Stellar Scientific Research and the Bag to Match An Extraordinary Pritzker Student By Kadesha Thomas
Katarina Ruscic, a student at the Pritzker School of Medicine, is combining her medical degree with a PhD in computational neuroscience. Her research involves observing frog egg membranes through a microscope to study the ion channel proteins that regulate heart rhythm. Photos by Dan Dry
Though the label on her red, snakeskin handbag is eye-catchsuch problem at 10 years old. For more than a year, she’d been ing, it is not nearly as impressive as the labels on her curriculum carted back and forth to the hospital with swollen lymph nodes. vitae: two patents pending with Argonne National Laboratory; They were benign, but the other children she became friends undergraduate degrees in biology, chemistry and biochemistry with weren’t so fortunate. When she asked her mother why they from the University of Chicago; and dual MD, PhD degrees had no hair, her mother told her, “they have cancer.” Ruscic still coming soon from the Pritzker School of Medicine’s Medical remembers how helpless she felt. That feeling has driven her Scientist Training Program. At age 25, she exemplifies the type passion for physics, biology and research. of high achievement for which the Medical Center is known. Ruscic knew the ideal place to blend those interests was just In May 2010, Ruscic, originally from Croatia, became the across the Midway at the Pritzker School of Medicine. After her second Pritzker student selected for the Paul and Daisy Soros first two years at Pritzker, Ruscic began doctoral studies at the Fellowship for New Americans. The award is given to 30 outInstitute for Molecular Pediatric Sciences, located in the Gordon standing graduate students from immigrant Center for Integrative Science. Her research families out of nearly 900 applicants and comes focuses on understanding how the ion chanwith a $40,000 tuition scholarship and a $50,000 nels that produce electrical impulses regulating scientific research grant. the heartbeat lead to heart arrhythmias. The Ruscic was introduced to scientific research research also has implications for conditions early on. Her parents left Zagreb, the capital of like epilepsy and cystic fibrosis, each linked to Croatia, for positions at Argonne when Ruscic an ion channel mutation. was 3 years old in 1987, just three years before “This is one of the most demanding projects war broke out in Croatia. As a toddler, Ruscic in the laboratory,” said Steve Goldstein, MD, thought laboratories had the magic of Disney, PhD, the institute’s director and Ruscic’s faculty with liquid bubbling through tall, looping glassmentor. “I would only give this project to a very ware. “It was like a magic show,” Ruscic said, special student. She is multifaceted with intelli“except it was real. It was science.” gence and creativity that one observes, not only in Katarina Ruscic, 25, won the As a sophomore in college, Ruscic went back Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship her approach to science, but to life. She is unique.” to Argonne for a summer fellowship in 2003. At for New Americans. Her bold, European fashion sense bears witage 19, she and chemical physicist Rex Gerald, ness to her individuality. She has won accolades PhD, convinced a room full of attorneys and directors to supfor that, too: “Best Dressed” in high school and “Most Likely port patent applications for their battery concept, which used to Have Scrubs Tailored” at Pritzker. Shopping trips in Croatia nanotechnology to overcome the limitations of standard lithiand flipping through fashion magazines give her a break from um ion batteries and could potentially be used to power electric her arduous academic research. The half hour she spends getvehicles. She’d like to give more detail, but the patents are still ting dressed, she said, is her creative release. pending, she said, smiling. Goldstein has no doubts about Ruscic’s future prospects: Ruscic liked quantitative science, but she wanted research “One day she’ll be popping a champagne bottle to celebrate the findings to be more readily applicable to real people’s problems, opening of her own research laboratory.” as they tend to be in biology. Ruscic came face to face with one And, of course, she’ll be impeccably dressed for the occasion. 24 For more information, call 1-888-UCH-0200 or visit uchospitals.edu
Taking Preventive Care to the Masses By Kadesha Thomas
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henever Shantanu Nundy, MD, called or went to visit his parents in Baltimore, he always brought some new “doctor’s orders.” Nundy was then a neophyte medical school student at nearby Johns Hopkins University, and, as his medical education progressed, so did his directives to his parents. “We’d talk about infectious diseases in class, and I’d say, ‘Hey Mom, get a flu shot,’” recalled Nundy, now 28. “Then, we’d study GI and I’d say, ‘Hey Mom, you’re over 50, get a colonoscopy.’ But she’s just one person, having one doctor’s visit.” His intent was to educate, not to confuse her, a woman struggling with Type 2 diabetes. However, that’s exactly what the deluge of information did. During his first two years, his coursework focused on the minutiae of how each organ works — or stops working — but only scantly covered how to prevent even the most common chronic diseases. Before he graduated from Johns Hopkins, he decided he would do something about it. He would write up 10-page checklists of preventive measures every patient should request during a doctor’s visit, then randomly drop them in people’s mailboxes. But then he realized that the logistics of that idea — getting the mailing addresses and delivering them to the appropriate people — were unrealistic. The idea became the basis for Nundy’s new book, Stay Healthy At Every Age: What Your Doctor Wants You to Know. The book, published in April 2010, contains more than 350 pages about the preventive screenings, counseling sessions and medications patients should have, based on recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When Nundy first pitched the idea to The Johns Hopkins University Press, he was only a third-year medical student and a concerned son. “I went looking for this book to give my Mom,” he said. But market research showed few people with any medical training had bothered to write about preventive health care. He signed a contract two months later. Nundy, now a third-year internal medicine resident at the Medical Center, still thinks physicians need to take more responsibility — primary responsibility, in fact — for helping patients prevent chronic diseases or detect them as early as possible. “The patient’s job is to just show up,” he insisted. His passion is clear when he talks about how pop culture magazines have ripped the dissemination of health information from real physicians, causing even more confusion — and physicians, he believes, have let them. “How many more magazine covers do you need about losing weight?” he asked. “How many trillions of health-related Web pages are out there, and how many were written by physicians? I want more physicians to share their information with people, in books, on blogs, on twitter, somewhere.” This motivated Nundy to start his blog, beyondapples.org. Instead of being counseled on lifestyle changes and screening tests during medical appointments, patients are turning to sketchy consumer sources, he said, if they are getting this information at all.
Shantanu Nundy, MD, a third-year internal medicine resident at the Medical Center, has published a book of personalized screening measures to help prevent illness. Photo by Dan Dry
Nundy’s primary care patients can expect to spend their 30-minute appointment talking about their main concerns and his. Kametta Clark, 36, came from her home in Matteson, Illinois, to ask Nundy how she could prepare for an upcoming surgery. She threw out questions one after another: What kind of medications should she take? What should she eat beforehand? How long would the surgery take? And what about scarring? After answering, Nundy took advantage of the time to fire off plenty of questions for her too, but not about the surgery: Did she smoke? Did she exercise regularly? What did she eat for breakfast? No, yes, and egg whites with turkey bacon, she said confidently — answers that made Nundy give a slight grin and a nod of approval. “I’m glad you’re being so proactive,” he said. “It’s all about knowing what keeps you healthy.”
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