Stanley Tsou

Stanley is currently a second-year medical student at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. He was born in Taiwan and raised in Cypress, California. Stanley graduated from Rice University with a major in Biosciences and a minor in Poverty, Justice, and Human Capabilities, an interdisciplinary field of study that allowed him to explore issues of human rights and impediments to human well-being, including discrimination, unequal access to health care, and lack of political freedoms. Specifically, he is interested in understanding the inequities embedded within the U.S. healthcare system and advocating for social service programs aimed at reducing barriers to medical care. At the Renaissance School of Medicine, Stanley volunteers at the Stony Brook HOME Free Clinic and serves as the President of the Internal Medicine Interest Group. He is also pursuing a Scholarly Concentration Program in Global Health, a longitudinal opportunity for medical students to understand the global burden of disease through scholarly pursuits at an international site. In his free time, Stanley enjoys playing sand volleyball, reading, and listening to podcasts.

What does the Kean Fellowship mean to you?
I am beyond humbled to be a recipient of the Kean Fellowship, which provided me with an invaluable opportunity to travel to Iquitos, Peru this summer to study the malaria immune response and improve malaria diagnosis in the Peruvian Amazon. While I have been working closely with my Principal Investigator in Stony Brook and our colleagues in Peru to develop our study protocol, the funding allowed us to purchase the necessary equipment and laboratory supplies that would otherwise not be available to us in a resource-limited setting. As this was my first time traveling abroad to conduct a global health research project, the Kean Fellowship helped spark my interest in tackling endemic diseases that are not typically found in the United States. Moreover, the opportunity to connect with a broader community of esteemed experts in the field of tropical medicine will further advance my commitment to becoming a better physician scholar and educator for my patients.

What do you anticipate learning?
Malaria is the most common parasitic disease of humans in the Peruvian Amazon, yet current diagnostic methods rely on microscopic examination by trained personnel, which is often time-consuming and lacks robust quality assurance. While rapid diagnostic testing using antigen dipsticks provides an alternative point-of-care screening method, it presents with several limitations including low sensitivity, stringent storage conditions, and lack of generalization to all malarial parasites. Hence, the objective of my project is to develop a smartphone application for automated malaria screening in the Peruvian Amazon. We hope that our developed application will increase accessibility for malaria diagnosis and reduce the long-term burden of malaria in the Peruvian Amazon and other endemic regions.

In addition, the second aim of my project is to compare the immune response between malaria and babesiosis, a tick-borne disease common in the Northeast and upper Midwest regions of the United States. Both diseases share a similar pathogenesis and clinical presentation. While the immune response to malaria has been studied in both natural infections and vaccinations, little is known about the immune response to babesiosis. As babesiosis has become more prevalent globally in recent decades, we aim to conduct a “head-to-head” comparison of the immune response between malaria and babesiosis to unveil insights into possible overlapping mechanisms.

During my time in Peru, I traveled with a local medical doctor to various health centers in the Loreto region to enroll positive malaria patients who either have not or have just started treatment. After obtaining informed consent from the patients, we administered a symptoms questionnaire and took whole blood samples to prepare for thick smears as well as the isolation of DNA, RNA, and peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Currently, we are in the process of labeling the microscopic images of thick smears to improve an existing algorithm capable of recognizing Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum in their different development stages. In addition, we will perform flow cytometry, cytokine profiling, and transcriptome analysis to characterize immune cell activation, understand the inflammatory response, and identify gene expression changes to provide a comprehensive picture of the immune response to malaria. We hope that this will augment our understanding of the pathogenesis of both diseases and identify new targets for therapeutic interventions or vaccine development.

What interests you about tropical medicine and what problems are you interested in solving?
My interest in tropical medicine stems from my broader interest in advocating for patients living in poverty or resource-limited settings. Many problems in tropical medicine are rooted in broader socioeconomic challenges. While rounding in the Infectious Disease Department at Loreto Regional Hospital, I witnessed how diseases such as tuberculosis, toxoplasmosis, and malaria disproportionately affect the local communities due to healthcare inaccessibility, systemic injustice, and poor adherence to treatment. I was broadened in my perspective to conceptualize health not only as a physical condition but as a product of economic and social factors that cumulatively impact health outcomes. Tropical medicine appeals to me because of the opportunity to apply my knowledge of clinical medicine to address the global burden of diseases. While my current project focuses on improving malaria diagnosis in the Peruvian Amazon, I have a broader interest in promoting greater health literacy among the Loreto population and developing community-driven health reforms aimed at curbing the spread of malaria and other endemic diseases in resource-limited settings.