2025 Awardee
Sonia Muthuraj
Major & Year
Cell Biology & Neuroscience and Minor in Anthropology, Class of 2026
DLS Student Support Award:
$350
Conference Attended:
American Society of Clinical Oncology
May 30- June 3, 2025
Chicago, Illinois
How did your conference experience add to your academic journey at Rutgers?
Attending the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) was an incredibly rewarding and enriching experience. Over just four days, I was able to meet clinicians, scientists, business executives, and patient advocates all working to advance the clinical oncology space. I took the opportunity to attend lectures and poster sessions that were relevant to my research interests, allowing me to learn about ongoing efforts to therapeutically target the biomarkers that I studied in this past year. I also got a feel for the current zeitgeist of clinical oncology, noticing the focus placed on hot topics such as liquid biopsy and PDL-1 immunotherapies, and I made sure to watch lectures on these topics to better understand why they are of such high interest. Furthermore, in exploring exhibit booths of pharmaceutical companies and smaller biotechnology companies, I learned about the business strategies that go into developing therapeutics and organizing drug trials. On my final day of attendance, I presented a poster on my work highlighting the prognostic role of tumor-macrophage fusion cells in metastatic cancers. In doing this, I met several clinician-scientists who raised new questions and highlighted gaps in my research. These visitors offered me advice, new ideas, and constructive criticism which I can now apply not only to this project, but to my career as I move forward as a scientist.
