Stanford University School of Medicine
Palo Alto, United States
Emon Nasajpour, BSc, MD candidate and Graduate Researcher. Emon is a third-year medical student at the Florida State University College of Medicine who is pursuing a career as a neurosurgeon and scientist. He previously worked with Dr. Michael Waters at the University of Florida conducting research on SCA-13. After completing two years of medical school, and various roles, he built interests in various specialties of medicine and is now taking time off from medical school to conduct research in the Petritsch Laboratory at Stanford University, School of Medicine in the Department of Neurosurgery. In the Petritsch lab, Emon coordinates the patient-derived model development, receiving and processing tumor tissue from the OR for cell culture and xenograft development. He conducts research in collaboration with researchers at UC Santa Cruz identifying gene outliers in the RNA expression profile of patients with brain tumors undergoing surgery and treatment at Stanford, helping identify vulnerable drug targets based on personalized-genomic data. Emon then validates drug sensitivities in patient-derived tumor cells and looks for novel therapeutic approaches to prevent tumor recurrence and to overcome therapy resistance. Over the next few months, he will extend this approach to more patients, and envisions completing a full bed-to-bench-to-bedside circuit by gathering sufficient in vitro and in vivo data (in mouse models) to make personalized treatment recommendations for children with brain tumors who are not responding to standard of care. Emon was also a caretaker for a woman with Alzheimer’s Disease in New York City before starting medical school, helping her adhere to a protocol developed by Dr. Dale Bredesen at UCLA. This experience further shaped his interest in neurological diseases, their investigation, and the importance of humanism in medicine and research.