Amar Purewal conducting research at The Stehlin Foundation for Cancer Research

Amarjyot Singh Purewal (Amar) knows he wants to practice medicine one day, but he’s not sure which specialty he wants to choose. His mother worked in clinical research and his dad is a physician, so he was exposed to both fields from an early age.

When it was announced in his physics class during his junior year in high school that the The Stehlin Foundation for Cancer Research had positions for two summer interns, he applied, was accepted and got exactly what he had hoped for. Mr. Purewal says, "The summer program opened up the whole field and showed us what we can do: ‘These are the options, now you choose.’"

Mr. Purewal experienced everything from injecting mice to observing cancer surgery. He says, "I got to gown-up and stand just feet away from any kind of surgery I could think of."

He also helped with research on camptothecin, a derivative from a tree in China that Stehlin Foundation Executive Director Bob Anderson claims is "the most powerful anti-cancer agent we’ve ever tested in our laboratory. In the 1960s the National Cancer Institute launched a massive campaign to find anti-cancer drugs in naturally occurring substances," he explains. "Close to 1,500 extracts from plants and trees were tested, and only one – camptothecin – exhibited anti-cancer activity."

After a variety of setbacks with the substance, the Stehlin Foundation began testing and developing camptothecin in the 1980s. Today, most of the foundation’s activities revolve around related drugs. Mr. Anderson explains, "The family of camptothecin that our staff launched now is a buzzword in cancer research."

Even while searching for a cancer cure, the foundation staff takes time to train students. Mr. Purewal remembers, "I developed a love for chemistry from seeing processes in action and conducting my own research. I purified a lot of camptothecin and watched and observed it."

As much as he enjoyed the research, Mr. Purewal was even more impressed with the often positive, more immediate results he saw from a doctor’s intervention with a patient in need. Mr. Purewal says, "When I came here, I thought it would help me focus on what I want to do. I think being a practicing physician is amazing. When I go to school in the Fall, I’ll take a pre-med track with a focus on business or economics so I can operate my own clinic someday."

While Mr. Purewal feels like he’s closer to a solution about his future, the people at the Stehlin Foundation think they may be close to having some answers, too. "One of our drugs is in the final stages of clinical trials, and we hope to send it to the FDA later this year for approval," Mr. Anderson says. "If that happens, we’ll be much closer to treating a wide variety of patients with tough tumors."

Because of the groundbreaking work in which he participated at the Stehlin Foundation, it’s no wonder that Mr. Purewal is quick to say that his summer internship "was a significant experience."

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