Yan LeyfmanResearcher, Joint ACAIM-WACEM Working Group on...

Yan Leyfman

Researcher, Joint ACAIM-WACEM Working Group on COVID-19

Yan.jpg

Yan Leyfman

Yan Leyfman’s dedication to medicine comes from personal experience with a life-threatening illness. He was born in Belarus in 1989, near the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. His early childhood was marked by serious, debilitating medical issues presumably caused by radiation exposure. He received life-saving treatment in Israel before immigrating to New York City when he was 5 years old. As he began college, Leyfman’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, spurring him to dedicate himself to oncology, gaining recognition for using gene editing to help create viable alternatives to chemotherapy in research at the Sloan Kettering Institute.

For someone undaunted by the prospect of curing cancer, COVID-19 was an appropriate next target for the Penn State medical student. Many of his friends and colleagues in the medical field were infected, and he was mindful that everyone close to him, including his parents, was at risk. “Recalling the fact that I was born in a pandemic, lived about the first five years of my life with Chernobyl, I promised myself that I would not let another pandemic occur under my watch without contributing in some way, shape or form,” he says.

As a medical student, he was unable to care for COVID-19 patients directly, so he threw himself into researching the disease. He meets weekly with an international group of researchers, all part of the joint task force between the American College of Academic International Academic Medicine and the World Academic Council of Emergency Medicine, to exchange ideas and updates about how the virus is being treated and spreading around the world. With that group, Leyfman created a cohesive model of the virus that demonstrated how it interacts with other cells. Leyfman has advocated for stem cell therapy to treat COVID-19 and warned of the dual threat posed by the coronavirus and the flu, always with the goal of being proactive about the disease. “If there’s anything that Chernobyl has taught me, it is pandemics are opportunities for hope,” he says. “They’re opportunities for innovation and opportunities to make a positive difference in the world.”