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The Cleveland Clinic Lerner of College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University (CCLCM) is a five-year program dedicated to developing the next generation of physician investigators. Students are assigned dedicated physician and research advisors to help ensure they reach their goals. In their fourth year, students work with a mentor to develop a master’s-level thesis in basic science, translational medicine, clinical medicine or health systems. When the students graduate, they each receive an MD with Special Qualification in Biomedical Research from Case Western Reserve University.
The research in which students are involved is critical, timely and often results in presentations at national conferences and publication in scholarly journals. The examples below briefly describe two students’ research projects, one that involves using advanced screening techniques to find prostate cancer and another that examines the prevalence of arrhythmic mitral valve prolapse after valve repair:
“During my research year at the National Institutes of Health, I studied how advanced imaging can better detect aggressive localized prostate cancer. Specifically, I worked with a specialized scan called PSMA PET/CT, which targets a protein commonly found elevated on prostate cancer cells. While this imaging tool has transformed how we find and stage prostate cancer, we still don’t fully understand why some tumors show up brightly on these scans and others don’t. To investigate this, we analyzed tumor samples from patients who had surgery for high-risk prostate cancer. Using a combination of immunohistochemistry (a method to visualize proteins in tissue), whole exome sequencing (to examine mutations in the DNA) and RNA sequencing (to study gene activity), we looked for molecular patterns linked to high uptake on the PET scans. We also tracked clinical outcomes like cancer recurrence after surgery. Our goal was to identify features of the tumor that could predict both imaging behavior and disease aggressiveness, helping personalize treatment decisions for future patients. This experience solidified my interest in academic urology and gave me hands-on training in translational research that bridges laboratory science with patient care.”
-Nikhil Pramod (’26)
“During my research year at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as a Sarnoff Cardiovascular Disease Fellow, I led a project focused on arrhythmic mitral valve prolapse. In approximately one-third of patients, mitral valve prolapse is associated with ventricular arrhythmias, which can result in adverse outcomes, including sudden cardiac death. My work explored the prevalence and prognostic impact of arrhythmic mitral valve prolapse in patients undergoing either surgical or transcatheter mitral valve repair. In a national cohort, we found that patients with arrhythmic mitral valve prolapse who underwent surgical repair had survival outcomes comparable to those without arrhythmias. Similarly, in an institutional cohort using long-term rhythm monitoring, the incidence of ventricular arrhythmias after surgical repair was not significantly different between groups. However, following transcatheter edge-to-edge repair, patients with arrhythmic mitral valve prolapse experienced worse survival and a higher risk of ventricular arrhythmias compared to their non-arrhythmic counterparts. The lab I worked with is currently enrolling patients in a multicenter randomized controlled trial to compare outcomes after surgical versus transcatheter repair in patients with mitral valve prolapse. We plan to use detailed imaging and prospective electrocardiographic data from this trial to further investigate the pathophysiologic impact of valve repair on arrhythmias.”
-Betemariam Sharew (’26)
