Thura Soe-Htwe in the lab.
Janet Silvera, Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
BURMESE-BORN JAMAICAN Thura Soe-Htwe, is the latest addition to a team of medical researchers brought together by international cancer societies to undertake an aggressively-funded project to improve on current treatments against the dreaded disease.
The research team is expected to design new therapies to combat the tumor which has killed millions worldwide.
Continuing career
Through collaboration between the Sloan-Kettering Institute at Cornell University in New York and the Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian University, Thura is now in Canberra, Australia continuing his promising career.
"If this goes as well as it has been, I will be very busy trying to get a new cancer drug out on the market," the 25-year-old researcher told Outlook. "Getting any medication from the laboratory onto the pharmacist's shelf is a long process involving countless clinical trials and legal hurdles."
But if all goes well, he said, the drug they are researching will significantly reduce mortality from tumour cell metastasis (the way in which cancer spreads and kills the victims).
He was chosen based on the tremendous promise he displayed in medical research during his time at Cornell University where he received numerous awards including Dean's Scholar, College Scholar and Research Scholar.
The former Cornwallian came to Jamaica at age seven years old with his parents, renowned Montego Bay physicians Soe Naung and Soe-Htwe.
From 2001 to 2003 after completing his Bachelor's degree, which he received with honours in Biochemistry at Cornell University, he went back to his Alma Mater as a teacher of Chemistry and Biology.
Thura has always been a high achiever. He specialized in a mixture of science, business and mathematical subjects at Cornwall College, where he was successful in a combination of eight CXC and O'Level subjects and four GCE A'Levels. He was a valedictorian in his graduating class in 1997.
"Outside of the classroom, I was involved with the debate team, the school's challenge quiz team, the school magazine and the tennis team, all of which I went on to be coach/advisor of while I was a teacher," he told Outlook.
As far as he can remember he has always been curious and never took things at face value.
Scientific research
"Instead of going along with popular opinion, I always wanted to find things out and I think that aspect of my personality has directed me towards scientific research."
He said his parents always described him as a 'destructive' child, "Because I would tear apart my toys from the first day I got them."
For Thura the thought of all the unanswered questions out there is his greatest source of excitement.
And although his family has a definite slant towards the medical profession, the idea of studying from volumes and volumes of thick medical textbooks has never appealed to him.
"I am not excited by memorizing information that other people have already discovered," he explained. "I want to be the one to add to that body of knowledge and discover new information."
He didn't decide on a specialty until late in his studies, but said oncology (the study of cancer biology) fascinated him because of its complexity.
The father of a daughter named Metta Sekai says five years might be too short a time, but he hopes within about 10 years he will have a permanent position institution with a school of medicine, preferably the University of the West Indies (UWI).
He hopes to merge the fields of medicine and the Caribbean context, so that the information directly relevant and applicable will be available to the populace.
