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Intern Spotlight: Tom Hinton ‘26 — Student Researcher at Nationwide Children’s Hospital

Published on: October 22, 2025

A man in a white lab coat measures liquid from one vessel to another.

Husson University Pre-Medicine student Tom Hinton spent his summer getting real-world experience in a medical lab at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Hinton interned as an undergraduate summer student researcher under Dr. Christopher Breuer, studying the usefulness of a new treatment for heart disease in children. Through the internship, Hinton learned how to handle mice and sheep in a laboratory setting, collect data in a scientific setting, and track and analyze statistics of their tests to gauge how successful the procedure has been in testing.

“There were certain methods I didn’t know about, and the lab was really good at encouraging me to learn those,” said Hinton.

Rows of glass slides are shown on a lab table.

The treatment Hinton studied is called a “tissue-engineered vascular graft,” or TEVG, which if successful, would allow doctors to surgically repair parts of a child’s heart with tissue that can grow with them over time.The procedure could remove the need for bone marrow collection prior to the graft, lower the toxin risks that plastics can pose in traditional heart disease surgeries, and lead to fewer necessary surgeries overall.

“For these kids, reconstructive surgery is a necessity for survival,” said Delaney Villarreal, a graduate student researcher and project lead at the Breuer lab who worked as Hinton’s mentor during the internship. “Right now, these kids require bone marrow collection on the day of surgery, but that adds another procedure to an already very stressful day. If we’re able to remove that step, then the patient doesn’t have to go through that extra stress.”

A man in a white lab coat is shown.
A man in blue scrubs is shown.

Hinton was trained as an EMT in Vermont before enrolling at Husson, and had a great interest in pediatric sciences, but wasn’t certain what he wanted to do in the medical field beyond that broad topic. This internship, found by his advisor Christopher Morin, helped him narrow down where he wants to go from here.

“I have grown an interest in cardiovascular science,” said Hinton. “I mean, I was immersed in it for four months. But I also have a really strong passion for pulmonary and oncology. I’m looking into all of those right now, and deciding if I want to go into those or just general pediatrics.”

— Rin Gately