MD/PhD summer program participant wins award at conference
Alexandre Bourcier spent time this summer shadowing neurosurgeons and cancer patients and learned how devastating the effects of malignant nerve tumors — and, in some cases, the chemotherapy treatments used to combat them — can be.
The Schreyer Honors Scholar also conducted research on how to treat those kinds of tumors that yielded some encouraging results.
After making his presentation “Alisertib, a new hope for the treatment of malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors,” to Penn State College of Medicine’s Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium in August, Bourcier made the same presentation at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in Tampa, Florida, in early November and received an award that included a monetary prize to be put toward future research.
Initially intent on studying neuroscience, the sophomore said his experiences in Hershey this summer as part of the MD/PhD program’s summer honors program increased his interest in cancer biology and helped him more clearly define his career goals.
“I not only want to be a doctor, but I also want to innovate my field,” he said.
Read more about Bourcier’s work in this Penn State News article.
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