Medical researchers have a duty to continuously add to the collective knowledge of the medical field so that practitioners can provide their patients with the best treatments available. As is the nature of medicine, human participants are central to this research. In order to participate in clinical studies, patients are usually connected to researchers by their practitioners. However, these practitioners cannot possibly know about every relevant study being conducted at any given time. As a result, many patients who could benefit from participating in these trials and many researchers struggling to find qualifying participants fail to connect. Taylor Wilcox, PhD candidate at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), is tackling this issue head on.
Through her work as an undergraduate researcher at UWM, Wilcox learned about the barriers that prevent patients from participating in clinical trials. As a graduate student, she founded Clinical Connections, an organization dedicated to not just connecting patients with studies, but also making medical research findings more accessible to patients so they can be better informed about their care. Clinical Connections is centered around MCW at the moment, but they have plans to expand to more institutions so they can serve people on a national and international scale.
Wilcox started her research journey her first semester at UW-Milwaukee, working with Dr. Alexander Arnold in the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. She assisted, then later took over for, a graduate student of Dr. Arnold’s in testing several different chemical compounds as potential therapies for neuropathic pain. Once she determined a compound was not toxic when introduced into a cell, she then tested its efficacy by measuring changes in nitric oxide signaling. In a drug discovery lab like this, Wilcox may have tested multiple compounds that eventually made it to animal or even human trial stages. She also found that working in a biochemistry lab helped her academically, as she gained practice with concepts and terms that she would later encounter in her classes.
Beyond the hands-on experience Wilcox was getting in the biomedical field; she also made lasting connections. Dr. Arnold famously likes to run team-building activities for his lab, and Wilcox has fond memories of going kayaking, going to beer gardens, and getting ice cream with her lab team. When she graduated in Fall 2022, she was already taking her next steps in her Biomedical Sciences career. Dr. Arnold is a member of her dissertation committee, and he connected her to her current PI at MCW, Dr. Michael Widlansky. Wilcox can draw a direct line between her time as an undergraduate researcher and where she is now, continuing to explore new possibilities and shape the future of clinical care.