Missouri medicine
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Washington University's Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) is the largest and among the most successful programs in the country for training physician-scientists. Due to the evolution of biomedicine and as a result of recent initiatives at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), exciting new opportunities are arising for physician-scientists. Interdisciplinary research will be increasingly required to tackle challenging scientific and medical problems, and MSTP students able to negotiate between the physical, biological and medical sciences will be poised to take advantage of this.
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The extraordinary discoveries of 20th century medicine and technology have created a scientific renaissance. This explosion of new knowledge and the tantalizing potential it holds for altering the course of human health and disease will change the practice of medicine and require the education of a new generation of translational/clinical scientists and physician-scientists as well as an accelerated evolution of the teaching paradigms for the training of physicians.
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The completion of the human genome project in 2003 ushered in the era of genomics, the systematic study of our DNA sequence. Proteomics, the study of the full complement of proteins present in a cell, is a natural extension of genomics. ⋯ All students and physicians in training will need to acquire enough knowledge of the underlying science, including medical genetics, epidemiology, bioinformatics and statistics, so they will intuitively understand the technology and recognize the strengths and limitations of genomic/proteomic tests. Because genomic or proteomic testing may yield extensive information about a person's genetic makeup and disease risks, consideration will need to be given throughout the medical curriculum to the ethical issues raised by the application of this new technology to the diagnosis and treatment of patients.