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Lighting A Spark
Educating the next generation of cancer researchers
Photo by Matt ShifflerIsaiah Waiters and Ese-Onosen Omoijuanfo are among the students who have participated in Case Comprehensive Cancer Center education programs.Growing up in the West African nation of Benin, Ese-Onosen Omoijuanfo nurtured a passion for medicine, seeing firsthand how a single illness or injury could tip a whole family into ruin—and how treatment could restore that family's future.
But what path would she take to become a physician?
The answer became clear when she was 16, living in Cleveland—and, by chance, met Nathan Berger, MD, former dean of Case Western Reserve's School of Medicine, and founding director of what is now the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
A renowned mentor and Distinguished University Professor, Berger also founded and led the cancer center's first summer program to give Cleveland-area high school students hands-on experience in research labs. He invited Omoijuanfo to apply.
Months later, she walked through the doors of CWRU's Biomedical Research Building and spent the summer learning fundamental lab skills while gaining a love of scientific research.
"There were so very, very many amazing opportunities," said Omoijuanfo, who returned the following summer—and then three more summers to help run the program as a college student. She even co-authored a published paper with Berger, who mentored her and countless others before his death last year. "He was a force for good in a way I have rarely seen," Omoijuanfo said. And his summer program, "truly makes that difference in people's lives and trajectories."
The cancer center has nurtured close to 1,000 students through highly regarded educational research initiatives. Summer programs serve high schoolers and undergraduates, while longer programs serve participants from middle school through postdoctoral research.
"It's really a continuum," said Gary Schwartz, MD, the cancer center's director. "It's a strategic approach to education across multiple age groups and different levels of education with the goal of creating the next generation of cancer researchers and health professionals involved in cancer medicine."
Illustration by Gordon Studer
Each summer, for example, about 40 Cleveland-area high schoolers work side-by-side with cancer researchers for seven weeks as part of the Youth Engaged in Science (YES) program, funded by the National Cancer Institute, and a related program funded with philanthropic dollars. They also receive training in lab techniques and safety, hear from cancer experts daily during lunchtime talks—and see themselves as budding scientists.
"This program gives people the opportunity, confidence and connections that they literally never would have had [otherwise]," Omoijuanfo said.
The cancer center also welcomes 40 undergraduate researchers for the yearly Cancer-focused Summer Undergraduate Research program, known as CanSUR. Funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society, CanSUR is a selective program that gives undergraduate students nationally the opportunity to work with leading cancer researchers who also provide crucial mentorship.
The CanSUR program is what brought Cleveland native Isaiah Waiters to the cancer center in 2022. "Not only did it help me learn some of the research techniques that I would need in the future," he said, "but it also cultivated that spark for science."
Waiters graduated from Howard University last year and returned to Cleveland months later as one of four students in the cancer center's inaugural class of post-baccalaureate scholars. The two-year program, sponsored by the American Cancer Society, is designed to prepare young researchers for MD/PhD programs and careers in cancer research.
"I really wanted to go somewhere where I would have the best opportunity to grow, not only as a student but as a researcher as well, and our post-bacc program is designed to help bring us to that next level," Waiters said. He is now working in a lab studying flaws in mitochondrial structure and function linked to cancer.
The cancer center also helps postdoctoral fellows and promising early-career faculty reach the next level. That includes Christopher Hubert, PhD, who joined the cancer center as a trainee associate member after becoming a postdoctoral researcher at Cleveland Clinic in 2013.
"Our cancer center is a big piece of how I learned to do what I do now," said Hubert, who studies diverse cell populations in brain tumors. By understanding which tumor cells are vulnerable to which drugs, he aims to develop combinations of therapies to target entire tumors.
Christopher Hubert, an assistant professor at CWRU鈥檚 School of Medicine and a member of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Hubert has secured federal, national philanthropic and local research grants. He published groundbreaking research on a new way to develop mini-tumors known as "organoids" to better analyze and combat glioblastoma brain tumors.
And he's now an assistant professor at the medical school and one of 10 inaugural participants in the cancer center's Emerging Leaders Program. "The center is preparing me to make more of an impact in the local community and how the cancer center runs," he said.
Omoijuanfo is also continuing her journey at CWRU. She'll soon start her third year at the medical school, and is working with Melinda Hsu, MD, an assistant professor at the school, a member of the cancer center and a University Hospitals' oncologist, on how to improve quality of life for people with lung cancer.
The human impact of research is what drives Waiters, too: "I don't want people to suffer from cancer," Waiters said. "And I realized that I can combine my passion for science—and creating things—and travel toward something that is so much bigger than myself."