Congratulations to Brady Cawthon, second-year medical student and SOAR participant at the Floyd School of Medicine, who received both Outstanding Medical Student Research and Best Overall Research at the October 30th PHERI Research Showcase.

Brady's project, “Pan-Cancer Analysis of JAK3 Variants Identifies Significant Racial Differences in a Regionally Representative Cancer Cohort,” examined racial differences in genetic variant frequencies across multiple cancer types. His findings highlight important patterns that may help address the underrepresentation of Black patients in cancer genomics research.

This research reflects a true collaborative effort involving Brady's SOAR mentor, Dr. Anna Blenda of the School of Medicine Greenville, our Floyd School of Medicine statistician, an undergraduate student from Davidson College, and researchers from the Prisma Health Cancer Institute.