He is an excellent scientist in the field of uro-oncology, contributing greatly to Anikó Valikovics and Dániel Bacsó's projects. He is dedicated to help them in progressing personally, not only scientifically. In May, Tibor Szarvas was named Supervisor of the Month (Year 2/3) at the Centre for Translational Medicine.
Dr. Szarvas is the head of the oncology research at the Department of Urology, Semmelweis University, and has been involved in the CTM program since its launch. He started working with two students in the first year, and both of them will defend their theses this fall with excellent publication tracks. In addition to them, he has a third-year student, a second-year student, and two first-year students. “We had done systematic reviews and meta-analyses at our clinic before, but I found that CTM is able to bring this kind of research to a higher level. Their team that supports this work is fantastic. Since our research raises many questions that can be answered using these methods, I was delighted to join CTM.”
In their research, Dr. Szarvas's first-year Ph.D. students focus on urological tumors. “Anikó Valikovics investigates the efficacy and safety of abiraterone and enzalutamide in patients with metastatic prostate cancer. She is a radiologist and oncologist, and started working at our clinic last year. She already has clinical practice, but she is also interested in scientific work. A TDK student, Nadeen Samaien, has already joined her project. My other first-year Ph.D. student is Dániel Bacsó, a student researcher at our clinic, who started the CTM program as an MD-Ph.D. student. He is a diligent and committed student, and wants to become a resident at our clinic. In his research, he compares the efficacy of different systemic therapies for urachal cancer.”
Since Dr. Szarvas' Ph.D students have insight into each other's research work, they can help each other to select scientific publications. “In this way, they can move forward with their work as co-investigators. Their findings could help to improve the treatment of both metastatic prostate cancer and urachal cancer. Both studies apply meta-analysis methods, which fit well with parallel ongoing laboratory work on both topics. In addition, we have conducted a study using data from the National Health Insurance Fund of Hungary, comparing the survival rates of prostate cancer patients treated with abiraterone vs. enzalutamide. The results of this study were recently published and have already been incorporated into Anikó's respective meta-analysis. That study has already been completed and is about to be submitted to a scientific journal. Since Dániel has just completed his final exams as a medical student, he has been busy recently, but he has already prepared the first draft of his manuscript.”
(Emese Szabó)