Gates Foundation scholar Kyle Lambert taking the fight to cancer

KYLE LAMBERT grew up in Ocho Rios, St Ann, where he attended Columbus Preparatory School. From the Garden Parish, he made the educational transition to St Andrew-based Ardenne High School, where his sojourn ended after grade nine. The migration with his family to New York had taken him out of the Jamaican classroom.

In New York, he worked hard, not just with the books, but also in his community. He was rewarded with “New York Senate legislation recognition” for his contributions to his community, as well as national scholarships such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Scholarship, and the Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship. With an honours diploma, he graduated at the top of his class as valedictorian.

With such excellent scholastic achievements, Lambert was accepted at United States Ivy League colleges such as Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins and Cornell University. But, he chose to study at Stanford, a private research university in California, where he is reading for a Bachelor of Science degree in neurobiology, and classical literature and philosophy, alongside a Master of Science degree in epidemiology and clinical research.

This high achiever is also the founder of Med For All Global, a service group that was established with the main goal of “bridging the gaps of health disparities through restorative programmes focused on health education, hands-on volunteering in communities with vulnerable populations, and research-led projects that benefit the lives of many worldwide”.

“My work in global health has expanded to many areas. I have partnered with resident physicians at Stanford Medicine to reconstruct approaches to diagnosing and treating paediatric respiratory illnesses in Ethiopia; crowdfunded for donations to World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Relief Fund and the Medical Aid For Palestinians group; led food drives and health check-in for hundreds of nursing home residents in Queens, New York; and led workshops teaching youth how to make an impact in health and other areas in community activism, among many other projects,” Lambert told The Gleaner.

The translational research and applied medicine scholar also said, “Recurring inequities across the medical spectrum confirm that healthcare systems worldwide are in dire need of change. I spent a lot of time learning about this, and it became a passion I wanted to pursue. That passion drove the work that Med For All Global was founded on.” He is funded by the Stanford School of Medicine, an honour generally reserved for experts in the field with graduate degrees. Translational research has to do with converting the results of basic research into results that benefit people.

“My work focuses on reducing the occurrence of paraneoplastic neurologic syndromes in patients with small cell lung cancer, and I am currently in the process of publishing co-authorship work on the mechanisms of metastasis of small cell lung cancer. My main focus right now is developing a mouse model encapsulating the complex nature of the paraneoplastic diseases, which is difficult to study in the clinic. Outside of this work, I have collaborated on genomic approaches to better understand the communication between the brain and immune system at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France.

For his work, Lambert recently received the Prime Minister’s National Youth Award for Excellence in Innovation in Science and Technology, valued at $100,000 and funded by the HEART/NSTA Trust. Another key sponsor was the Sagicor Group, which donated $500,000 to be divided equally among the recipients. In addition, the Institute of Law and Economics gave special awards of $50,000 each to Lambert and Dr Kareem Heslop for science and innovation. It seems, then, that Lambert was the bigger winner of them all.

“These awards recognise the work that I have done leading a research-centred service group, and my work in cancer science at one of the most well-recognised research universities in the world … . I am humbled to receive such a high honour at only 21 years old. This recognition serves as even more motivation to continue working hard to deliver for my country on a global scale. I am eager to now use my new platform as an awardee to further this work,” Lambert shared.

After graduating from Stanford, he said he intends to pursue a doctoral degree in cancer biology and a medical doctorate. This is with the larger goal of opening a lab focusing on developing “novel innovative therapies and genetic techniques to better understand and treat cancerous diseases”.