Kush Grover

Kush Grover’s path to the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences can only be described as a roller-coaster ride.

He was born in India, but moved to the United States with his mother and sister when he was about seven years old, joining his father who had emigrated to the U.S. a year earlier.

Originally settling in Queens, N.Y., Grover watched his accountant father and his mother establish their own business and make a living for their family.

As a young teen, he moved with his family to Seaford, Long Island, where he attended middle and high school before deciding to attend the University at Buffalo as a pre-pharmacy student.

After three years as an undergraduate, he entered Buffalo’s PharmD program, and, admittedly, wasn’t as prepared as he should have been. “My first year was a struggle,” he said. “I didn’t have that last senior year as an undergraduate to understand how much harder the classes were going to get, and I had some friends die and the year just got away from me.”

So, Grover returned to Buffalo the next academic year to complete his bachelor’s degree, expecting to be accepted back into Buffalo’s PharmD program the following year. He earned his BS in pharmacology and toxicology, but was wait-listed for Buffalo’s PharmD program.

Buffalo’s loss soon became Binghamton’s gain.

“I interviewed here and liked the faculty and the campus,” Grover said. “When I started here and interviewed here it seemed like the professors actually wanted to know the students. It attracted me and I wanted to be in a smaller class where I can establish better relationships with the faculty.”

Grover, now a second-year (P2) student, said his first year went really well. “I earned a 4.0 my first semester and all A’s except pharmacy law last semester, and I was awarded the summer research internship.”

Hard work is not new to him.

The research internship saw Grover branching out a bit, working on cancer stem-like cells with Tracy Brooks, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences and Menner Family Endowed Faculty Fellow. He hopes to continue.

“I’m hoping to continue that project and possibly use it for the research track capstone,” Grover said. “But I have to talk to Dr. Brooks and see if there is a specific project I could work on.”

Grover’s work on cancer stem cells took Brooks’ research in a different direction, he said. “My research went off of hers, using the same pancreatic cancer cells, but I thought it was a very meaningful side of the research that she hadn’t started yet … having the cancer cells grow as cancer stem-like cells and in 3D models. They’re not the same as embryo-derived stem cells, but they’re cells that are usually hidden and hard to treat with drugs and can allow the cancer to come back.”

“I felt that it was a very important area of research that she could expand to, and I had already done something like it three years ago as a volunteer with a professor at New York University, where I got my initial exposure to research. When I saw the research opportunities available here, I went to Dr. Brooks to ask if it was something she was interested in. She helped me write my application for the internship,” Grover added. “I want to continue now because I don’t feel I did enough to be meaningful this summer.”

Grover spent the first part of the summer learning the techniques of culturing the cells and the basics including how to use the equipment and how to actual grow the cells, as well as helping out other lab assistants.

“I was learning; Dr. Brooks was teaching,” he said.

“After that I did the research to figure out what would be needed to grow the cancer cells as cancer stem-like cells,” he said. “What are the properties that are causing them to have this extra resistance to drugs or why are they being hidden? I figured more of that out, focusing mostly on pancreatic cell lines and initiated the growing of the cells.”

The nitty-gritty of Grover’s work was getting proportions right, experimenting to find a good concentration of cells, if they’re dying and things like that. “I figured out a pretty good concentration for all of it, but am still playing around with the numbers to see what would happen if I change this or that,” he said.

“I started treating the cells with drugs toward the end of the summer to see how they would be affected,” he added. “Once they’re treated, you have to wait to see how they’re doing, test them and wait for the next batch to grow. You can only run so many experiments in a week, but now that I was actually treating them, I want to continue and see what I can do to improve results.”

As for his future, Grover is still debating what direction he’ll go after receiving his PharmD degree. “I don’t want to cross anything off the list yet,” he said. “I don’t really like hospitals, but I haven’t had a hospital rotation yet so maybe I’ll like it. I do like community pharmacy, but it’s not as appealing as it once was and the research is more what I’m looking to do. I want to give everything a shot before I decide.”

But until he makes his decision, he’ll remain involved with the School of Pharmacy in a number of ways. Beyond his classroom, research and clinical experiences, he serves as one of two student representatives on the school’s Curriculum Committee, which looks at syllabi to make sure they cover all of the educational objectives and match what is being taught. He is also a tutor and mentors two first-year students, and he’s taken a leadership role in the school’s student government.

“I’m president of the student government here, so we’re working on finishing up the constitution that we started working on last spring,” he said. “We’ll be setting up our first general body meeting soon as the Binghamton University School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Student Government.

“I wanted to have something with a more school-oriented focus and wanted to get more involved in the profession and other opportunities,” Grover said. “I felt like I was doing a lot to help with the constitution and taking a leadership role, so I decided to run and won.”