MD/PhD Student
West Virginia University School of Medicine Department of Neurosurgery
Kent Marshall, MS; MD/PhD Student; West Virginia University, School of Medicine; West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
I am a native of Saint Albans, West Virginia. I earned my Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Exercise Physiology at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia.
The kindness of the surgeons that treated both my father and grandfather when they suffered MI’s sparked my interest in medicine. As I progressed through primary and secondary school and multiple STEM courses, I realized that there were many ways to help others through a career in healthcare. These potential careers included biomedical engineering, public health, nursing, and many others.
However, helping others out of illness and into health as a surgeon drove me to finalize my decision to attend professional school as an MD student. As I rounded out my studies in my BS degree, I began to question how the fields of medicine and surgery advanced themselves. I was then afforded the opportunity to gain experience in research as a graduate student and realized that the ideal career for me included both medical practice and research. I matriculated first into a Clinical and Translational Science PhD program at WVU, and successfully made a lateral transfer into the MD/PhD program at the WVU School of Medicine.
During my preclinical years in the MD program, I fell in love with the topics that were presented to us in our neuroanatomy and neurophysiology courses. As a surgical extern during the summer between my first and second year of medical school, I got to experience neurosurgery first-hand in the operating room. I got to see very critical patients become well relatively quickly. I also got to see others treated for disease that spared them more time with their family and loved ones. It is because of these progressions of events that I plan to pursue a career in neurosurgery to bring the latest advancements in the field to my home state. As a surgeon-scientist, it is my objective to help surgically treat, and develop new targeted pharmaceutical and radiation-based therapies for, intracranial primary malignancies and metastases. Currently, my research efforts have involved evaluating the nature of radiotherapy resistant glioblastoma and targetable biomolecules to overcome this resistance. I have also been involved in elucidating novel compounds to treat gefitinib resistant brain metastases of non-small cell lung cancer. Ultimately, it is my goal to take the lessons and techniques that I am developing as a student, and further specialize to treat and study intracranial neoplasms of pediatric patients.