Medical Scientist Training Program

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Medical Scientist Training Programs are highly selective combined M.D. and Ph.D. graduate degree programs offered by a number of United States medical schools with grant support from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). Students need outstanding academic and research credentials, excellent MCAT scores, and prior clinical experience. Several schools also require GRE scores. Admission to MSTP programs are competitive as students receive full tuition waivers for the medical and graduate portions of their training, an annual stipend ranging from $19,000 to $28,000 per year, and travel and supplies allowance. Several hundred students per year are admitted annually to MSTP programs around the country. In addition, many medical schools have MD/PhD programs that are not supported by the NIH but offer similar training opportunities ^[1].

The vast majority (over 80%) of MD/PhD program graduates eventually go on to work in positions in academic medicine, government, or industry where medical research is a central component of their duties ^[2]. According to a FASEB 2000 study, graduates of NIH-funded MSTPs make up just 2.5% of medical school graduates each year, but after graduation account for about one third of all NIH research grants awarded to physicians. Many MD/PhD graduates also practice clinical medicine in their field of expertise.^[3]

MSTP training was developed by the NIGMS to stimulate training of talented physician-scientists for future careers in biomedical research. Most students can live comfortably with the stipend, but to a varying degree depending on the location of the school. For example, over 70% of the students at the University of Iowa own their own houses, as opposed to most of the students going to schools at big cities, such as New York or Chicago, who would just rent throughout their training.

Typically, students complete the program in six to ten years, depending upon the time spent in Ph.D. research. These programs vary greatly in size, ranging from two trainees per academic class (e.g. University of Connecticut) to over twenty (e.g. Washington University in St. Louis). Additionally, several medical schools allow for the PhD portion of the MSTP to be completed at an allied institution, where research in specific fields may be stronger than at the home institution. Such alliances include:

• The University of California, San Diego and the Salk Institute and The Scripps Research Institute
• Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• The Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program (Weill Cornell Medical College and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and The Rockefeller University)
• The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Carnegie Mellon University [2]
• The University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and the University of California, Berkeley
• Stony Brook University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory
• The University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine and the California Institute of Technology
• The Emory University School of Medicine and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
• SUNY Downstate Medical Center and Polytechnic Institute of New York University.
• The University of Southern California and the California Institute of Technology.
• Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic.

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Mount Sinai School of Medicine allow students that have also been accepted into the Graduate Partnership Program of the NIH to complete their thesis work through this program, typically at the NIH and the University of Cambridge (Health Sciences) or the University of Oxford (Biomedical Sciences).

Most programs have created MSTP-specific courses that fulfill medical or graduate school requirements and streamline the training schedule. These courses eliminate overlap between the curricula without sacrificing necessary rigor. This integrated curriculum takes different forms at different institutions, but all MD-PhD recipients receive a complete MD training and a rigorous PhD experience.

A number of medical schools without funded NIH MSTP grant slots maintain their own non-MSTP MD/PhD combined degree programs, sometimes offering full or partial student financial support funded by the schools themselves. A few of the more popular non-MSTP MD/PhD programs include those at Boston University, Dartmouth College, Wayne State University, University of Southern California, Ohio State University, University of Miami and the University of Oklahoma.

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.nigms.nih.gov/Training/InstPredoc/PredocOverview-MSTP.htm
2. ^ Ley TJ, Rosenberg LE (2005). "The physician-scientist career pipeline in 2005: build it, and they will come". JAMA 294 (11): 1343–51. doi:10.1001/jama.294.11.1343. PMID 16174692. 
3. ^ Zemlo TR, Garrison HH, Partridge NC, Ley TJ (2000). "The physician-scientist: career issues and challenges at the year 2000". FASEB J 14 (2): 221–30. PMID 10657979 [1]. 

[edit] External links

• American Physician Scientists Association
• List of NIH MSTPs
• Guidebook for prospective MSTP or MD/PhD students written by students, but with no citations.
• The M.D./Ph.D.: An Academic Path to a Career as a Physician-Scientist

[edit] Other Wiki Links

American Physician Scientists Association