Running a Basic Science Lab

Abstract

Surgeon-scientists who supervise basic science laboratories are an essential component of the field of academic surgery and contribute to the fundamental understanding and treatment of disease through discovery and application of innovative therapies. A surgeon-scientist is defined as a surgeon who is engaged in bench research, usually translational in nature, and across a variety of fields including genetics and genomics, cell and development molecular biology, proteomics, lipidomics, biomedical engineering, systems biology, and more recently, machine learning and computational-patient interfaces [1]. Due to the increasing complexity of the fields in which surgeon-scientists are engaged, there has been an evolution over the past three decades from being an isolated bench researcher to his/her incorporation into groups of investigators working together in multidisciplinary teams (e.g. ‘team science’). This change has been fostered by the unique attributes of surgeon-scientists who are positioned to be the key conduit for translational application of novel therapies into clinical practice.