UCSF Duo Receives Howard Hughes Early Career Research Awards

UCSF's Jayanta Debnath, MD, and Scott A. Oakes, MD, have been named recipients of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Physician-Scientist Early Career Award program. The program provides $150,000 over three years to promising physician-scientists in their early years as tenure-track faculty at academic medical centers. The money must be used for direct research expenses, and the recipients' institutions must agree to let the young physician-scientists spend at least 70 percent of their time doing research. It has long been known that the first few years as a junior faculty member at an academic medical center can make or break a physician who wants a career in biomedical research. Two reasons why new faculty physicians abandon plans for research careers are lack of flexible funding to accommodate the need for new labs and lack of time to actually do research. In fact, focus groups of young physicians - all of them alumni of training programs run by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) - have identified a junior faculty member's first few years as the most critical stage in a physician-scientist's career. HHMI responded to these challenges by creating the Physician-Scientist Early Career Award program. Debnath and Oakes are two of 13 awardees announced by HHMI. Many of them have already made impressive, original contributions to research in a variety of fields. "We feel that the Early Career Award program is one of the best investments we could make in the future of biomedical research," said William Galey, PhD, director of HHMI's graduate science education and medical research training programs. "There is a pressing need to recruit talented physicians to careers in medical research, to help translate basic science discoveries into new medical therapies for patients. We hope that these competitive grants will enable some of the most promising MDs and MD-PhDs to make a successful transition from mentored training to independent junior faculty research positions at academic medical centers." HHMI already supports two programs to recruit future physician-scientists: the HHMI- National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Scholars Program, which enables medical or dental students to spend a year doing research in laboratories at the NIH, and the HHMI Research Training Fellowships for Medical Students Program, which allows medical or dental students to conduct full-time research at any academic institution in the United States except the NIH. HHMI established the Early Career Awards to encourage alumni of these HHMI programs to continue to pursue their interest in research once they accept academic positions. Only alumni of HHMI's medical and dental student research training programs are eligible to apply. "We want to make sure that these talented young physicians, who have already shown exceptional promise in the research lab and in the clinic, are not lost from the ranks of research scientists," explained Peter J. Bruns, PhD, HHMI vice president of grants and special programs. HHMI received nearly 50 applications for the first awards. A panel of leading physician-scientists reviewed the applications, evaluating each applicant's ability and promise for a research career as a physician-scientist. They considered the quality and quantity of formal research training, the commitment of each applicant's research institution, the quality of the research environment, the applicant's commitment to pursuing a biomedical research career and the quality of the proposed research plan. The three-year awards support individuals who have obtained full-time, tenure-track faculty positions at biomedical research institutions. The grants may not be used to replace or supplement salaries, or research expenses that would otherwise be supported by the institution. HHMI's 2006 Early Career awardees are: Atul J. Butte, MD, PhD, Stanford University School of Medicine Jayanta Debnath, MD, UCSF School of Medicine Emad N. Eskandar, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital John L. Hartman, MD, University of Alabama School of Medicine Siavash Kurdistani, MD, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine David Martin, MD, University of Washington School of Medicine Vamsi K. Mootha, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital Scott A. Oakes, MD, UCSF School of Medicine Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Stelios M. Smirnakis, MD, PhD, Brigham and Women's Hospital Kimberly Stegmaier, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Jennifer F. Tseng, MD, University of Massachusetts Medical School Catherine J. Wu, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute