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Medical students take advantage of DCRI's Summer Research Program This excerpt was edited and reprinted with permission from the Children’s Hospital and Darby Children’s Research Institute’s (DCRI) newsletter, Kid Connection. Debbie Shoemaker, Summer Research Programs in the College of Graduate Studies director, contributed the following information.   Summer is the perfect opportunity for medical students to enhance their experiences as future health professionals, teachers and scientists through research positions.   These experiences shape career choices and professional development and are an opportunity to concentrate on a project that can advance a field of research. By publishing an abstract or paper through a summer research position, a medical student’s prospects of matching to the best postgraduate training programs in the country increase with the added experience.   This summer, the DCRI has welcomed several medical students who are conducting research in the lab. Students working with physicians have a golden opportunity to experience clinical care in the Children’s Hospital and various clinics. Three sets of summer students are offered positions by the Summer Research Program.      Students who must define specific project goals in advance are the Summer Health Professionals (SHPs). With few exceptions, the Summer Undergraduate Research Professionals (SURPs) do not know who their mentors will be until they arrive on site. The Governor’s School students know their mentors, but do not submit project titles until they have completed their summer work.   Some of the SHP projects for this summer include: silencing CD44 RNA expression, imaging glioma invasiveness with two-photon microscopy, neural and cancer stem cell interactions, effects of CD44 down-regolation on amount and distribution of BCRP, effect of vitamin D on periodontal disease in pregnant women, role of vitamin D in lupus, and estrogen and innate immunity.   Most of the SURP participants will work with the executive director of the DCRI, Bernie Maria, M.D. Governor’s school students will work with other DCRI investigators on various topics of interest.   Students will also have the opportunity to work with Dan Knapp, Ph.D., Department of Pharmacology distinguished professor and director of the MUSC Proteomics Center, on proteomic analysis of heart tissue. As part of the work of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute funded Cardiovascular Proteomics Center, researchers are studying changes in protein expression associated with embryonic heart development and in cardiac hypertrophy.   Summer research students will have the opportunity to assist in sample preparation and analysis of heart tissue associated with these studies. Through this experience, students will be exposed to the analytical methods used for proteomic analysis including multidimensional liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry.     Friday, June 30, 2006 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Island Publications at 849-1778, ext. 201.