MD/PhD picking a lab

[Guest]

TLDR; Will doing my PhD in a cardiovascular lab doing work with endothelial cells in athero hurt my application in neurosurgery later down the line?

I'm looking for a lab to join and have gotten conflicting advice on which lab I should go with. I could see myself enjoying both labs and it really comes down to how my application will benefit/suffer from which lab and the funding of each lab. My school is not very well funded in neuro research and the lab that I am interested in isn't well funded and does not have a great track record, but it is neuro research that I am interested in. On the other hand, our cardiovascular labs are well funded and have a great track record, I like this lab, the people, and find the research very interesting, but it isn't neuro and that is worrying me a little bit when it comes to neurosurgery application. The main consensus I am getting from people I have talked to has been to 1. Find a lab you fit into and 2. find a well funded lab but they don't really mention if it would hurt my application to pick the cardio lab. So my biggest question is if I pick the cardiovascular lab will it hurt my neurosurgery residency application?

[Focus]

Yes, but not as much as a non MD/PhD track applicant.

[Guest]

Why, as someone interested in neurosurgery, would you become an MD/PhD while doing research in Cardiovascular cells? Makes no sense. I thought the point of the PhD part of your degree is to become hyperspecialized in research in a field you plan on pursuing

[Guest]

Wow are you planning to rotate in my lab? I finished an MD/PhD in a cardiovascular lab and am applying neurosurgery now. Your lab description sounds like the one I am interested in. Here are a few things.

1) It doesn't matter what you do your PhD in. The goal is to show you can do learn how to do research and then high quality research and get funding (apply for F30 and also AHA if you go to this lab). You want the best lab environment to get you there. Better to be happy for 3-4 years, publish lots of papers, enjoy your labmates, then go to a toxic environment or one with no funding or limited projects.

2) In my case, while I joined a cardiovascular lab, I ended up doing a neuro-focused project. The reason being is because there is a surprisingly good amount of overlap between CVS and neurovascular disease. Alzheimer's has a strong vascular component. There are a lot of peripheral counterparts to more neurosurgical/endovascular neurosurgical diseases like AVM, aneurysm, and cerebroembolism which you could study but still tie in to your neurosurgical interest.

3) To add on to point #2, you can use your lab's cardiovascular expertise to collaborate with more traditional neuro labs.

4) Don't forget about the blood-brain barrier. This is what I ended up doing. I helped drive a BBB-focused project in my lab, which up until my arrival, only worked on peripheral endothelial cells. Throughout my PhD I worked on both peripheral and brain endothelial cell projects, with the latter being my main focus. So believe when I say that there is you can definitely make it work.

5) Keep in touch and reach out to neurosurgery mentors. Try to publish clinical papers throughout your PhD that show your commitment and interest to neurosurgery. If you do this, then I think you'll be fine even if you don't do anything neuro related at all for your Phd. So many people change interests in 3rd year that I don't think anyone would really question why you did a CVD-focused PhD, especially if you still engaged in neurosurgery research.

6) Last thing to keep in mind is you could end up hating neurosurgery or deciding it's not a good fit once you rotate in your 3rd year. So I wouldn't let it have that much of an influence on your lab choice, especially if there's a huge difference in terms of funding.

Happy to talk more.

[Guest]

I was considering the cardio lab because a lot of the advice I got from the PhD side of my mentors were telling me it's more about the techniques and skills you learn during your PhD rather than the topic you study. I did not know if this advice applied to the MD/PhD world as well, so I turned to here to try and elicit some more advice.  


To the third commenter, Thank you for the in depth response! It is really helpful. Good luck on your application and hope you match!