Med Student Driven to Create Hope Through Cancer Research Earns Inaugural Award

UCF medical student Natalya Kramer lost her grandfather to lymphoma, inspiring her to pursue medicine with hopes of caring for cancer patients and their families.

That dedication and her passion for research recently earned Kramer the inaugural Dean Deborah C. German, M.D. FIRE (Focused Individualized Research Experience) Impact Award, an honor named after the founding dean of UCF's College of Medicine who created the FIRE course, which requires every student to conduct a two-year research project.

German announced earlier this year that she is transitioning from her role and will remain at UCF for a year as an advisor to the president and provost on health affairs. FIRE leaders created the award to honor German's legacy of scientific discovery as part of medical training, an educational component that makes UCF's medical school unique nationally.

"I want our students to develop a spirit of inquiry. I want every UCF physician not to be afraid to seek answers to medicine's unanswered questions." - Deborah German, College of Medicine dean

"I want our students to develop a spirit of inquiry," German told Kramer as she presented her with the award. "I want every UCF physician not to be afraid to seek answers to medicine's unanswered questions."

After earning an undergraduate degree the University of South Florida, Kramer decided to attend UCF in part because the FIRE course was one reason she came to UCF.

"I wanted to combine research with clinical care," she says.

Her FIRE project focused on glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer with a five-year survival rate of only 5% to 7%, according to the Mayo Clinic. Even if surgery, chemotherapy and radiation initially stop the cancer, it usually returns and becomes stronger. Kramer says she wanted to know why.

With support from her FIRE mentor, Kiminobu Sugaya, head of the College of Medicine's neuroscience research division, she discovered that extracellular vesicles responsible for cell-to-cell communication may influence non-cancer cells to take on cancer-like properties.

The new award goes to the student whose research shows the greatest potential impact to medicine and/or biomedical research. College of Medicine faculty and fellow students chose Kramer for the award during the FIRE Conference.

"It is our privilege to establish this award in honor of Dean German," say Robert Hines and Lane Coffee, co-directors of the FIRE course. "When establishing this medical school, she realized the importance of rigorous scientific inquiry, and our students have benefited from - and will continue to benefit from - this course within the curriculum."

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