Deeper Pathways for Recruitment Efforts: Identifying Opportunities for Undergraduate and Medical Student Involvement in Infectious Diseases.

Background: Only 74% of infectious diseases (ID) training positions were filled in the 2022 fellowship match, indicating a need to find increasingly novel and creative solutions for ID recruitment and outreach. Methods: The websites of 2321 universities and 181 medical schools across the United States were manually searched for the presence of undergraduate clubs and interest groups, respectively, for multiple medical specialties and subspecialties, including ID. Geographic data were used to compare the proximity of ID fellowships to undergraduate institutions. Results: ID student groups were extremely rare among the categories studied throughout undergraduate institutions (6 out of 2048, or 0.29%). Only 58 of 163 (35.6%) medical schools nationwide included an ID student group. Geographic comparison found that every adult ID fellowship is in the same county and/or city as at least 1 undergraduate institution and 28.5% of adult ID fellowships are in the same zip code as at least 1 undergraduate institution. Conclusions: The relative paucity of ID student interest groups presents an opportunity for the ID community to begin outreach and recruitment at the undergraduate and medical student levels, specifically through student groups.

The Molecular Mechanisms and Therapeutic Prospects of Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres (ALT).

As detailed by the end replication problem, the linear ends of a cell's chromosomes, known as telomeres, shorten with each successive round of replication until a cell enters into a state of growth arrest referred to as senescence. To maintain their immortal proliferation capacity, cancer cells must employ a telomere maintenance mechanism, such as telomerase activation or the Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres pathway (ALT). With only 10-15% of cancers utilizing the ALT mechanism, progress towards understanding its molecular components and associated hallmarks has only recently been made. This review analyzes the advances towards understanding the ALT pathway by: (1) detailing the mechanisms associated with engaging the ALT pathway as well as (2) identifying potential therapeutic targets of ALT that may lead to novel cancer therapeutic treatments. Collectively, these studies indicate that the ALT molecular mechanisms involve at least two distinct pathways induced by replication stress and damage at telomeres. We suggest exploiting tumor dependency on ALT is a promising field of study because it suggests new approaches to ALT-specific therapies for cancers with poorer prognosis. While substantial progress has been made in the ALT research field, additional progress will be required to realize these advances into clinical practices to treat ALT cancers and improve patient prognoses.