Jawad Zahid
Major surgery triggers in our bodies what is referred to as a surgical stress response. Among other things, this means that our metabolism and immune system run at a lower speed, and this could be part of the explanation for relapse in some cancer patients after surgery.
Medical student researches the immune system after cancer surgery
Jawad Zahid will be spending the next ten months investigating what exactly happens to the immune system during cancer surgery. He is one of five medical students who were accepted into this year鈥檚 DARE (Danish American Research Exchange) programme, and he will be conducting his research at Stanford University.
Jawad will specifically be studying colorectal cancer, i.e. cancerous tumours in the colon and rectum. Every year, around 5,000 Danes are diagnosed with colorectal cancer, and 80% of cases are operable. However, in one third of these cases patients experience a relapse, and this is presumably linked to the dampening down of the immune system when patients undergo surgery to remove the tumours.
Jawad is taking immune cells from 30 Danish patients with him to California where he and an expert research team will analyse the cells pre- and post-surgery. It is hoped that a better understanding of the surgical stress response and immune system will make it easier to spot the patients who are most susceptible to relapse, and thus to prevent it.
Jawad normally studies medicine at the University of Copenhagen.