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Massey cancer researcher and pulmonologist Patrick Nana-Sinkam, M.D., has been elected as a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. Membership is by election, and only researchers who are 50 years of age or younger are eligible for nomination.

One of the country’s oldest and most respected medical honor societies, the ASCI has more than 3,000 physician-scientist members who translate laboratory findings to the advancement of clinical practice. The society’s mission is to support the scientific efforts, educational needs and clinical aspirations of physician-scientists to improve human health.

Nana-Sinkam is the only Virginia physician-scientist to be elected this year and the 13th Virginia Commonwealth University faculty member to hold membership. At VCU Massey Cancer Center, he is a member of the Cancer Cell Signaling and Cancer Prevention and Control research programs and is the Linda Grandis Blatt Endowed Chair in Cancer Research. He is also the chair of and a professor in the Division of Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine at the VCU School of Medicine and the KL2 program co-director at the C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research, where he mentors early career faculty members to help prepare the next generation of clinician-scientists for success in clinical and translational research.      

“I am honored to be counted among my ASCI physician-scientist peers who represent excellence across a breadth of academic medicine and have made significant contributions to the understanding of human health,” Nana-Sinkam said. “I look forward to working with the ASCI to advance science and foster partnerships that accelerate translational research for the betterment of human health.” 

Nana-Sinkam studies genetic biomarkers as a means of developing novel blood-based tests for the early detection of lung cancer. His research focuses on improving patient outcomes through new targeted therapies. He co-leads Massey’s Lung Cancer Screening Program, which operates the only clinic in the region in which a dedicated pulmonologist meets with each patient to provide informed and shared decision making about lung cancer screening and to determine their individual lung cancer risk.

“Since joining the VCU School of Medicine faculty in 2016, Dr. Nana-Sinkam has made great strides in advancing our clinical research enterprise and has taken a special interest in connecting health sciences researchers with the resources they need to support their work,” said Peter Buckley, M.D., dean of the VCU School of Medicine. “We are proud to count him among our ranks of faculty members who are representing VCU’s clinical research expertise on a national stage.”

Nana-Sinkam will be among new members from 46 different U.S. institutions who will be inducted into the ASCI on April 5 in Chicago.

Re-purposed from an article by Anne Dreyfuss, C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research

Written by: Wright Center