Coming full circle: from high school to med school

Sudhakar Nuti grew up with Yale College’s Gothic buildings never far from sight. “That’s where I want to be,” he said of his dreams to attend Yale College. Nuti also knew, from an early age, that he wanted to be a doctor. He devoured science-related classes at New Haven’s Hill Regional Career High School. During his junior year, Nuti partially fulfilled both his dreams: he enrolled in an honors course called Anatomy-Physiology. By enrolling in that course he became eligible to participate in the Anatomy Teaching Program (ATP), taught by medical students on Yale’s campus. What Nuti could not have known is that seven years later, he would become the first ATP alumnus to attend the School of Medicine. He is now a first-year medical student at Yale.

Nuti’s high school biology teacher, Shirley Neighbors, encouraged him to sign up for the ATP. Neighbors started the program in 1993 with support from William B. Stewart, Ph.D., associate professor of surgery (gross anatomy). “We hoped to provide high school students with the kind of experience that would inspire them to follow a career in the health sciences,” Stewart said. In the program, first-year medical students teach basic anatomy to 48 Career High students. For much of the program’s 23-year history, the class met twice monthly throughout the entire academic year in the medical school’s anatomy lab. Due to the new curriculum rollout in fall 2015, ATP students will meet twice monthly during the spring semester, when medical students complete their anatomy course.

Wendy Decter, M.D., Career High’s lead science teacher, took over ATP four years ago after Neighbors retired. “Some years so many medical students volunteer that the teacher-student ratio is one-to-one,” Decter said. After the class ends, high school students receive a certificate of completion, while the medical students receive a memento, like a hand-designed T-shirt, from the high schoolers. Decter, who taught Nuti during his senior year, remembered him as smart and driven. “He probably could have taught the AP chemistry class that year instead of me,” she said.

After he finished ATP, Nuti searched for research opportunities at Yale between his junior and senior year of high school. Neighbors, his teacher at the time, provided another suggestion: the Discovery to Cure internship. The program, housed in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, offers high school students a chance to conduct research toward preventing and detecting female cancers, including ovarian. The program’s director, Gil G. Mor, M.D., Ph.D., recalled his first impression of Nuti, who then sported almost shoulder-length, hair. “I thought we made a big mistake with this kid,” said Mor, professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences. “That teaches you not to judge the book by the cover,” Mor said. Nuti made a lasting impression. The then-high school student concisely explained a most intricate process involved in ovarian cancer: epithelial-mesenchymal transition, or EMT. (EMT occurs when epithelial cells, after undergoing a biochemical process, break free from their place of origin, travel in the bloodstream, and have an ability to transform into other cells, like cancer.) Nuti is also the first alumnus of the Discovery to Cure program to return to Yale as medical student, Mor said.

From high school, Nuti went to Yale College, where he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in classical civilizations. His undergraduate advisor at the time, Michael K. O’Brien, M.D., Ph.D., assistant clinical professor of surgery (gastrointestinal), told Nuti to slow down when the latter asked if he should apply for fast-track early admissions to medical schools during his junior year of college. “I told him, ‘You are going to get into a great school. This is not your one and only chance,’ ” O’Brien said. Nuti agreed, and decided to spend two years between college and medical school doing research. While looking for a mentor, he met Harlan M. Krumholz, M.D., the Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine (cardiology). Krumholz’s focus on improving patient outcomes and promoting better population health coincided with one of Nuti’s passions: to provide all patients, not just those with good insurance, with the best health care possible. Nuti signed on to research with Krumholz not for one semester, but for two years. “Sudhakar is exceptional—kind, thoughtful, creative, and determined to make a difference for others. Some students come to me and want a little research experience,” Krumholz said. “But he has achieved skills and delivered on research that would challenge people who are much further along.” His desire to provide access for all led Nuti to volunteer at the student-run HAVEN Free Clinic, where he often sees immigrants who have no other recourse for health care. “Nuti can understand what that is like,” Krumholz said. “He’s very sensitive to the knowledge that one piece of bad luck related to health can send people on a different path if they do not have enough financial support. He wants to make health care better for all.”

With just one semester of medical school finished, Nuti’s CV looks like it belongs to an experienced researcher. Since 2013, he has built up a list of 19 co-authored articles on subjects from ovarian cancer to the care of patients who suffer heart attacks. As if his schedule wasn’t busy enough, he is also completing an online M.Sc. degree through the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom. With the start of the spring semester, he is in anatomy class again—this time as a Yale medical student.