Fourth-year Medical Student Youxin Guan on Conducting Research and Supporting Fellow Students

Throughout her years at New York Medical College (NYMC), Youxin Guan, School of Medicine (SOM) Class of 2021, has made both major inroads with her own research into the use of advanced MRI sequence to assess spinal lesions in cancer patients and supported the research of her fellow medical students through her involvement as a member of the SOM Student Research Committee. 

With findings suggesting that non-invasive MRI technology can be used with patients with varied cancers to produce results similar to biopsy results, Ms. Guan’s research, which began after her first year at NYMC as part of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Medical Student Research Program, was published in September, in the top journal Radiology. 

“Using advanced MRI sequences to monitor changes in spinal lesions over time among cancer patients is more desirable because imaging is quick, low risk and non-invasive, allowing for close monitoring as frequently as needed and producing diagnostic imaging evidence that is consistent with the corresponding gold standard biopsy results,” says Ms. Guan. “Another advantage is that this specific MRI modality can predict treatment response as early as two hours post-radiation therapy, giving physicians an idea whether or not to adjust treatment plan to achieve the optimal outcome as early as possible.”

Ms. Guan’s specific responsibilities for the project have included study design, patient selection chart review, data collection, data analysis, writing the manuscript and replying to revision requests from the journal as the first author of the paper.

Supporting her fellow students in their own research, Ms. Guan has been a member of the Student Research Committee since her first year at NYMC. “The big project at that time was to get the Medical Student Research Seminar Series up and running,” she says. “It was our goal to expand on what Erin Caraher, M.D. ’20, and Jayaji More, M.D. ’20, the founders of the Research Committee, had established for the research seminar series, and made it into an integral part of the research concentration curriculum.”

To accomplish that, the Committee has collaborated with specialty interest groups, hosted themed seminars every two weeks, and established a standardized process for recruiting presenters and running the seminars. They have also regularly contributed news to Synapse, the SOM Student Senate’s monthly newsletter and, most recently, in student involvement in COVID-19 research across all class years. 

“I feel that NYMC provides a supportive environment for research and is constantly looking for ways to enhance the research experience and encourage students to be proactive about finding research opportunities,” says Ms. Guan. “In addition to getting support for the research activities I am involved in, I also received ample support in research advocacy as a Research Committee member. The faculty at NYMC are genuinely interested in promoting research among medical students, and they work closely as a team to support whatever research needs a student has.”