A trio of summers at OMRF has launched two Langston University students toward medical careers
Sometimes motivation is as close as the floor below you. And so it was for Langston University’s Amia Quinn and J’Taelii Heath, who this past summer completed their third straight internship at OMRF.
Both studied with Dr. Bob Axtell, whose lab sits above the foundation’s Multiple Sclerosis Center of Excellence. The students’ daily walk from the parking garage to OMRF’s rear entrance reminded them why research matters.
“I’d see patients being dropped off, sometimes in wheelchairs or else unable to take more than a few steps toward the clinic,” Quinn says. “When I first came here, I didn’t know anything about MS. Seeing them motivated me to work toward finding new therapies.”
Quinn and Heath both interned through the OMRF-OKC VA Langston University Biomedical Research Scholars Program, a partnership involving OMRF, Langston and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The senior biology majors have now technically “aged out” of the program, although Heath is continuing her work with Axtell. Both have their sights set on medical careers: Quinn as a forensic pathologist, Heath as a pediatrician.
Heath’s research has focused on the correlation between cigarette smoke and MS. She has presented her findings at conferences around the country, including one at Harvard Medical School. In 2023, a presentation she gave took first place during Research Day at the Oklahoma State Capitol. Quinn has studied the relationship between MS treatments and viral infections like Covid-19 and influenza.
“It’s been cool to watch these light-bulb moments go off in their heads as they discover more and more about the disease they’re studying,” Axtell says.
OMRF’s Dr. Valerie Lewis, a former Langston staffer, initiated the internship program in 2021, with help from her mentor, OMRF physician-scientist Dr. Hal Scofield, who’s also associate chief of staff for research at the OKC VA Medical Center.
After that first summer, OMRF was among 20 sites nationwide funded by the VA through a three-year pilot project. This past July, the VA approved five more years of funding for the program, which aims to generate more careers in medicine and research among underrepresented populations.
One former Langston Scholar leveraged her OMRF internship to land her first post-college job, as a chemist for an international research lab. Others have been accepted into prestigious graduate programs. Ultimately, Lewis hopes to expand the program so Langston graduates can intern at OMRF while completing doctoral research. “I’d like them to work in Oklahoma and increase our scientific diversity,” she says. “Ideally, that would be at OMRF.”
What makes the program shine, says Dr. Byron Quinn, who chairs Langston’s biology department, is the sustained relationship it builds between the Langston Scholars and their OMRF mentors. “The ability to return to the same lab each summer allows students to accomplish more,” he said. “J’Taelii and Amia are proof of that.”
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Read more from the Winter/Spring 2025 edition of Findings
President’s Letter: The Life-Changing Impact of Clinical Research
The Searcher
Family Legacy
Voices
Ask Dr. James
Meeting the Challenge
A Biologist From Birth
On a Mission
Coming to America
