{"id":3527,"date":"2017-06-05T13:40:21","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T17:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter\/?page_id=3527"},"modified":"2017-06-05T13:40:21","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T17:40:21","slug":"lindsay-mcnair-90","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-spring2017\/profiles\/lindsay-mcnair-90\/","title":{"rendered":"Lindsay McNair \u201990"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"S17-Short-Bio-McNair\"<\/a>DEGREES: B.S. in biology; M.D., University of Connecticut School of Medicine; M.P.H. with concentration in epidemiology\/biostatistics, Boston University; M.S. in bioethics with concentration in research ethics, Union Graduate College (now Clarkson University)<\/p>\n

JOB TITLE: Chief medical officer, WIRB-Copernicus Group (WCG)<\/p>\n

FAVORITE TRINITY MEMORY: Movies at Cinestudio, staying at dinner in Mather as long as possible to avoid a return to studying, and continually forgetting the combination to the outside doors (that may not be a favorite, but it was memorable).<\/p>\n

How did you get started in your field?<\/em><\/strong>
\nWhile training to be a surgeon after medical school, I did a fellowship in which I ran a research study looking at arm function in women who had breast cancer, and at the same time, I was on the hospital committee that reviewed the ethical conduct of research within the hospital (the Institutional Review Board). When it was time to complete my surgical training, I realized that I liked research better than clinical practice. I worked as a medical director at biopharma companies for several years designing the clinical development pathways and clinical trials for new drugs and providing medical oversight of the clinical trials. During those years, I continued to teach and speak about ethics in research and the protection of the rights of research participants.\u00a0In 2013, I was recruited to be the chief medical officer for WCG, where I get to combine both the science and the ethics of clinical trials.<\/p>\n

What do you do in your role as CMO?<\/em><\/strong>
\nMy company provides the ethical and regulatory review of research that involves human participants before the research can begin.\u00a0I\u2019m responsible for the oversight and training of the 60-plus physicians who sit on our review boards. I also work with researchers and biopharma companies to help them design their research studies in a way that is scientifically valid and also meets ethical and regulatory standards and to help them develop internal polices for ethical research conduct.\u00a0I also do a lot of writing and speaking at conferences about related topics such as social media and clinical trials, as well as the ethics of compassionate use of unapproved medications.<\/p>\n

What do you enjoy most about your work?<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe variety and the challenges, especially as we develop new therapies and new technologies. For example, it has long been a general rule that new medicines are tested in adults before they are tested in children. But some of the new gene-replacement therapies are being developed for babies who will die of their disease very young, so there are no adults to test first; how do we do clinical trials of a brand new medicine in a weeks-old baby, with terrified parents, in a way that is ethical and appropriate and that advances our understanding of the disease and treatment?<\/p>\n

How did your experience at Trinity help prepare you for what you do now?<\/em><\/strong>
\nMy experience at Trinity gave me a very solid base for my continuing education. When I got to medical school, I had already learned much of the first-year curriculum in my Trinity biology and biochemistry classes, which gave me a great start.\u00a0But I also had the opportunity to take a variety of courses outside science, which also helped me. My English classes trained me well for the writing I do now, and my theater classes prepared me for public speaking and teaching.<\/p>\n

What was the most memorable course you took at Trinity? Why?
\n<\/em><\/strong>\u201cAnimal Physiology,\u201d which I took early as a sophomore and thought I would ace \u2014 and I got a 54 on the midterm.\u00a0I was shocked, and it made me realize that I needed to change the way I studied, the way I thought, and the way I learned. It wasn\u2019t about memorization anymore; it was about understanding concepts and being able to integrate and explain them.\u00a0That recognition set me up well for every course I took in grad school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DEGREES: B.S. in biology; M.D., University of Connecticut School of Medicine; M.P.H. with concentration in epidemiology\/biostatistics, Boston University; M.S. in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"parent":1468,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-full-width.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-spring2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-spring2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-spring2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-spring2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-spring2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-spring2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3527\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-spring2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-spring2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}