This summer, I learned about the etiology and pathology of Castleman disease from articles, meetings, personal research, and medical records of patients. The meetings I had the opportunity to sit in on ranged from education lunch talks, to international board meetings on the direction and expansion of research. I also learned about the importance and uses of registries and data, as well as how to go through medical records and gain insight into how physicians record patient information. I familiarized myself with medical terminology, medications, and laboratory tests. Going through published Castleman disease articles on the first day, I understood very little of the language, but that changed by the end of the summer. I was trained on and entered patient data into the ACCELERATE international registry and got to see how medical research works. For my project specifically, I reviewed entered data in the registry and examined the current treatments for Castleman disease that are being used around the world. I then did more research on the mechanisms of actions for all of the medications used to treat Castleman Disease, either by themselves, or in groups known as regimens. This is a rare disease, so many different medications were used over a small number of patients. The goal for the future would be to have enough patient information entered into the registry in order to create specific treatments that are the most effective for an individual patient. This is important because of the heterogeneity of the disease in both subtype and within subtype. Patients present with a variety of different clinical features and lab values to name a few. It was a very educational summer, where I got to learn a significant amount about the medical field. I also plan to stay involved with the people and organization that I worked with in the future.
This summer, I learned about the etiology and pathology of Castleman disease from articles, meetings, personal research, and medical records of patients. The meetings I had the opportunity to sit in on ranged from education lunch talks, to international board meetings on the direction and expansion of research. I also learned about the importance and uses of registries and data, as well as how to go through medical records and gain insight into how physicians record patient information. I familiarized myself with medical terminology, medications, and laboratory tests. Going through published Castleman disease articles on the first day, I understood very little of the language, but that changed by the end of the summer. I was trained on and entered patient data into the ACCELERATE international registry and got to see how medical research works. For my project specifically, I reviewed entered data in the registry and examined the current treatments for Castleman disease that are being used around the world. I then did more research on the mechanisms of actions for all of the medications used to treat Castleman Disease, either by themselves, or in groups known as regimens. This is a rare disease, so many different medications were used over a small number of patients. The goal for the future would be to have enough patient information entered into the registry in order to create specific treatments that are the most effective for an individual patient. This is important because of the heterogeneity of the disease in both subtype and within subtype. Patients present with a variety of different clinical features and lab values to name a few. It was a very educational summer, where I got to learn a significant amount about the medical field. I also plan to stay involved with the people and organization that I worked with in the future.