{"id":91205,"date":"2014-04-04T11:21:44","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T15:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=91205"},"modified":"2014-04-04T17:04:54","modified_gmt":"2014-04-04T21:04:54","slug":"ask-the-soon-to-be-dr-drew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2014\/04\/ask-the-soon-to-be-dr-drew\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask (the Soon-to-be) Dr. Drew"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"David<\/a>
David A. Drew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Research being done in UConn Health\u2019s Center for Molecular Medicine<\/a> is uncovering more evidence of differences between lesions found in the right side of the colon compared to the left side.<\/p>\n

Those differences may help explain why colonoscopies are more effective in preventing left-sided cancers than right-sided. And while the implications are not fully known, understanding the earliest lesions that form in the right colon could hold the key to making colorectal cancer\u2014a deadly yet largely preventable disease\u2014more preventable and therefore, ultimately, less deadly.<\/p>\n

The study of these early lesions, known as aberrant crypt foci, or ACF, is taking place in the laboratory of Daniel Rosenberg<\/a>, professor of medicine in UConn Health\u2019s Department of Genetics and Developmental Biology. A key figure involved with that research is Ph.D. candidate David Drew.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis work is central to my thesis,\u201d Drew says. \u201cIt\u2019s really the bulk of my dissertation.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also has drawn national interest. The American Association for Cancer Research chose Drew from a pool of more than 2,000 applicants as its AACR-GlaxoSmithKline Outstanding Clinical Scholar. The award recognizes \u201cpromising young cancer researchers who are the authors of outstanding proffered papers related to clinical research.\u201d Drew is 27.<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid has tackled some enormously important issues in defining risk of colon cancer among the population,\u201d Rosenberg says. \u201cHe has already published three papers and is about to submit a major epidemiological study of colon cancer risk in the Connecticut population, work that was a combined effort with Drs. [Thomas] Devers<\/a>, [Richard] Stevens<\/a>, [James] Grady<\/a> and myself. There are some surprising and critically important observations that I think will have a major impact on how colon cancer prevention is implemented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevens, professor and cancer epidemiologist in the Department of Community Medicine and Health Care, calls Drew \u201ca very capable young researcher with a good sense of epidemiology. He\u2019s also an excellent basic scientist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Technology in the Rosenberg Lab enables researchers to visualize biopsies on a microscopic level, differentiating between cells from the lesions and cells from normal tissue. They also have developed a method of broad genetic screening on the samples, revealing mutations rarely associated with cancer.<\/p>\n

\"Ph.D.<\/a>
Ph.D. Candidate David Drew uses a laser capture microdissection instrument to isolate aberrant colon cells to investigate the earliest initiating events leading to colon cancer. (Tina Encarnacion\/UConn Health Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to take those specimens back to our lab and understand the earliest genetic, epigenetic, and molecular changes that are happening in these lesions that may be contributing to your future risk of colon cancer,\u201d Drew says.<\/p>\n

Next week in San Diego, he presents his abstract, \u201cProximal human aberrant crypt foci as surrogate markers of colorectal cancer risk,\u201d at the AACR\u2019s annual meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really interested in why those right-sided lesions specifically may be different than the left-sided lesions,\u201d Drew says. \u201cThe work that I\u2019m going to be presenting at AACR is really the first work that we did specifically looking at the right versus left, and what we\u2019re learning is that these little tiny lesions on the right are different than the ones on the left.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the questions is whether right colon lesions become cancerous more quickly, or whether they\u2019re just not as detectable. Rosenberg Lab researchers hope analysis of these lesions at the molecular level can yield a better understanding. Sophisticated technology has enabled them to develop a broad genetic screen on tissue specimens, potentially revealing earlier clues about colon cancer risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to understand the first stages of initiation and understand what the earliest possible changes are that are occurring and contributing to colon cancer carcinogenesis,\u201d Drew says.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe will become a highly productive and successful cancer researcher and I have no doubt that he will head an academic research group in the near future,\u201d Rosenberg says. \u201cDavid\u2019s translational focus has been instrumental in my securing several large extramural grants (NIH, DPH). He did a wonderful job in working together with several distinct disciplines to move the epidemiology paper forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later this year Drew expects to complete his thesis at the UConn Health Graduate School and leave with a Ph.D. in biomedical science. He and his wife, Katelyn Dannheim, live in West Hartford, but are soon likely to move to the Boston area; Dannheim is graduating from the UConn School of Medicine next month and will begin residency training in pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.<\/p>\n

Drew graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry\/biophysics, and stayed at RPI for graduate school. Within the first year, his principal investigator took a job at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, leaving him with the choices of following her to Vanderbilt, staying at RPI in another lab, or starting over somewhere else. The fact that his then-girlfriend was a medical student led him to UConn, and his interest in genetics and translational research led him to Rosenberg, who calls him \u201cone of the finest students I have ever trained.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been given a great opportunity here,\u201d Drew says. \u201cI consider myself very lucky. Not everybody gets work that I get, that is so translational and conducive to publishing.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never hear about the failures in science very often, unless they\u2019re catastrophic. We fail a lot, but that\u2019s part of science. But every time something doesn\u2019t work, we learn something from it. And that\u2019s a great skill to have, for life, for professionalism and for research.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Follow UConn Health<\/a> on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a> and\u00a0YouTube<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research by UConn Health Ph.D. candidate David Drew has drawn national attention and could impact future of colon cancer prevention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":91221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[57,2010],"class_list":["post-91205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-17 03:48:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91205"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91224,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91205\/revisions\/91224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/91221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91205"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=91205"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=91205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}