{"id":55400,"date":"2019-07-02T03:56:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T07:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/utnews.utoledo.edu\/?p=55400"},"modified":"2019-06-30T09:17:16","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T13:17:16","slug":"medical-student-earns-fellowship-to-study-blood-clotting-in-cancer-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/07_02_2019\/medical-student-earns-fellowship-to-study-blood-clotting-in-cancer-patients","title":{"rendered":"Medical Student Earns Fellowship to Study Blood Clotting in Cancer Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"

Innovative research that may explain the precarious connection between lung cancer and serious blood clotting disorders has earned a University of Toledo medical student a fellowship with the North American Society for Thrombosis and Hemostasis.<\/p>\n

Adam Meisler, who will be entering his second year of medical school, was one of only three students in the country to receive the 2019 award. The fellowship includes a $5,000 stipend and a $1,000 award to the lab. <\/p>\n

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Medical student Adam Meisler took a blood sample for his research focusing on the connection between lung cancer and blood clotting disorders. Meisler is one of three students in the country to receive a fellowship with the North American Society for Thrombosis and Hemostasis for his research.<\/p><\/div>\u201cThis is a huge honor for him,\u201d said Dr. Randall Worth, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and assistant dean for student affairs in the UToledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences. \u201cYou don\u2019t often have students who have a fellowship on their resum\u00e9 when it comes time to apply for residency. Adam is an outstanding student. If he maintains that, it\u2019s going to put him at the top of the national competitive scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lung cancer patients have an elevated risk of strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms. Approximately one-fifth of the 150,000 annual deaths tied to lung cancer in the United States are the result of large blood clots. <\/p>\n

Meisler\u2019s project is focused on whether cancer-fighting T-cells bonding with blood platelets in those patients might explain why. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe suspect that the interaction between platelets and T-cells is largely contributing to that phenomenon,\u201d Meisler said. \u201cIf we can find a way to break up those aggregates, I think that would be huge.\u201d<\/p>\n

In healthy individuals, a relatively small portion of T-cells are attached to blood platelets \u2014 somewhere around 15 percent. However, in lung cancer patients, Meisler and Worth have found as many as 65 percent of their T-cells are bonded with platelets.<\/p>\n

Worth said science has already shown that a portion of lung cancer patients who have had a stroke or heart attack don\u2019t respond to the normal anti-coagulants that would be prescribed to prevent a second event.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s a big push from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Heart, Lung and Blood trying to understand why that is,\u201d Worth said. \u201cI think with these platelet T-cell aggregates, we may have discovered the time bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the fellowship, Meisler will continue his research and present his findings at the North American Society for Thrombosis and Hemostasis conference next spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo apply my research to something as high impact as lung cancer is really special,\u201d Meisler said. \u201cThis project and the fellowship is definitely making me lean toward a future specializing in hematology-oncology.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Medical student Adam Meisler is one of three students in the nation to receive a fellowship with the North American Society for Thrombosis and Hemostasis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":849,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,1,3,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/849"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55400"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55644,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55400\/revisions\/55644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}