to working on cancer?

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Yeah, so I've actually had like multiple family members like actually get cancer just because there is like a high incidence rate within like the Mexican population, which was very unfortunate, but I was too…I remember thinking like I never wanted to like step into this space Just because it's a red I felt like it was like and like I feel like there was probably maybe more understudied areas to pursue.

But yeah through ColoTech and like just having that connection to my family our backgrounds and also just seeing like how much there still is unmet needs within the space has me very excited and additionally like the pro-diagnostic concept of it and how it could be like right now we're focused on colon cancer but like how it can maybe be applied later for like lung cancer, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, which is very exciting and like it opens up this whole new space like yeah I would love to continue to pursue to explore.

Oliver Bogler:
So what are you doing at the moment, Kelly?

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Yeah, aside from ColoTech, I have two jobs. I'm working as a clinical anatomy scholar at Stanford Medicine. And it's kind of like this role has really three roles involved. But part of it is just doing anatomy research. And right now I'm focused on actually like the extensors of the hand and the anatomical variations that come along with them.

And another big part of it is teaching aspects. So right now I actually assist in teaching the medical anatomy course for the medical students, which is very interesting. Never gone to medical school yet and helping teach this. But additionally, like later this quarter, I'm going to be one of the main TAs for the undergraduate anatomy course, which Gabe is considering taking. So that would be exciting.

And another part of the role is just the community engagement, working with high school students, like teaching them anatomy, talking to the donors, helping out with like the anatomical gift program, which has been very rewarding and like has kept me grounded, obviously through like the interesting work with cadavers.

And then my next job is a research assistant actually in the Molè Lab at Stanford where we just study human embryo implantation. It was a very hard, difficult space to study beforehand just because, one, mouse models don't really represent the human pregnancy cycle, embryo implantation cycle. So there was really a high need for an in vitro model to be able to study the human endometrium. And through my lab, we were able to create a 3D cell engineered model, which now we can actually study what the mechanisms are going to implantation. Obviously this can have high impacts for people who are trying to get pregnant or going through IVF cycles. But yeah, so very rewarding year, very busy year, but I've been enjoying all of it.

Oliver Bogler:
So I want to ask you all, where do you see yourselves in five or 10 years? You've got many steps ahead of you, but the step you've just accomplished is a major step. Where do think you'll be in the future?

Gabe Seir:
Probably still in school, to be honest. I am currently planning to apply to MD PhD programs. which is a very exciting path, but hopefully still in school by then, but overall looking to just continue on this translational research path. I'd hope that in the future, we're still identifying needs and identifying people that have these needs and being able to think about and create solutions for them. So just continuing kind of on that engineering pathway of let's bring actual solutions from the lab to people.

Oliver Bogler:
Have you heard of the OxCam program at NIH, Gabe?

Gabe Seir:
I have not.

Oliver Bogler:
So it's an interesting program. It's an MD-PhD program. has a couple of different pathways in it. But the core notion is that you do your medical school in the United States, and then you do your PhD in a blended program between an NIH lab and a lab either at Oxford or Cambridge. But you get your PhD from those universities. And one of the advantages, I did my PhD in England, not at either of those universities, but you get a quicker, shorter time in graduate school. Because in England you can do your PhD in three years, right? You don't have any more classes. And so it's way to accelerate the very long MD-PhD pathway. it's a great program. think you might want to check it out.

Gabe Seir:
Absolutely, thank you.

Oliver Bogler:
Shreya, how about you? Where do you see yourself in five or 10 years?

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, similarly, probably, at least in five years still in school, finishing up my PhD. And at this exact moment, I'm not sure what the exact steps forward are. I am currently interested in going into academia and going into research with some teaching, but currently very flexible and just looking for what that ideal blend of research, science, communication and education looks like.

Oliver Bogler:
That's really interesting to me because communication and teaching is increasingly important, I think. We are in a time when we need to reestablish trust with the general public when it comes to science, I think something we've sort of enjoyed but maybe haven't nurtured as much as it needs to be. So I'm excited for you. That sounds like a really interesting thing. How about you, Kelly? Where will we see you? If I was interviewing you in 10 years, where would you be?

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Yeah, probably still in residency. Yeah, but I'm applying to like med schools right now. So that's kind of like the timeline that it goes. But at the same time, you know, I'm very interested in like pursuing a career in like oncologic medicine or pediatric medicine. So I'm excited to like actually hone down by that point, know exactly what I want to do and like the career path that I want to take within medicine.

But additionally, like something very important to me, kind of similar to like how Gabe and Shreya has been talking about finding out that needs for people in marginalized communities, like that holds like really close to my heart, really dear to my heart. And hoping to like, as I continue through this field, like advancing health equity, making it more inclusive, more accessible for, you know, people of color, people with disabilities, people who are typically excluded or face like disparities within the medical system. But yeah.

Oliver Bogler:
That sounds fantastic. Of course, you can combine pediatrics and oncology, right? I mean, there's a real need there. I interviewed a group from our pediatric oncology branch for this podcast a few months ago, very interesting stuff and big challenges in trying to get enough data on these thankfully rare tumors, but cracking some of those problems is really tough, but really important. All right, my last question, what advice do you have for someone who's listening, who's maybe just finding their own way in STEM and thinking about different careers, what advice would you give to someone maybe finishing high school or early in their undergraduate career?

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
I would probably say that there's always something new to discover, always something, like always a need unmet that could really help people or if someone was passionate enough to pursue that solution, could see it move forward and just advance science.

And so just keep your mind open and really focus on these needs and on the need spaces because solutions can come out anytime. But how impactful they can be is dependent on the amount of people that it can help. So just like thinking about that at the forefront of your mind and thinking about, yeah, like don't be afraid to like come up with these crazy ideas. I think even through this project, when we were first like taught, when we moved from like working with just like IBD patients and like wanting to move towards more colorectal cancer, at the beginning people were like, oh, but it's cancer! Are you sure you want to like jump into that difficult space and like it would be difficult to come like to pursue this like pro-diagnostic solution. But because all three of us were like so passionate about it and like what and like now looking back like we're continuing to pursue this project. That's like really how you could make that impact by pursuing what you're passionate about because in the end it's about how long you can, you want to work on it and continue to push it forward. But yeah, reach for the stars.

Oliver Bogler:
I love it.

Gabe Seir:
Yeah, I just really encourage them to follow their interests. I feel like this can especially be a very daunting space to move into. Especially now, sometimes it can feel like so many problems have been solved, what else is next? But the answer is there are still so many problems to solve. And if you follow your interests and kind of forge your own path, you can find your niche and find the problems that you want to solve. And that'll just make your work so much more impassioned and so much more feasible to complete.

Oliver Bogler:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, sometimes it, I mean, and we're also seem to be creating new problems all the time. So I don't think we're going to run out of problems anytime soon. But it's sometimes it looks that way for sure.

Shreya Garg:
And then sort of tangential to that, I would definitely say, don't be afraid to take the time you need to figure out what those interests are. Sometimes it can feel like, especially in STEM, you need to know what you're doing this moment so that you can make a five-year game plan and so that you're then ready for the next step that's ahead of that. But in reality, several of our professors have told us, you know, they didn't know what they wanted to do until their postdoc. They didn't know what they wanted to do until they took a three-year gap and then really took the time to figure that out.

So whether you know exactly what you want to do straight out of high school or feel like you need to take, you know, really just explore in college or even in grad school, take that time because it'll be so much more worth it when you find something that motivates you and you're not feeling pressured to stay at this pace that is not sustainable or will not really make you happy with what you're doing.

Oliver Bogler:
That's really good advice. Taking your time to work it out is not always easy, right?

Especially when you are sort of in the day to day and the planning and everything that one thing follows on from another. But yeah, really good advice. Thank you all.

[music]

Oliver Bogler:
Now it's time for a segment we call Your Turn, your chance to share a recommendation with our audience. If you're listening, then you're invited to take your turn. Record a tip for a book, a video, a podcast or a talk, or really anything that you found inspirational or amusing or interesting, send it to us at NCICC@nih.gov. We'll play it in an upcoming episode. Now I'd like to invite our guests to take their turn. Let's start with you, Kelly.

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Yeah, so I'm going to recommend a book that I actually read this past summer, and it's called The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. And it's just like a beautiful like historical fiction book, following like these four generations of women in this like Latino family. And just like it's at a time in history, where obviously there's a lot of patriarchy and there was just like a bunch, a lot of violence at the time, but like centering these stories on the women and just like on how impactful they were even within like their small circle of community or even in like the uprising, which was very interesting to read about and see that be like the center.

And this book was written decades ago. So it was like very interesting to like read something from so long ago that made an impact in society at the time, especially in the Latino community. And in addition to that, there's magical realism elements to it, which is a big theme in Latino literature. So was just really nice to escape into the realm of this family and these generations.

Oliver Bogler:
That's a great recommendation. I think I might put that book on my to read list as well. Thank you, Shreya.

Shreya Garg:
Yeah, so I was in the UK this past summer and then came across this book and a book store in London. It's called How Tyrants Fall by Marcel Dirsus. And I ended up spending my entire time at that bookstore reading through the first few chapters of this book because it was amazing. It essentially analyzes how dictators and totalitarian regimes across the world fell and how you might be able to prevent such institutions from coming into power in the future by essentially creating this blueprint of solutions using all these case studies from the past.

So I'm actually not finished with it yet, but so far it's provided a really good lens on political structure, power, and what our roles as citizens might look like within this whole architecture. And this might seem removed from science, but I think especially in today's age, science literacy is really a form of resistance. And science can seem very closed off, so kind of breaking those barriers and uniting together via science or through other means can really be a form of taking down such institutions. And I think that it was just a really eye-opening book that makes you think about the ways that you can engage in such ways.

Oliver Bogler:
Very, very interesting. I'm going to definitely pick that one up. Thank you. I love it. Gabe, how about you?

Gabe Seir:
I'm going to recommend a book that's right in the field of my master's degree in kind of this blend of AI and medicine. It's called the AI Revolution in Medicine. And it just thinks about what AI could look like in medicine in the future and where it's going from here. And I think a really interesting aspect of it is the book itself, but also it was published last year. You can already tell the difference year has made in the field and where AI and medicine is going. So just gives a lot of insight into like, this is a really fast moving field. What is possible?

Oliver Bogler:
That sounds like a great read as well. I mean, they probably need to publish a new edition every six months, right? Just to keep up.

Fascinating. I'm going to make a recommendation as well. It's also for a book. It's a history book, Emperor of Rome, Ruling the Ancient Roman World by Mary Beard. It maybe connects to some of the things you were reading, Shreya. I've recommended history books before and have an abiding interest in several periods, including ancient Rome.

In this book, Mary Beard, who's written many excellent books on the period, looks across the lives and careers of many emperors and draws out common themes, giving you an idea of what it might have been like to rule Rome and perhaps more accessible to most, what life was like back then. And I always come away from reading history refreshed. It's like a holiday for your mind, perhaps, and also affirmed in the fact that much is universal in the human experience.

Beard writes well, making her books a pleasure to read and it's very easy to read. And if you've ever wondered what it might be like to rule the Roman Empire, now is your chance. Well, thank you all so much for what you're doing, for sharing it with us here on the podcast. And I wish you all nothing but tremendous success as you progress in your careers. Thank you.

Shreya Garg:
Thank you so much.

Gabe Seir:
Thank so much for having us.

Kelly Lopez-Cid:
Thank you, yes.

Oliver Bogler:
That’s all we have time for on today’s episode of Inside Cancer Careers! Thank you for joining us and thank you to our guests.

We want to hear from you – your stories, your ideas and your feedback are welcome. And you are invited to take your turn and make a recommendation to share with our listeners. You can reach us at NCIICC@nih.gov.

Inside Cancer Careers is a collaboration between NCI’s Office of Communications and Public Liaison and the Center for Cancer Training. It is produced by Angela Jones and Astrid Masfar.

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