Dr. Drapkin’s
Professional
To-Do List
words by Maryann Brinley / photographs by Sam Ogden
Ronny Drapkin, MD, PhD, UMDNJ-Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences ’96, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School ‘98
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onny Drapkin’s father, a brain surgeon in private practice at the Jersey Shore, would invite his son to scrub in and observe surgeries when he was just in high school. “At the time my dad took his boards, he scored the highest in the country.” His grandfather was also a physician. Always intrigued with medicine, Drapkin says, “It was a foregone conclusion that med school was in the cards for me.”
Yet, this son’s journey to becoming what he calls “a go-to guy for ovarian cancer research” at Harvard where he is an assistant professor in pathology at the medical school and principal investigator/scientist at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, was not quite a straight and narrow shot. Though Dana Farber is a powerhouse in research, there wasn’t a single ovarian cancer research specialist — until Drapkin filled this void in 2005. Yet at one point, he couldn’t decide on a direction in medicine.
Drapkin’s career path offers others subtle but important turn signals. And the fact that he hasn’t been out of UMDNJ - Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) all that long — having earned his PhD in ’96 and MD in ’98 — makes his life’s lesson plan even more worthwhile. So listen up.
Drapkin’s father had become disillusioned with medicine’s brave new world of managed care with its red tape and insurance bottlenecks. He warned his son, “Look, this is a wonderful career but you have to be absolutely sure that it’s what you want to do because there is just so much else to deal with.” The elder Drapkin had seen the way his practice changed from 30 to 40 years earlier when doctors had more autonomy and less bureaucratic hassle. He disliked the billing, the insurance, the ever growing paperwork demands, and all the stuff that wasn’t really part of medicine, of treating patients.
As an undergrad at Brandeis University, Drapkin found his way into a lab doing research, first as a technician, and later graduating to his own project for a senior thesis. “I caught the science bug,” he reports. “I was fascinated that you could ask really relevant questions about biological processes and use very simple model systems” to get answers. He was studying yeast, looking at how its DNA is replicated, repaired, segregated, and learning that the same principles affect human cells. That’s when he decided to apply to an MD/PhD program. Research had to be part of any equation for him. And a life in academic medicine might offer a shield against some of the more annoying aspects of private practice.
Drapkin spent eight years at RWJMS and as part of his PhD, he studied under Danny Reinberg, PhD, an expert in gene expression and “a superstar,” according to his student. The experience was life-changing. To be able to clarify the connections between human disease and basic research wowed him. “I remember thinking, ‘This is even better than I thought it would be.”’ In a finding that surprised even him, they discovered protein factors within certain genes that have dual functions in DNA repair and gene transcription. To their amazement, these proteins were mutated in cancer patients. “It became clear to me that I wanted to stay in cancer research” — which meant he would have to give up part of his dream: to become a surgeon like his father. “I had been gunning to do that. It suited my personality.”
To be successful in the operating room, Drapkin points out, you have to spend most of your time there, which doesn’t leave room for meaningful basic bench research. “This is one of the quandaries most MD/PhD candidates face: somewhere along the line, you have to choose between research and clinical medicine and lean towards one.” He opted for research but was left with the decision: what field of medicine to pursue. Though he loved his clinical years, he admits, “I didn’t find it intellectually exciting to treat chronic illnesses like hypertension and diabetes.”
Back then, Robert Trelstad, MD, professor and currently chairman emeritus of the RWJMS Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, had been following his progress through school: a lucky turn for Drapkin who advises anyone in a similar situation to trust the wisdom of elders. Mentors, professors and even senior students do know best. “The more people you talk to, the better off you will be. You’ve got to inform your instinct,” Drapkin says. “Tap into alumni as resources. I was lucky because when I was finally looking for a job, two friends interviewed for positions six months ahead of me and I followed their advice” — which included the simple suggestion to always ask for what you want. Everyone is not offered a standard contract, he reports, and everything is negotiable, even parking permits.
Meanwhile, as a med student wrestling with a big decision, he relied on Trelstad, who suggested pathology. “I had always thought of it as a specialty which dealt with dead people.” An area on the cutting edge, not simply focused on the reasons for death or autopsies, pathology, this professor promised, would place Drapkin in the forefront in two ways: he’d be looking at tissues in the laboratory but making clinically important diagnoses. Liberated from the burden of direct patient care, a pathologist can still make a huge impact on what happens to the patient. Autopsy is a very minor part of what he does. “In fact, the pathologist,” Drapkin explains, “is sometimes described as the doctor’s doctor. We have to find out everything possible about a disease in order to make the diagnosis. Then we convey that information to the physician.”
Because of Trelstad’s guidance, Drapkin did a month’s pathology rotation at Columbia University Medical Center. His sister was getting her PhD there so besides being able to stay with her, he was exposed to the “amazing technology that is being translated into clinically useful tools, probes and imaging diagnostic modalities that go far beyond simply looking in a microscope.”
Trelstad also arranged for Drapkin to spend a day at Harvard Medical School in the company of Ramzi S. Cotran, MD, “the guy who wrote the bible for all pathologists everywhere.” Cotran was chair of the Pathology Department, which has “one of the best, if not the best, residency programs in the country,” according to Drapkin. That day of personal experience made his formal interview and application to the program later in his senior year so much easier and more familiar.
Ronny Drapkin, MD, PhD
When Match Day arrived in March of the following year, Drapkin was in. His residency class had 12 people and 10 were PhDs as well as MDs. “I remember leaving UMDNJ thinking that I had done well. I spent more than eight years there and UMDNJ was great for me. Then, I got up here and realized that everyone else had done work in amazing labs throughout the country.” The two MDs in his group were even National Institutes of Health (NIH)-trained. Drapkin laughs now as he recalls how this kind of outstanding and competitive scholarship level raised the bar for him. Professionally speaking, thinking big is always a good idea, he says.
At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, for three intense years, Drapkin jokes that he was able to see “every zebra that came through the door” and to diagnose “everything under the sun. And you have a built-in opportunity to do research with access to tissues and clinical anatomical materials.” Diagnostic pathology goes far beyond simply looking into a microscope. He is always asking how to make a better diagnosis. For instance, how can gene expression be used to stratify patients with diseases that may look similar but have different responses to the same therapy?
Following his residency, he completed a five-year post-doc where he narrowed his cancer interests to gynecological malignancies. “Here at Harvard, we may have at least 50 breast cancer experts so if I was going to market myself…and yes, this is a job market, I had to distinguish myself from people like my own mentor, David Livingston, who is an icon in breast cancer research.” Meanwhile, Drapkin realized that not enough was known or discussed about ovarian cancer. “This was a niche for me and a void I could fill.” He believes that he might not have been offered a faculty position if he hadn’t taken that turn into ovarian cancer as a research area. This ingredient in his “recipe for success” was crucial.
Though he accepted his position in 2005, his laboratory was completed just this past February. As a principal investigator, he sees his job as supporting the work both intellectually and financially. “I’m no longer simply thinking about a particular experiment but how it fits the mission of the lab and how to tell this story, and how to generate more funds so I can keep the story going.” His day is packed with committees, collaborators, post-docs, technicians, research and grant-writing, “I’m the person who makes it all happen on multiple levels. There are a million balls up in the air at all times and I get inundated with requests as the only ovarian cancer guy here.” Fortunately, collaboration is one of the things Drapkin enjoys very much and feels is important to move things forward in an area of ever-increasing complexity.
He admits, “I’m probably doing way more than I should but I don’t want to miss anything in life.” He doesn’t sleep as much as he’d like. His wife thinks he is over-extended and he’s the kind of father of two who insists on coaching his son’s baseball team. But he’s extremely happy. Ask Dr. Drapkin if he is exactly where he wants to be in his life and his enthusiasm is palpable. He loves it. This is great news for the estimated 22,430 women who will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007.