My Video Resume

Michael Chin's Video Resume from Michael Chin on Vimeo.

Transcript:

• Growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts, Michael Chin always dreamed of being a doctor. When he enrolled at the University of Virginia, he began his pursuit of his chosen profession: Medicine.
• While an undergraduate student, Chin sought out various leadership roles and stood out in these positions.
• Michael Chin's Notable Achievements at University of Virginia: Worked as a research assistant in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston; Studied radiation treatment outcomes for Hodgkin’s disease patients; Led a detailed analysis on a subgroup of patients with Lymphocyte-Predominant Hodgkin’s Disease.
• Post-Graduate Success: Michael graduated from UVA in 2002, and then attended an intensive pre-med program atTuft University. In 2004, he was admitted to Tufts University School of Medicine.
• While attending medical school, Michael Chin held many research positions: Research assistant at Baystate Plastic Surgery (for a retrospective study on the results of mastopexy and reduction mammoplasty after breast conserving therapy with radiation); Research associate at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, working for the Division of Plastic Surgery studying wound healing; Manuscript reviewer for Tissue Engineering and FASEB Journal
• After holding so many prestigious research positions, Michael received his medical degree with a Research Honors while winning multiple awards for his research in plastic surgery.
• After medical school, Michael Chin moved to Worcester for his residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical School as a plastic surgery resident. He also began to co-investigate at the University of Massachusetts and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. At UMass, he built a strong research team that conducted privately funded studies to examine the effects and possible mitigation of radiation induced skin injury in irradiated mice. By the end of his third year at UMass, Michael was appointed to a faculty position as Instructor of Radiation Oncology. Michael’s work in hyperspectral imaging resulted in a patent filing for a novel method of radiation exposure detection.
• Today, Michael Chin is still in Worcester as a research fellow in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Questioning Gene Editing

When it comes to the new gene-editing therapy known as CRISPR, the scientific community appears to be divided. While its applications for disease prevention are encouraging, the ethical implications and the unknown repercussions related to individual health remain a serious concern.

But where do the patients stand when it comes to the use of gene-editing therapy?

According to representatives from various patient advocacy organizations, the jury is still out on whether this technology is really a positive thing. People are still concerned about getting more information in order to make the proper choices.

“We’re a long way from a final opinion on any of these issues,” says Richard Hynes, a cancer researcher and co-chair of the national committee from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “[It’s a] a discussion, not a finalization of opinions.”

To move the discussion forward, the medical community needs to learn more about the technology and base decisions on facts, not fear of the unknown.

Extraordinary Results With New T-cell Therapy

Scientists have been using the immune T-cells to target cancers, producing extraordinary results. Patients who would typically only have a few months to live are now in remission.

The scientists have shown that this process, which involves the engineering of immune cells to target a specific type of blood cancer, has been very successful in their early clinical trials.

Widespread implementation of this practice will take some time, as is the case with all medical advancements. Not to mention the use of T-cell therapy is very dangerous and typically only used as a last resort. But for those patients who have exhausted all other options, the early results of this process is extremely promising.

The T-cell therapy is administered by removing immune cells from patients and then tagging them with receptor molecules that target a specific cancer. The cells are then infused back in the body.

Speaking at the annual meeting for the American Association for the Advancement for Science (AAAS), researcher Stanley Riddell said: “This is unprecedented in medicine, to be honest, to get response rates in this range in these very advanced patients.” In one of the studies, 94% of participants with acute lymphoblastic leukemia saw symptoms vanish completely.

So far, these tests have only targeted certain blood cancers. More will need to be done to determine how long patients remain in remission; cancer cells can sometimes hid unnoticed by the body’s defenses, or instead, overwhelm the defense systems and throw the immune system into overdrive.

“Much like chemotherapy and radiotherapy, it’s not going to be a save-all,” Riddell said of the new therapy, adding: “I think immunotherapy has finally made it to a pillar of cancer therapy.”

To learn more about this study, please check out this Guardian article.