Credit: DANA JOHNSON/VANDERBILT

After graduating from medical school, Brenda Nicholson (above) was intent on a career in clinical practice. But a three-year fellowship in haematology–oncology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, changed all that. Now an assistant professor of medicine at the university, Nicholson recently received a five-year clinical associate physician, or CAP, award from NIH to further her patient-oriented research in breast cancer. The CAP award, part of NIH's effort to attract young physicians into clinical research, provides 75 per cent of an NIH-capped salary. Nicholson, in return, will be expected to devote 75 per cent of her time to the projects outlined in the award.

Nicholson attended medical school at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and followed this with an internship and residency in internal medicine at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Both colleges run clinically directed programmes with almost no exposure to research, says Nicholson, “and that's why when I came out of training and went into fellowship I had in mind that [ultimately] I was going to go into private practice. Exposure really was the thing that stimulated me to want to stay [in academic medicine].” During her fellowship at Vanderbilt, Nicholson says she was given considerable responsibilities and opportunities, as well as a lot of positive reinforcement. She credits her mentor, David H. Johnson, deputy director of the Vanderbilt–Ingram Cancer Center and director of medical oncology, with helping to launch her career in academic medicine, and the new chairman of medicine for actively encouraging young physicians to go after NIH funds.

Vanderbilt is unusual, she says, in being strong both in basic science and clinically. She has managed to develop collaborative projects with basic scientists, including a study to test the combination of tamoxifen and the monoclonal antibody Herceptin in patients with oestrogen-responsive tumours and metastatic breast cancer, a BRCA1 gene therapy trial, and a study to test whether taxol can sensitize cancer cells to radiation therapy.

Now with a CAP award under her belt, which affords physicians the kind of mentoring and protected time needed to develop the skills to become independent investigators, Nicholson is very much on an academic medicine career track. She says: “It's a career that's exciting, and allows you a balance between patient care and the creativity of doing studies.”