The University of Texas MD/PhD Program at Houston is a dual degree program of The University of Texas McGovern Medical School and?MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. The program educates physician-scientists and draws from faculty expertise at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and MD Anderson Cancer Center. This rich training environment?encompassing laboratories, hospitals, and clinics in the Texas Medical Center?ensures that our graduates are uniquely prepared for careers in translational research, where basic research is applied to improving patient care and promoting well-being, and observations/samples from patients are taken to the laboratory to improve understanding of disease mechanisms.

The Program was established in 1982 and is unique in its approach to allow students to complete their first three years of Medical School before starting their dissertation research. The Program considers this critical to the students? success as it is not until the third year of Medical School that students actually evaluate patients, diagnose problems and recommend treatment plans, and are thus prepared to understand the limitations of current methods for preventing, diagnosing and treating disease and to appreciate the importance of clinical and translational research.