Patrick Nnoromele dreams of inventing ways to preserve the gift of sight. Four years into the Johns Hopkins Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), in simultaneous pursuit of M.D. and Ph.D. degrees, he spends countless hours in the classroom, the clinic and the lab, where he researches gene therapies for extraordinarily rare eye diseases. “A lot of the work I do in the lab is one to two degrees removed from being translated into the clinic,” Nnoromele says. “It’s a rare opportunity — one that I don’t think I could get at another institution.”

But now, the program making Nnoromele’s dreams possible is facing a critical threat to its existence.

For decades, the National Institutes of Health has awarded grants to fund MSTP trainee slots — covering student tuition, stipends and insurance — with the goal of developing a pool of well-trained physician-scientist leaders to address the nation’s biomedical research needs. Johns Hopkins historically received funding for a large share of its trainee slots owing to the program’s stellar track record. However, changes to NIH funding criteria have sharply reduced support. Over the past 16 years, the number of federally funded trainee slots Johns Hopkins receives fell from 50 to 22, even as the program earned multiple perfect training scores within the same period. Anticipated NIH budget cuts are predicted to further reduce support.

Some medical schools have responded by cutting M.D./Ph.D. enrollment. Without new funding sources, Johns Hopkins may be forced to follow suit.

Alumni are stepping up to help. Drew Pardoll, MSTP 1982, who serves as the Martin D. Abeloff Professor of Cancer Research and director of the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, made a generous gift to support the Helen and Joseph Pardoll MSTP Scholars Fund, named in honor of his parents.

“My career was made by the MSTP,” says Pardoll, whose immunotherapy research has revolutionized cancer treatment. He adds that the MSTP funding he received enabled his education. “My mother used to say it felt like we won the lottery.”

Pardoll sees the MSTP as a remarkable investment, and cites his work in developing antibodies to block the PD-1 pathway — a breakthrough discovery that unlocked the immune system to fight cancer — as an example. “Drugs that block this pathway are now the most commonly used cancer therapies,” Pardoll says. “For the companies producing these antibodies, they support probably 120,000 jobs,” which, as Pardoll adds, accounts for just one pathway. “Any way you cut it, this would not have happened if not for the MSTP.”

Pardoll hopes more alumni will step in to help secure the future of the Johns Hopkins MSTP and the outsized impact its graduates have on biomedical science.

Scholarship support is helping Nnoromele pursue his dreams. Born in Kentucky to Nigerian immigrants, he was inspired to pursue medicine and biomedical research after witnessing the limits of medicine through the experiences of sick family members. “I planned to become a doctor so I could treat patients fighting similar conditions,” Nnoromele says. “But I couldn’t, in good conscience, look at them and say, ‘We don’t have better options for you’ without doing something to make better options.”

Nnoromele estimates that he has another five years until he completes his M.D./Ph.D. He plans on a career in academic medicine, practicing as an ophthalmologist and running a lab. “If any of the projects I’m working on end up going as well as I hope, I’ll see a tangible impact in the lives of the patients who I’ve met and seen,” Nnoromele says. “And I would like to spend the rest of my life doing exactly that.”

Read more about the MSTP program at Johns Hopkins HERE.