Participation in a scientific pre-university program and medical students' interest in an academic career.

BACKGROUND: The proportion of medical doctors involved in research activities is declining. Undergraduate medical research programs are positively associated with medical students' research interest. Scientific pre-university programs (SPUPs) outside the medical domain are also positively associated with research interest, but have not been related to the shortage of clinician-scientists. This study examined the effect of an SPUP on medical students' research interest. METHODS: This study was conducted at a Dutch medical school. Medical students in all years who had participated in an SPUP and first-year master students who had not participated in an SPUP were invited to fill out an online survey on extracurricular activities and future career interests. SPUP participants were compared with three groups of non-participants: (i) an unmatched group, (ii) a group matched on gender and pre-university Grade Point Average (pu-GPA) and (iii) a group matched on gender and first-year GPA, one to five years after finishing the SPUP. Participants evaluated the SPUP through ratings of statements about the program. RESULTS: Two-hundred forty medical students, including 71 SPUP participants responded to the survey. SPUP participants participated significantly more often in the Honors class (i.e., extracurricular educational program for high-performing students), gained significantly more often extracurricular research experience, enrolled significantly more often in the Research master (i.e., research training program parallel to the clinical master program) and obtained significantly more often a scholarship than unmatched non-SPUP participants. Using a non-SPUP group matched on gender and pu-GPA reduced the effect size of the significant differences in Honors class participation, Research master participation and scholarship obtainment. Using a non-SPUP group matched on gender and first-year GPA rendered the significant difference in Research master participation and scholarship obtainment insignificant. Significantly more SPUP participants than unmatched non-SPUP participants preferred a combination of clinical care and research in their future career. Using a non-SPUP group matched on gender and either pu-GPA or first-year GPA did not change the effect size of this significant difference. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate the potential value of an SPUP in increasing the number of medical students with research interest and as a policy measure to help to alleviate the shortage of clinician-scientists.

Network Building with the Cytoscape BioGateway App Explained in Five Use Cases.

The BioGateway App is a plugin for the Cytoscape network editor, allowing users to interactively build biological networks by querying the Biogateway Resource Description Framework (RDF) triple store. BioGateway contains information from several curated resources including UniProtKB, IntAct, Gene Ontology Annotations, various datasets containing transcription-factor regulatory relations to specific target genes, and more. The BioGateway App facilitates the step-by-step creation of complex SPARQL queries through an intuitive Graphical User Interface, allowing users to build and explore biological interaction networks to assess, among other things, gene regulatory relationships, gene ontology annotations, and protein-protein interactions. As the BioGateway information content is most abundant for human proteins and genes, this article describes the utility of the tool through a series of use cases on these human data, starting from the most basic levels and then detailing applications that address some of the rich complexity of the integrated data. Network refinement and display can be further optimized via the selection and filtering possibilities that the Cytoscape framework provides. The use cases also provide examples to explore network information in other species, as they become supported by BioGateway. © 2020 The Authors. Basic Protocol 1: Introducing a node from the canvas Basic Protocol 2: Introducing a node from the query builder Basic Protocol 3: Exploring molecular relationships between diseases Basic Protocol 4: Find proteins with protein kinase activity involved in a disease and explore the context around them Basic Protocol 5: Exploring the potential downstream effects after targeted inhibition of proteins Support Protocol: Installation of the BioGateway plugin through the Cytoscape App Manager and from source.

Promoting evidence-based practices for breast cancer care through web-based collaborative learning.

The Knowledge Summaries for Comprehensive Breast Cancer Control (KSBCs) are a series of 14 publications aligned with World Health Organization guidance on evidence-based breast cancer control and accepted frameworks for action. To study utilization of the KSBCs in the development of locally relevant breast cancer control policies and programs in limited resource settings, the National Cancer Institute Center for Global Health, the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center developed the Project ECHO® for KSBCs (KSBC ECHO). Project ECHO is an online model which employs case-based learning, while promoting multi-directional learning and network-building. The program was evaluated using a pre-post study design to assess if this online collaborative learning platform can be an effective model for dissemination and utilization of the KSBCs to inform breast cancer control programs and policy advocacy in limited resource settings. A total of 28 KSBC ECHO participants (57%) responded to the baseline and endpoint program evaluation surveys. Across all 28 respondents, analysis of the data indicates that knowledge increase was statistically significant overall: average knowledge gain was 0.77, 95% CI [0.44 - 1.08] and p value < 0.0001. A majority of responding team leads reported that the core ECHO components (case/didactic presentations, discussion) contributed to a great extent to strengthening their project proposal/goals. Program evaluation survey responses indicate that utilization of this online platform provided an opportunity for individual knowledge gain, multi-directional information exchange, network-building, and strengthening of the proposed breast cancer control projects based in limited resource settings.