Season 3 - Episode 2: From Lab to Clinic: The Power of Mentorship in Cancer Research

Listen and Subscribe to Inside Cancer Careers

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify Podcasts
• YouTube
• Email Alerts

Andrea Apolo, MD

Andrea B. Apolo, M.D. is an internationally recognized expert in bladder cancer research. She was recruited to the National Cancer Institute’s Physician-Scientist Early Investigator Program in 2010 to build a translational bladder cancer program. In 2014 Dr. Apolo received the Lasker Clinical Research Scholars Award and in 2021 was granted tenure at the National Institutes of Health. She has been an investigator on more than 35 clinical trials, authored over 120 scientific papers or chapters which have been cited over 2,500 times, serves on a number of editorial boards, and has made over 100 scientific presentations at universities and national/international meetings. She has received multiple awards, including the 2011 National Institutes of Health Award of Merit, the 2018 National Cancer Institute’s Director’s Award for Clinical Science, the 2018 Advancing Cancer Treatment Award for leadership in genitourinary clinical trial patient access, and the 2020 Arthur S. Flemming Award for leaders who make an impact in public service. In 2021 she received both the National Cancer Institute’s Director’s Award of Merit-Equity and Inclusion-for outstanding dedication and collaboration in launching the Equity and Inclusion to promote diversity and the National Cancer Institute’s Director’s Award of Merit-Clinical Science-for developing an NCI study that led to a new standard of care for first-line treatment of metastatic renal cancer. In 2022, she won the National Cancer Institute’s Federal Technology Transfer Award and was elected as a member to the American Society for Clinical Investigation. Dr. Apolo serves as the current chair of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. 

Dr. Apolo serves within the Center for Cancer Research of the National Cancer Institute as Head of the Bladder Cancer Section of the Genitourinary Malignancies Branch and Director of the Bladder Cancer and Genitourinary Tumors Multidisciplinary Clinic. Dr. Apolo is dedicated to improving the treatment and survival of patients with bladder cancer and other genitourinary tumors. Her research involves developing and designing clinical trials to test novel therapies for bladder, kidney, and rare genitourinary cancers. She has been instrumental in the clinical development of multiple immunotherapeutic agents and combinations, from first-in-human studies through phase 3 clinical trials. She led the bladder cancer study of avelumab that resulted in FDA approval in advanced bladder cancer and the phase 1 study of the combination of cabozantinib and nivolumab that led to a phase 3 and the FDA approval of this combination in kidney cancer. She also led the Alliance Ambassador study, a phase 3 study of pembrolizumab in patients with a muscle-invasive bladder cancer which demonstrated a doubling of the disease-free survival in these patients. Dr. Apolo’s work has led to impactful outcomes for patients with genitourinary tumors. She is also passionate about mentorship. Dr. Apolo has mentored dozens of students and trainees, and is a role model for young investigators, demonstrating that they too can achieve and succeed in their career goals in science and medicine. 

Saad Atiq, MD

Dr. Saad Atiq is currently a fellow in medical oncology. He is interested in clinical and translational research to advance patient care in genitourinary malignancies. Dr. Atiq is working with the bladder cancer team to explore potentially synergistic combination treatment regimens to investigate and overcome mechanisms of resistance to treatment. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Andre Kydd, MD, PhD

Dr. Andre R. Kydd is an oncologist in Bethesda, Maryland. He received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and has been in practice between 11-20 years. Dr. Andre R. Kydd has expertise in treating anemia, among other conditions.

 

 

 

Show Notes

• Andrea Apolo, M.D.  
• Saad Atiq, M.D. 
• Andre Kydd, M.D., Ph.D.
• Genitourinary Malignancies Branch 
• Center for Cancer Research 
• Hematology Oncology Fellowship 
• ASCO AACR Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop 
• Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Career Development Award 

Ad: NanCI-Connecting Scientists mobile application 

Your Turn Recommendation: 

“I would recommend starting a tradition with your family, with your loved ones, and it becomes really special after many years.” – Dr. Apolo 

“…ask as many why questions as they can to never shut down those why questions…” – Dr. Kydd 

• Overcooked on Nintendo Switch 

Inside Cancer Careers Listener Survey 

Transcript

Oliver Bogler:
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. 

January is National Mentoring Month here in the US, highlighting one of the most important factors in a successful cancer career. At the NCI, we celebrate this in many ways, including with an outstanding mentor award. And our guests today include one of the winners of this award in 2025 and two fellows who nominated her. 

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. Of course, we're always glad to get your feedback on what you hear. We have a listener feedback survey open until the end of January 2025 and invite you to fill it out. A link is in the show notes. And the show's email is NCIICC@nih.gov.

Dr. Andrea Apolo is senior investigator and head of the bladder cancer section in the Genitourinary Malignancies Branch where she also serves as the acting deputy chief. It's part of NCI’s Center for Cancer Research. And most importantly, Dr. Apolo is a recipient of the 2025 NCI Outstanding Mentor Award. Congratulations and welcome Andrea.

Andrea Apolo:
Thank you so much, Oliver. Thanks for having me. And I just want to say, I didn't know that I was getting this award until only a few days ago. And I didn't know that my fellows nominated me for this and that I had already invited them to do this podcast before I even knew that. So that's kind of funny.

Oliver Bogler:
It's a close-knit team. Also on the show are Dr. Saad Atiq and Dr. Andre Kydd, both hematology oncology fellows at NCI who work with Dr. Apolo and who nominated her for the award. Welcome to you both.

Saad Atiq:
Thank you.

Andre Kydd:
Thank you for having us.

Oliver Bogler: 
Let's start out with mentoring. Andrea, what does it mean to you to receive the NCI's Outstanding Mentor Award?

Andrea Apolo:
So this is a very special award for me because I see mentorship as one of the most important jobs that I have. In addition to taking care of cancer patients and finding new therapies, I think teaching the next generation of oncologists and guiding them and giving them the tools that they need so they can be successful in oncology, in research, in patient care, I think is really critical for the future of medicine. So to me, this is such an honor that I received this award and thank you to my fellows for nominating me. And this is wonderful for me, it means a lot.

Oliver Bogler:
How would you describe your mentoring style?

Andrea Apolo:
So I think my mentorship has really evolved. It used to be very didactic, like I just used to kind of say, okay, this is the way that we do things, this is the way that I do things, A, B, and C, this is kind of the formula that I follow to treat patients. And then I realized as a personal journey for myself that one of the most important things to me was to see others and how other senior oncologists and how they would manage patients and they would have a relationship with patients and have that connection with patients and really the way that they dealt with patients. So to me, that was really critical to me. So I wanted to, you see a lot of different styles and I wanted to develop my own style of how to communicate with patients and develop relationship with patients as we treat them, as they enroll in clinical trials. We're oncologists and then we're scientists. We're always physicians before scientists, I think, in the field that we do. 
So I wanted to learn how to best teach that. And that's been kind of a process that I've gone through. In addition to clinical trial research, in addition to basic science research, I really wanted to make sure that the fellows remember that the patient is central and that their cares are always first.

Oliver Bogler: 
So both the substance of what you do and also maybe the style of how you do it. 

Andrea Apolo: 
Yes.

Oliver Bogler: 
Saad, you were the primary nominator of Dr. Apolo for the award. Tell us why you nominated her, please.

Saad Atiq:
I think, you know, I have been working with Dr. Apolo now for about a year and a half, and I've just had a really incredible experience getting to learn from her. You know, she really puts forward her mentees and everyone in the group always giving us any opportunity that comes forward. So really from the start of my time working with her to now, I've gotten this kind of graduated independence on patient care, on research opportunities. And I've really gotten to learn how to be a caring and compassionate oncologist just by watching how Dr. Apolo cares for her patients. And I'm wrapping up my last year here at the NCI. When I saw the opportunity to nominate someone for this award, I thought there's no better way to try and honor someone who's done so much for our whole team than nominating her for this mentorship award because again, she really tries to uplift us in every facet of our careers, whether that's in the basics of oncology, whether that's from a research standpoint or for me most recently in searching for jobs after fellowship.

And so I'm just very, very grateful to have worked with her and learned from Dr. Apolo and to continue to have her as a mentor for the rest of my career.

Oliver Bogler: 
That's great. Andre, what's your perspective?

Andre Kydd: 
So I would certainly agree with a lot of those comments and, you know, seeing the mentoring style that we have for both of us. I first started working with Dr. Apolo now a little over four years. And incidentally, when I first came to the NIH, I came as essentially a clinical research fellow. I was a member of the NIH undergraduate scholarship program of which Dr. Apolo was one of the first participants. And at that point, I was looking for mentors and I was talking to the program and I was looking for someone who would help me guide because I knew that I was interested in ultimately pursuing the hematology oncology fellowship and ultimately the career in that field. And they connected me knowing that she was a great mentor with her before. And it really came to fruition for all the things that we talked about before. 

And in particular, when I came, we discussed our plans for the time together. And I think the part that was great was that she knew the places that I wanted to go, both short term and long term. And we developed a plan that really worked well and supported me in terms of seeing patients being involved in laboratory work, given my past research experience, to get to this next point, to give that graduated opportunity at that point, because even before I officially became a fellow, I got a lot of exposure that fellows get. And so that was at that stage, my graduated independence of going from well, okay, was trained in internal medicine and I want to get ready for fellowship and successfully applying for the program. 

And then once in the program, realizing, okay, I've got a great mentor, I would like to continue clinically and in the lab and being a part of this great team to be able to continue. And here I am four years later and also getting ready for the job search and all along the way having more and more opportunities in the clinic, in the laboratory space and opportunities for writing and presenting. And having these opportunities that are presented that really make a huge difference in our career to see not just the details of the work that we're being done, but how to also mentor others, how to lead a team, what it means to have those relationships that are meaningful and therapeutic for our patients. So in all those spheres, being able to observe all the great ways that a mentor can enrich the lives of someone who wants to have this type of career as a combination of a... physician, as a scientist, and everything else.

Andrea Apolo: 
And I just I want to make a comment Oliver. I had some amazing mentors, you know, going through my stages of different places, I was, know, when I was a fellow, when, you know, I became a junior attending and I was in, you know, starting off as tenure track. I had a tenure track committee and I had a group of mentors there and I found it to be so helpful and valuable to me  - all the different feedback I got and the different opportunities that were presented to me. So if I could give a little piece of that back to my fellows and my trainees, then it's just coming around full circle.

Oliver Bogler: 
That makes complete sense. That's fantastic. I was going to ask you, Andrea, what do you look for in a mentee?

Andrea Apolo: 
I look for somebody who's motivated, who wants to make a difference, do great things, has ideas. That's what I look for. And they can be different things. they can be, I want to do, and it doesn't matter as much. If I want to do laboratory research, we have a project for you. If you want to do, you know, clinical trial research, looking at quality of life, we have a project for you. I want to do biomarkers. You know, it's more, it's not so much the topic, although, you know, some topics I'm a little better at than others, but it's a little bit more the drive and why you want to do that, kind of what the end goal is. So I do look for, you know, students and trainees that are very motivated to do the work and to learn and to be part of a team.

Oliver Bogler: 
So the NCI's nomination for this outstanding mentor award asks fellows to weigh in on a variety of different components, if you will, of the mentor-mentee relationship. One that struck me as really important is communication, because everything I think that the three of you have said is based on the ability to communicate effectively. And I wonder, Saad and Andre, if you could comment on how you've experienced that in what must be an incredibly busy work life with the clinic and the research and all the other commitments you have.

Saad Atiq: 
You know, I think that communication is something in our team that Dr. Apolo has emphasized from the get-go when we first joined the team. One of the first things she said is that, you know, whenever we come up with a plan, you need to make sure that every member of the team is incorporated into that decision-making process and then also that the plan is communicated to anyone who isn't present so that we have kind of a very closed loop communication system within the team. You know, each, after all of our clinic days, we have a session where we run the list and go through all of our patients together, which is something we actually just got done doing and ensures that nothing is kind of falling through the cracks from a clinical care standpoint. We do that actually a couple of times a week to make sure that things are moving forward in the direction we want them to so that we have opportunities to bring up concerns and each member of the team is encouraged to bring up any concerns we have even when we were just starting out as fellows.
You know, we were encouraged to speak up and ask questions not only for learning, but also bring up any concerns so that if there's something that someone else may have overlooked that is addressed. So, you know, I think Dr. Apolo is really a model of effective communication for us in clinical care. 

Then similarly on the research standpoint, you know, when there are projects upcoming and we have deadlines that are very closely overlapped, we set several meetings to ensure that we're working towards those deadlines. We, follow up with each other, you know, after clinic days or, or in off clinic days to ensure that there's no other kind of pieces of information that we need or additional kind of, documents of support or anything like that. And so I think that, you know, frequent check-ins have been, a theme in our, in our team. And it really does help in terms of making sure we're staying on track with everything.

Oliver Bogler: 
Andre, anything you'd like to add?

Andre Kydd: 
Again, I would like to second all those things and I think I'd also like to emphasize the idea that we have the environment where that open communication is really the standard, is the norm to be able to be free to make those comments, to be able to speak up, to make constructive criticisms, say how can we work better as a team? 

So I think, again, it's not just those details of the bits of information that are passed. It's also how that information is being shared together. And the fact that we're all working together as a unified team, no matter what sphere that you're in. We're all working together to make things better for patients and always that is central and that permeates everything that we're doing so that we're not fighting or bickering. We're all thinking creatively, how do we do the best for the patients in the clinic? How do we make the best science in the lab for our mission to actually translate all this information?

I think that overall environment that sets the stage and foundation for that communication is just as important for the fact that we have these individual meetings.

Oliver Bogler: 
So course an important element in mentoring cancer researchers is providing an interesting and challenging work environment, right? I want to turn to the work of your group. Andrea, can you tell us what the focus of your research program is?

Andrea Apolo:
Yeah, so we focus on genitourinary tumors with a focus on bladder cancer and rare GU tumors. And in terms of what we're doing there, we're running clinical trials for patients that have advanced disease, that have progressed on standard therapy, but we are also developing trials for patients at earlier states of disease to try to improve outcomes in that setting and maybe to try to change the standard of care in terms of the way that we do things. Like maybe we don't have to remove the bladder, which is the standard of care in bladder cancer. Maybe, you we can intervene a little bit earlier and have better outcomes for the patients. And we all kind of use data from the more advanced setting and then move it up to the earlier states clinically. So clinically we do that.
In the laboratory, we're developing models for patients that have rare tumors, rare GU tumors, especially rare histologies. We don't have good animal models for this. We don't have good in vitro models for these. And we're also looking at resistance of one of the standards of care therapies that we have and trying to understand the mechanisms of resistance and how to overcome this so we can better treat the patients. 

It's kind of nice that we integrate everything really well from the clinic with patient samples to the laboratory, then back to the clinic. And we have several clinical trials where we're collecting biomarkers and we're testing things in the lab. And then, you know, we're also kind of looking at these rare tumors that we're testing in the clinic. We're looking at these in vitro and in vivo and trying to figure out the best therapies and best combinations.

So I think it's a really exciting time because we have effective therapies and we've evolved a lot because we had no effective therapies. then, know, slowly over the years we have found more effective therapies for bladder cancer. And then we try to say, can we use this for other rare tumors? And what about combinations that have a strong rationale, for example, in other histologies that are not in GU oncology, but know, kind of trying to mirror that in GU oncology and see if it works. So a lot of work to do, not enough people. So I think it's exciting work.

Oliver Bogler: 
That sounds really fascinating. I guess immunotherapy has been a big part of what's happened in the last decade or so, right, in your field.

Andrea Apolo: 
Yes, immunotherapy, have developed, we did the first in human studies here at the NCI using avelumab, which is a PDL-1 inhibitor. And we ran the bladder cancer cohort here. We found it to be effective. Now this is a standard of care for patients with bladder cancer. We also did the first in human combination of cabozantinib and nivolumab, which is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor and checkpoint inhibitor combination. And now this is a standard of care in kidney cancer. We did phase ones that led to the development of the phase three studies for that. We also did the phase three trial of immunotherapy in the adjuvant setting for patients with bladder cancer after they've had radical surgery. And we have a lot of these samples, and now we're trying to do the biomarker studies to see could we have detected the patients that would have done the best. And, you know we incorporate all of this testing within the lab also. And then also, you know, then, you know, going back to developing prospective clinical trials using biomarkers. So it's all kind of a cycle.

Oliver Bogler: 
Fascinating stuff. Andre, what's your focus within that larger program that Andrea just described?

Andre Kydd: 
So I have a couple parts that are overlapping on the clinical side and on the laboratory side. Some of the projects are involved actually working to generate some of those models of rare GU tumors. For example, we use patient-derived xenografts, which are patient cancer samples that have been taken from them either at whether live or at autopsy. And we're growing them in mice to be able to use those to look at how effective individual drugs might be. Doing those studies for resistance mechanisms. And we also use those to generate cell lines, which are the cells that are just grown on plastic for similar studies as well. And we can use those to learn about these rare tumors where we don't have much information to do testing studies, learn about resistance to see what would be the best mechanisms by which we can take this information and translate it into the next clinical trial to see if that works to continue to improve the outcomes for patients with these types of tumors as well. 
Under Dr. Apolo's mentorship over the course of the past few years, I’ve been able to work in developing one of the clinical trials of which Dr. Apolo is the study PI, but has been working as one of the lead associate investigators by being able to think of one of this early studies of a combination targeted therapy and an antibody drug conjugate, SG, plus an immunotherapy and using it for a selection of five rare tumors.
We started working on this around the time they was first joining with Dr. Apolo back in either 2020 or 2021 and been working through it over the course of the past couple of years and various committees within the NCI with our industry sponsors, reviewing this with a number of committees, taking this to the Vail Conference, the joint AACR-ASCO workshop for studying this, of which Saad was also a participant that same year. 
And ultimately now, that study opened a couple months ago when we're enrolling patients on that one. I talk about that as one of the projects, and obviously there are lots of people that are involved in that team, but that was, in my case, one of the examples of the great mentorship and opportunities that we get that we have at the NCI that's very, very unique in preparing for the long-term career and something that people might not get at other institutions until much later in their careers. And again, that's something I'm very thankful for Dr. Apolo as well.

One of the last projects is another in terms of urothelial carcinoma, the most common form of bladder cancer from patients that have been participating in our natural history protocol and other clinical trials that unfortunately have succumbed to their disease, but have still wanted to make a contribution to the generation of knowledge of their particular tumors and have donated their bodies and their tumor specimens to be able to study in the lab.

In this context, we learn a lot about tumors from multiple sites of disease, maybe their primary bladder tumor, lung and liver metastasis, areas that we typically can't get when patients are alive, just because it's really tough to do multiple biopsies on a patient. But sometimes we learn about these different sites of disease, what makes one site more or less resistant, how tumors change over time and disease progression. And we use that knowledge to have a better understanding of what ways could we target these cancers in a more effective way, or other nuances of disease that we couldn't get and is very difficult to get with all the other model systems that we do have. 

And again, with that goal of translating this information back to the clinic, how do we have studies that are better able to capture what is going on in our patients to ultimately think how do we make our treatments even better in this context? How do we design the next effective clinical trial or the next agent that could be effective from what we've now learned in lab?

I think all these studies are reflecting again what we talked about before in terms of communication, those opportunities to build my prior strengths and interests, long-term career goals, and to make a contribution as well.

Oliver Bogler: 
Sounds like fantastic work. Saad, how about you?

Saad Atiq: 
So when I first came to Dr. Apolo, I told her that I wanted to develop the skills of a clinical investigator so that I can, I want to have a career in as a clinical investigator in GU oncology. And so what we initially focused on was helping me get experience in clinical and translational research with the translational aspect being collaborating with laboratory scientists and physician scientists like Andre to translate concepts from the lab to the clinic. 

And so one of the first experiences that I had with the team was there was a concept that Dr. Apolo was interested in developing, building upon the current treatment paradigm for metastatic bladder cancer patients, where the standard of care is now an antibody drug conjugate and enfortumab vedotin and an immunotherapy, a PD-1 inhibitor, Pembrolizumab.

And what we were looking at doing is seeing if adding an IL-15 super agonist to that combination would potentiate responses for patients in the frontline treatment of metastatic urethelial carcinoma. And then also if patients who've previously been treated with checkpoint inhibition, if we can reinvigorate an immune response in that patient population. 
So we took this concept and I was able to take it to the Vail conference that Andre mentioned and develop it into a clinical trial that we're working to open now for the team and for our patients across the country. And so that was one of the main kind of experiences that I've had over the past year to really develop the skills of writing and opening a clinical trial protocol. 

Along with that, I've focused mostly on clinical research, so have contributed to several review articles and rare genetic urinary tumors like penile cancer, urethral cancers. I've also been working on a project that we developed in collaboration with Caris, which looks at histology agnostic biomarkers in pure squamous cell carcinomas of the genitourinary tract, looking at whether or not we can identify any biomarkers of interest that we could design future clinical trials around.
And then on the translational side of things, I've been working with our lab teams to see if we can develop a more representative model of bladder cancer in mice that more accurately reflects what we see in our patients. And if we can then use that model to explore some of the mechanisms of resistance that we see to the new kind of standard of care of therapy with metastatic urothelial carcinoma with EV and pembrolizumab. So really kind of a nice mix of projects that I feel is really helping get me ready for this next step in my career.

Oliver Bogler: 
That sounds really interesting stuff. You both mentioned the Vail conference. Just tell us briefly, what is that?

Andre Kydd:  
The full title is the ASCO AACR Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop. Essentially, it is a one-week session for which participants have submitted a clinical trial that's in development, and you bring it to this conference and you find this protocol in a small group session with peers, typically in your field of study, for example, genitourinary, faculty members and others, biostatisticians, patient advocates, ultimately for the goal of getting it ready for submission to your local IRB and just reviewing this. 

In addition to having this product of this clinical trial that you're ready to get ready for submission, it's also an experience for the participants to actually learn methods of developing impactful clinical trials, in terms of lectures with faculty members, meeting with other biostatisticians that are present at this conference. And it also is an opportunity to build your network of other young faculty, fellows, other early junior faculty that are also interested in clinical trial work. 

And therefore, you get the knowledge and that networking and mentorship and that perspective for being able to do this. It's quite competitive conference to be able to get to. And so we are very grateful for the support of Dr. Apolo to have clinical trial protocols that we could even be ready to submit at this stage. And again, supporting the work that NIH has done and it's supportive as an entire institution for having fellows to go to this conference as well. So it's an honor to go to that. And I know that for our small groups, we are still in close communication because you're building your peer networks of folks on your same stage. So you're getting mentorship from above.

Andrea Apolo: 
When I was a fellow, did it. I don't need to mention the year, you know, so we don't need anybody doing math, but yes, I did it when I was a fellow and it was a great experience for me in trial development. So I try to encourage my fellows to apply if we have a protocol for them to apply with. It's really fun. It's a really great experience.

Oliver Bogler: 
Yeah, it's fantastic. We're going to drop a link in the show notes for people to go and look at that conference if they're not familiar with it already. I want to ask you, Andrea, so a lot of this really exciting stuff that we've heard from all three of you, the clinical center at the NIH is kind of a unique environment in which to work. Can you tell us a little bit about what the opportunities are that it offers?

Andrea Apolo: 
It is. And someone who has worked in other places, I trained at Cornell and then at Memorial Sloan Kettering for my fellowship. And I have those experiences that were different. And then before that, for medical school, I trained in inner city hospitals in New York City. So it's very different. 
The NIH is a research center. So the patients that come here are all coming on a clinical trial. And we have the infrastructure to do clinical research. And the nice thing about being here is that everybody's a researcher. So like the dermatology consult that you're calling, the radiologists that's reading your scan, they're all researchers too. So they all have great ideas as to other things to do or what the latest is for this side effect that's happening or this imaging that you're using. So it's a really fun environment to work on because of that.

And that's the clinical part of it, but then there's all these laboratories, and the NIH is predominantly laboratories, predominantly basic research, and that's really fun to work with the labs too, and doing collaborations and doing correlative work and kind of using the latest biomarkers and the latest techniques that are available. So that's really fun. So it is a very unique place with the infrastructure to do clinical trials, clinical trial research for the field that you're working in. So it's a really cool place.

Oliver Bogler: 
Well, it sounds like you're really pushing the boundaries on bladder cancer and associated diseases. And I wish you fantastic luck with the next phase of all this exciting work. We're going to take a quick break. And when we return, we're going to talk career paths. 

[music]
Cancer researchers, are you drowning in a sea of scientific papers? Wish there was a way to cut through the noise and find the research that truly matters to you? Look no further than NanCI, the revolutionary new AI-powered app from the National Cancer Institute.

NanCI isn't just another research publication app. It's your personal research assistant, designed to understand your unique interests and connect you with the most relevant papers, people, and events in the field. Imagine being able to chat directly with research papers, ask questions, and get instant answers. That's the power of NanCI's AI-driven "chat with paper" feature.

But NanCI is more than just a conversation starter. It's a networking tool, helping you discover new connections and build your professional network. It's a learning tool, recommending papers you might not have found on your own and helping you quickly get up to speed in new research areas. Simply declare an interest by bookmarking papers on a topic into a folder and NanCI helps you stay up to date.

Whether you're a seasoned researcher or early in your career, NanCI can help you take your work to the next level. By harnessing the power of AI, NanCI is transforming the way cancer research is done.

Download NanCI for iOS today from the Apple App Store! That is N-a-n-C-I. Experience the future of research for yourself.
[music ends]

Oliver Bogler: 
All right, we're back. Let's talk careers. My question to each of you, what got you started on the path to science and medicine? Let's start with you, Andrea. I'm always curious. What was that moment when you first knew, this is what I want to do?

Andrea Apolo: 
Yeah, that's a great question because I don't come from a family of doctors or scientists. I was the first person in my family to go to college. I'm a daughter of an immigrant and I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was in high school. I didn't even think I was going to go to college. But then I decided I did want go to college and I went to a city university.
And there I think my love for science really blossomed. I took physics, I took chemistry, I became a chemistry major, and I just loved the way that science can answer the questions that you have about life, you know, all these, how things work. And loved biochemistry, loved molecular biology, and I loved working with people. 

I mean, I did a lot of volunteer work just because I was I was going to school in the Bronx and there was a big community, there was a big need. And that's where I really fell in love with the idea of potentially being a doctor and applying to be pre-med and then potentially applying to medical school. But I wasn't really sure. And then actually when I was in college, I applied for a scholarship at the NIH where I got to come here during the summer and do research and learn about biomedical research and that's you know that was my first introduction to biomedical research. It was a basic lab. Working in the lab and asking scientific questions and I just fell in love with it and I got the scholarship for three years you get to renew it and then I had a service commitment that I would come back here. So I kind of always knew that I would come back here and you could come back here at any time but I kept on delaying it because I wanted to come back here as a PI so I can make a big difference and actually make a big impact in the field, whatever I was going to decide to do. 
I feel like the NIH is part of my life, even when I was like, you know, basically in my training, still young, and it really influenced me going into research. I fell in love with medicine, but me going into research, think, was really influenced by doing research work while I was in college.

Oliver Bogler: 
That's a interesting story and it's exciting to hear that the NIH summer program was so impactful in your decisions. 

Andrea Apolo: 
It was, yeah.

Oliver Bogler: 
Andre, how about you? What's your story?

Andre Kydd: 
I think it really had started pretty early as realizing the impact that a disease like cancer had in people's lives when there's family members there. I knew I was always into science and sort of science classes. And I also was thinking of what I wanted to do. I said, well, I want to think of some way that I could both pursue science, but I want to apply it to something. How can I make people's lives better. So I think I naturally gravitated to, on one hand, research to think of these interesting questions, but applying it to medicine in a way that really, again, has an impact on people's lives. And I think as the next extension, cancer was the place where I really appreciated that most.

So I think those sorts of things slowly came together in high school years and through college and having an interest in doing cancer research and pursuing medicine at that point and ultimately, one, coming to the NIH during those later years, ironically, also deferring it, but also pursuing MD-PhD and sort of leading to where I was now in terms of wanting to think about clinical trials, doing laboratory work, translational work, and ultimately having going back to patient care, which as I think about it was very, and is very much the mission of the NIH in terms of thinking, yes, we have all these laboratories, but what is the mission of all these things being the National Institutes of Health in terms of driving that for the betterment of people's lives. So I think it was in that sense a very natural fit in terms of when to do that and why I gravitated towards cancer. 
Before meeting Dr. Apolo, I hadn't gravitated to general urinary cancers. I said, okay, I'll be someone undifferentiated. There's some, know, there's some aspects that in terms of how cancer behaves, et cetera, but I think Dr. Apolos' enthusiasm is quite infectious in terms of this is a great area of clinical need and there are lots of interesting research questions that are still there. And so I think that also is a very natural fit in terms of continuing to move in the direction not just of cancer in general, but cancer of the bladder and …

Andrea Apolo: 
Andre, just to kind of piggyback on that, I tell my fellows that I'm working on bladder cancer and if you come to work with me, that doesn't mean you have to do bladder cancer. Like really, you're learning the skills that you can then apply to, you know, multiple different areas and do different tumor types. So, and it was the same for me. Like I picked, I didn't pick bladder cancer as a field, I picked my mentor when I was a fellow who was doing bladder cancer research. And then it just kind of went from there. And then I just naturally, when I came to the NCI to do my service payback, they were like, can you start a bladder cancer program? Which is, we didn't have one. And I was like, my God, that's an amazing opportunity. Yes. And that's just kind of where it all stemmed from there. you can pick a mentor that's not necessarily working in the field that you want, as long as they will provide you the skills that you need to do what you want to do.

Andre Kydd: 
Exactly, I'll definitely add to that as well. Again, I got into the fellowship program successfully, I did have the option to rotate with lots of other people. And so, definitely kept that in mind. I think that's absolutely true. 

Oliver Bogler:
Yeah, you kind of need all the pieces and I'm sure many of the skills are transferable, right? 

Andre Kydd: 
Exactly. And I think that's also highlighting the fact that we also get in terms of mentorship and thinking of mentorship as a network also and get some in your field, some outside the field, different institutions that everyone can contribute in terms of your network of mentors that are kind of coming together. So think that emphasizes the things that also do happen at the NIH because you do have so many people here involved in medicine in terms of research and you can think of all these places where it's coming together to build you in terms of where you want to go.

Oliver Bogler: 
Fascinating stuff. Saad, tell us your story. How did you first know medicine and science were your path?

Saad Atiq: 
So I do come from a background of medicine. I grew up in a small town in Arkansas, Southern Arkansas, and my father was the only oncologist for really the entire Southern portion of the state, Northern Louisiana and Western Mississippi. And, you know, I didn't really understand his career early on, but I do have kind of one particular memory that always comes to mind. And it was when we were out grocery shopping and one of his patients' family members came up to him and just thanked him for the way that he had cared for their loved one. And that moment's always stuck with me because I think that their loved one had passed at the time. Cancer in the mid to the late 1990s, we had a paucity of options in terms of what we could do for treatment. But what stuck with me was that the way that he interacted with the patient and their family, clearly left a lasting impact on them. 

And I wanted to be someone who could try and guide people, patients and their families through this vulnerable moment in their lives, through this scary time. And while I didn't necessarily, you know, I'd go to my dad's clinic sometimes and see him interact with his patients, but you know, I really saw empathy with others in the community modeled for my mom. And so I carried those two examples forward and decided to pursue a career in medicine based on really those kind of factors, hoping to be that kind of person for my patients and their loved ones. 

And it was in residency when I decided to leave Arkansas and go up to North Carolina. Again, kind of echoing Dr. Apolo and Andre, I talked to some of my co-residents, some of the senior fellows and they advised me to work with one of the genitourinary oncologists in North Carolina who was then my mentor and I saw someone in my mentor who, you know, of course at the highest level prioritized patient care and then showed me how you can use clinical and translational research to advance and enhance that care of your patients. 

And that's what really got me interested in the clinical and translational research aspect of things. And when I looked for fellowships, I was looking for a fellowship where I could develop those skills to become a productive clinical investigator. And again, at the advice of at the advice that Dr. Apolo mentioned of choosing a mentor and not necessarily the field, I wanted to work with Dr. Apolo because of the fantastic things I'd heard about her as a mentor and the great work she had done. so that's how I decided to join the Bladder Cancer team and have really not looked back since. It's been a great experience and has really kind of just carried my career forward.

Oliver Bogler: 
You know, if you'll permit me the observation, what I really hear very strongly from all of three of you is this combination of the intellectual challenges of medicine and science, but also that human angle of wanting to make a difference in the lives of people and wanting to interact with people. Did I get that right?

Andrea Apolo: 
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the privileges that we have as clinical investigators is that we get to do science, but we also get to be part of patients' lives within the clinic, within taking care of them and treating them as they go through the challenge of cancer.

Oliver Bogler: 
Yeah. So Andrea, I want to put you on the spot for a second. Would you be willing to share with us some of the challenges you faced in your career so far and how maybe how you learned from those and how that's informed your mentoring style and also your work?

Andrea Apolo: 
So I think that it's very challenging to do what we do for so many different reasons. I think the main one is you want to be innovative and you want to try something different, novel, without, you know… that's not too harmful, that's not going to hurt anybody, but that's going to be important and you can potentially build on that. And that's really hard. And I think trying to find best approaches, ideas, I think that can be a huge challenge in research, not just clinical research, but just in research in general. 

The way that I've best kind of overcome that is attending conferences, learning about novel mechanisms, seeing what's being done in other cancers, attending lab meetings, like basic conferences and then clinical conferences and kind of learning from that and then kind of seeing how can I do things better if something worked or can I combine two things that work? What about this pathway? No one's tested this before. Let's look at it in the lab. 

There's all these different ways you can go about it, but it's good to kind of build on things that you know well and then kind of build on that. But that can be really challenging. And sometimes, I mentioned in the beginning kind of the positive clinical trials that I've had, but I've had a lot of negative clinical trials and you don't care about those. Those can be very discouraging and sometimes career altering for young investigators. 
So I think perseverance is really important. Just, you know, if you believe in something, keep trying, keep asking the questions. And I know here at the NIH, everything is about being super focused. I have multiple burners going on at the same time because you just don't know kind of where things are going to go and what's actually going to work. So, you know, that doesn't mean that that's what I recommend for young trainees, but I think that can be very challenging is to be innovative and try to find the best treatments that you possibly can. 

Because if somebody would have already thought about it and somebody's doing it, having an idea and then actually executing it are miles apart, right? So ideas are a dime a dozen, I feel. But I think carrying it through and seeing it through is a lot of work. That's where the grit comes in. And you have to have that and you have to be able to put that in in order to kind of execute things. That's always something that you learn along the way as you kind of do it, you watch others do it, and then you learn. And that's what I've learned a lot from others I've watched do. So that's one of the big challenges that I've had. I I've had many others. I mean, I could probably talk all afternoon about that. But that to me was a big challenge as a clinical investigator.

Oliver Bogler: 
Thank you for sharing that. Andre , you're a fellow, Saad, you're a fellow. That means this is intentionally time limited. What's next for the two of you? I'd love to hear what your thoughts are about your next steps.

Saad Atiq: 
So I have about six months left of my oncology fellowship and have just accepted a position to become a genetic urinary clinical investigator at Mount Sinai in New York. So I'm looking forward to that.

Oliver Bogler: 
Congratulations. That's great. And what are your plans there? You're going to be continuing your clinical research.

Saad Atiq: 
Yeah, absolutely. So I plan to focus on, from a research standpoint, bladder cancer and rare genitourinary tumors. And from a clinical standpoint, I'll see a broad spectrum of genitourinary malignancies, including prostate, bladder, kidney patients, and of course, some of the rare tumors such as penile, testicular, and urethral cancers.

Oliver Bogler: 
And what do you think are the most exciting things you'll be able to focus on in terms of the research angle in your position at Mount Sinai?

Saad Atiq: 
You know, I think there's a lot of great research opportunities at Mount Sinai. There are several labs I'm hoping to collaborate with up there in terms of labs focused on immunotherapy combinations, novel therapeutics, looking at repurposing existing therapeutics in combination therapies to overcome certain mechanisms of resistance.
I think those are all kind of areas, particularly in the metastatic setting where bladder cancer has a need. I think bladder preservation is definitely a huge area of interest for the entire field and something that I hope to explore more in my time in Mount Sinai. 

And then I think, you know, in terms of other opportunities, there certainly for rare tumors, there's always opportunities to look at some of the therapeutics that we have from other disease spaces and see if there's potentially targetable biomarkers in those rare tumors that we can design trials around as well.

Oliver Bogler:  
Fantastic. I wish you nothing but success with that. 

Saad Atiq:
Thank you.

Oliver Bogler:  
Andre, how about you? What's next for you?

Andre Kydd: 
So even though the same year in officially ending the fellowship in six months, I've been approved for a fourth year of advanced fellowship during which I'll have the opportunity to continue the clinical trial and some of the lab-based projects that I described earlier during the podcast. Soon after that point, I'll be looking at the job landscape myself also, internal positions as well as external faculty positions.

Andrea Apolo: 
Andre got a grant. Are you going to mention that you got a grant? Huge grant.

Andre Kydd: 
Okay, yeah. the other part of that and part of the reason I would like to continue that is part of the work supporting this is also being awarded one of the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Career Development Award, which is a two-year, $240,000 career development grant, also supporting a number of the research projects, specifically the ones that I discussed earlier. And think of the ways to promote equity in terms of  having a diverse patient populations in the clinical trials, but this is something that's also baked I, in terms of the populations that are included in the research work that we're doing for those cell lines. The patient-derived xenografts and as well as looking at studies to look at those efficacy studies in terms of those targeted chemotherapies that we mentioned before. 

So hoping to continue some of that work here and being able to keep that work going. And so I’ll help to guide it, but... again, very excited about that work, at least in the short term and how that fits into the long-term goal that I already discussed as well.

Oliver Bogler: 
Of congratulations on that award. Is that from AACR?

Andre Kydd: 
So it's partially sponsored under AACR, but it's under and part Medical College of Virginia. It's under Bristol Myers-Squibb Foundation, a few other independent foundations from a number of companies. And its namesake is Robert A. Winn, the Cancer Center Director at the Massive Cancer Center at VCU in Virginia. But again, supporting researchers like myself, early stage, early faculty members working towards equity and overcoming barriers in terms of the clinical trial participation and lots of different axes, whether it's income, race, geographic location, and lots of other things that are needed to have excellence in clinical trials. And thinking that this is what's needed to make the best possible science. 
And I think that's particularly relevant as where the NIH in thinking we've got a catchment area of the entire country. And so it's very important for us to have those clinical trials that are representative of our entire population, all the folks that we are aiming to take care of without those barriers that have been placed historically and are still present at the current time. 

So, I'm really hoping to address those both in terms of excellent science and science that is reflecting the need that is there for the patients that have the bladder cancer, the general urinary tumors that we're actually dealing with in the clinic. And so that's a very exciting part.

 
Andrea Apolo:  
So, Oliver you can see how proud I am of both Saad and Andre. So I'm beaming with pride right now.

Oliver Bogler:
Of course. Congratulations on all these accomplishments. Yeah, that's fantastic.

Andre Kydd:
Exactly. Exactly. So I'm looking at Saad and I'm like, yeah, let's go to first. We've been, we're actually roommates at Vail also, but I think that's, you know, saying, okay, well, it's also these relationships that we build and form at the NIH and these are lifelong partnerships. I'm going to be calling Saad up and getting ideas and coming across, et cetera, conferences along the way. So I think that's a great part. And again, sort of a testament in terms of the environment that we've built of collaboration and working together that we got the mentorship from Dr. Apolo, but I'm have my mentorship from Saad. I hope to do the same and fellows that are gonna be joining Dr. Apolo from classes behind us. So I think that's one of the exciting parts that we've got by being here.

Oliver Bogler: 
Fantastic. In closing then, I'd like to ask you each, what advice would you have for people listening who might be very early in their careers, maybe undergrads even earlier, inspired by what they've heard from you? What should they be thinking about doing if they want to follow in your footsteps?

Andrea Apolo:
So I would say find a good role model and a mentor that you can talk to about your career. And they may not look like you. Like, you know, I'm Latina. I would have loved to have a female Latina mentor, but most of my mentors were white men. And, you know, that's, that was who guided me most of the way through my career. So they may not look like you, but if they're doing the work that you would want to do someday, and they're willing to spend time with you, then I would grab that opportunity and try to meet with them frequently and ask for their advice. And that can help you in taking the next steps to do what you want to do.

Oliver Bogler: 
Thank you. Saad, how about you? What would you say?

Saad Atiq: 
I think choosing a mentor is probably the most important decision I made throughout my early or throughout my training. not only just a senior mentor, but also peer mentors have been incredibly helpful for me, just like Andre was talking about earlier, you know, talking we're at the same level, but we learned so much from each other. I've learned tons from him.

And, and so I think, you know, having multiple mentors at different levels has really been the most helpful thing in my career because I saw people who are doing what I want to do and they've guided me on how to do it. And, and, and then I have folks at my level that I can collaborate with under the guidance of someone, more senior. So I'd say mentorship is, is perhaps the most important factor. 

And then the other aspect is if there's not a mentor who maybe is within your institution, I think a lot of people are really excited about mentorship and I'd say don't hesitate to reach out. You may not hear a response from everyone. Many people are extremely busy and may just not see your message, but there's no harm in reaching out with genuine interest. I think that's typically well received.

Oliver Bogler: 
Thank you. Andre?

Andre Kydd: 
In addition to all those things for plenty of wonderful mentors, those mentors that also work as sponsors, those who don't just point the way, but who actually give those opportunities and really help you build your careers along all those different assets. Again, I completely agree that they may not look like you, but those that have your interest and really help to build to where you'd like to go in the future.

Oliver Bogler: 
Fantastic advice. Thank you all for that. 

[music]

Oliver Bogler: 
Now it's time for a segment we call your turn. It's 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 that you found inspirational or amusing or interesting and send it to us at NCIICC@nih.gov will play it in an upcoming episode. 

Now I'd like to invite our guests to take their turn. Let's start with you, Andrea.

Andrea Apolo: 
So thinking about this, I love traditions that I've developed. I have two boys and we have developed traditions during the holidays and that's been a lot of fun. we have a tradition for Halloween, we have traditions for Christmas, we have traditions for Valentine's Day. So I think, and you know, coming from a family of immigrants that we were just in a different situation, we didn't have any of that. So I think developing your own traditions with your family, if you didn't have them and you want them, think it's never too late to start. So I think having traditions makes things extra special and really fun. So that's what I would recommend is starting a tradition with your family, with your loved ones, and it becomes really special after many years.

Oliver Bogler: 
That's a great recommendation. Thank you so much. Andre, how about you?

Andre Kydd: 
I think on the theme of kids, I have a seven-year-old daughter, and I think she's at the point of asking lots and lots of ‘why’ questions, many of which I don't know the answer to. So I think in the mindset of mentorship, I'm sort of proud to say I'm going to be like her, and I'm going to ask as many why questions as I can. I'm going to keep asking them nonstop. And I have a lot of fun going to say, you know what? I don't know, but let's look and try to figure out the answer, which I think for anyone in science and medicine, I think is really fun, is the right approach. And I think I want to take that same energy every day that I'm coming to work and think about what's going on, why, questioning everything that's going on, and trying to make sure that she never loses that. 

And I think not just on the personal side, I think as I'm becoming a mentor for more and more people, I look forward to the opportunity to help anyone who comes into my sphere ask as many why questions as they can to never shut down those why questions, even though I'm sure there are a lot of ones that I won't know the answer to. But the fact that I could help them do that just as I'll help my daughter find those and find some books or go through websites or scrounge to the library to find those, because who knows where that's going to lead. And I think just as much fun it's been on the personal side and how much I've learned in that sphere, I think that's going to carry over there. So I want to keep the why questions going. You know, just celebrate that.

Oliver Bogler: 
That's fabulous. That's the heart of science. That's amazing. Saad, how about you?

Saad Atiq: 
You know, I don't have any kids, my answer is a little bit different, but what I've found really entertaining and amusing over the past few weeks actually is my fiance and I were looking for a way to work on teamwork and communication, and we stumbled upon a game on the Nintendo Switch called Overcooked, where it's basically working together to fill out orders in like a kitchen. And that's been kind of a fun way for us to work together on something in a very lighthearted manner. And so if anyone's looking for a little bit of a laid back way to work on team working communication, try playing Overcooked with friends or whoever else you want to. It's a fun little experience.

Oliver Bogler: 
That's a fabulous recommendation. love it. I mean, that's a high stress environment, right? Orders are coming in, guests are, I...

Saad Atiq: 
Yeah, you gotta talk, otherwise you're not gonna get those orders in, and so there's a lot going on. It's fun, though.

Andrea Apolo: 
I feel like restaurants are very similar to medicine. There's a hierarchy, it's a high stress environment. So as somebody who worked in restaurants for many years throughout high school and college, I can definitely say there's a lot of similarities.

Oliver Bogler: 
Well, maybe you should also check out Overcooked. That sounds like a fun thing.

Andre Kydd: 
Yeah, I think we should actually suggest this to our program director for the next orientation session for incoming fellows because now I'm entirely intrigued about this and I think it would be a great experience to think about how this does in fact apply to the lives that we're living. So haven't seen it before, but I'm sure it can be done somehow.

Oliver Bogler: 
Well, we'll definitely drop a link in the show notes. And instead of making a recommendation myself, I'm just going to remind our listeners of the survey that we have open through the end of January, 2025, a listener survey. Please give us your feedback there. We'll put a link in the show notes and we'd love to hear from you. 

I'd like to really thank the three of you for this fantastic conversation. Thank you so much.

Andrea Apolo: 
Thanks for having us. This is great. Thanks, Oliver.

Saad Atiq: 
Thank you.

Andre Kydd: 
Thank you very much for the opportunity to do so.

Oliver Bogler: 
And congratulations again to you, Andrea, and to the three of you. Keep up the good work. You're doing really amazing things for patients and people. Thank you.

Andrea Apolo: 
Thank you.

[music]

Oliver:
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. 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, Astrid Masfar, and Maria Moten.

Join us every first and third Thursday of the month wherever you listen – subscribe so you won’t miss an episode.

If you have questions about cancer or comments about this podcast, you can email us at NCIinfo@nih.gov or call us at 800-422-6237. And please be sure to mention Inside Cancer Careers in your query.

We are a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute. Thanks for listening.