Daniel Ruben Flores: Following in His Family’s Medical Footsteps

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As a doctor’s son, Daniel Ruben Flores grew up in his family’s pediatric clinic.  

He and his siblings hammered away at their math and reading homework after school at the clinic, while their parents helped the sick.  

Flores often paused to admire the handwritten letters – and drawings of his father with a stethoscope – on the wall from patients thanking the pediatrician for caring for them. 

“Wow, all these other kids really appreciate my dad and all the work he’s doing,” Flores recalled fondly. “I feel like that just kind of motivates you … to go into the field.”  

Witnessing his father’s work and the impact he had on his patients helped spark a fire in Flores to pursue medicine and help people, too. 

He’s taking big steps now – like serving in the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials program as an intern at the Institute for Health Promotion Research at UT Health San Antonio – to possibly one day join his father as a doctor, and even become a researcher who can unlock the mysteries of cancer and dementia.  

First Steps toward a Medical Education 

Flores’ family immigrated from Peru, where his father studied medicine, before he was born and settled down in Brownsville, Texas.  

During Flores’ high school years, he took up an interest in swimming. Physical fitness remains an important part of his life, which he hopes to instill in his future patients. 

“I think it always helps [your health] to be engaged in some kind of exercise,” Flores said. “[Exercise] helps with work or school, helps your mind, relieves stress, takes your mind off things, and it makes me feel better.”  

After high school, Flores attended Baylor University, where he studied chemistry as a pre-med student.  

Rather than applying to medical school right away, Flores took three gap years to refine his application. 

His hard work paid off. 

The now 26-year-old is about to begin his second year of medical school at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Medical School, where he is still deciding an area of study. 

A Growing Interest in Two Important Fields 

Flores was inspired by his father’s work to pursue pediatrics, which was solidified when he spent time working in an emergency room. 

“When I worked in the ER, like working with kids, I just really enjoyed working with kids,” Flores said. “Definitely for the less serious cases, like when kids would come in and maybe it’s a scrape or they just had the flu. Just getting them back to their baseline health, getting them healthy. Those patients have always given me the most satisfaction.”

However, someone very important in his life pulled him in a new direction. 

Every summer, Flores and the rest of his family would venture back to Peru to visit with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents.  

He and his grandfather shared a special bond, which made it much more difficult for Flores to watch his grandfather’s health decline from dementia.  

“I remember my grandfather’s personality,” Flores said. “He was a judge over there, so he was super quick-witted, and even for his age … It was just shocking to see him as we would go back every year, slowly lose parts of his personality [due to dementia.]” 

His grandfather’s struggles led Flores to study how to help people with dementia. 

“Just seeing that kind of stuff makes me want to do research in neurology to try to get rid or eliminate or find ways to lessen the impact that dementia has,” Flores said. “Because that really affects the whole family.”  

He’s exploring ways to fuse the two together, hoping that his new internship helps light the way to a future that serves the Latino community through research.  

Exploring Options in Research 

Flores is one of the latest inductees into the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials: Clinical Investigator Pathway Program, created by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2023. 

The program supports up –and– coming professionals to advance diversity in clinical trials.  

As part of his internship, Flores is working at the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at UT Health San Antonio and the Mays Cancer Center, an NCI-designated Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio, throughout summer 2024.  

The ambitious medical student is operating under the leadership of Dr. Amelie Ramirez, director of the IHPR and associate director of cancer outreach and engagement at the Mays Cancer Center, where he works to analyze data for the Avanzando Caminos (Leading Pathways): The Hispanic/Latino Cancer Survivorship Study.  

Avanzando Cominos is a 6-year clinical trial funded by the National Cancer Institute to recruit 3,000 Latino cancer survivors to help understand how different issues impact survivors’ symptom burdens, health-related quality of life, and disease activity. 

Latinos can join the study here. 

One of the ways Flores is looking for trends is by organizing patients by types of cancer, where he’s observed a difference between enrollments by kidney and prostate cancer patients compared with lung and liver cancers.  

“[We’re] just seeing why some of those patients are failing to enroll [in clinical trials],” Flores said. “We’re just trying to see if there are any correlations that we can find and get a way to improve enrollments so we can get more enrollments for this study.”  

Like Father, Like Son 

Flores’ father has always been a huge inspiration and motivation in his life. 

His father studied medicine in Peru, where you head into medicine straight out of high school.

That couldn’t be further from the reality of medicine in the US, which required Flores’ father to take three exams at once to qualify for residency.  

Flores would often hear stories of how difficult it was and how much studying he had to do to achieve his dreams.  

“[He] just never gave up and he did it for him and his family … He just always instilled that work ethic, not just by telling us, but also just how much he worked and how much he sacrificed for us,” he said.  

“He’s been just my biggest role model growing up,” Flores said.  

Like many other medical professionals before him, Flores’ path hasn’t always been easy. 

In fact, there were times, especially when faced with challenging courses, where he questioned his decision to pursue medicine.  

Whenever he had those thoughts, he knew he could turn to his dad for support and guidance.  

“My dad didn’t really push us to [go into medicine]. I remember talking to him about these classes being really hard and not knowing if this is something that I want to do for the rest of my life,” Flores said. 

His father’s solution to his indecision was to encourage him to get first-hand experience, which is how he found his way into clinical trial research.  

Research-Oriented Mindset 

During his three-year gap between undergrad and medical school, Flores sought every opportunity to gain experience. 

Flores worked as a scribe in an ER, where he took a strong liking to working in a research-type environment.  

At one point, Flores found himself right across the way from the place where he would later be working with the Avanzando Cominos team. 

Working in clinical trial data management at the Mays Cancer Center opened Flores’ eyes to the possibilities that clinical trial research held and eventually led him to apply for the program. 

“If I do neurology or pediatrics, I definitely want to do research, like some kind of academic medicine and do clinical trials,” Flores said.  

Positioning for the Future 

His time at IHPR is reinforcing his clinical trial research mindset.  

“This whole internship is helping me get [clinical trial] experience,” Flores said. “It’s one thing, like my other job, I used to just manage the data and mimic it. [Here] we’re kind of doing our own research project and kind of drawing our own analysis, which is like taking on a role I want in the future.”  

Flores hopes that this experience will give him more exposure to clinical trials and help him learn more about them.  

He attributes a lot of what he’s learned thus far to working with Dr. Derek Rodriguez, a research scientist at IHPR who serves as Avanzando Cominos program manager, and oversees the clinical trial internships.   

Rodriguez has taught him how to jump into a project quickly and adapt to the needs and challenged him to find new ways to approach research goals.  

“He’s been really great at showing us the ins and outs,” he said. “Dr. Rodriguez has been instrumental in getting us started and getting us going into the project … I feel like if Dr. Rodriguez hadn’t given us guidance, we’d be totally lost right now.”  

As a Latino looking to get into research, having a mentorship is important to helping you find a clear direction, Flores advised.  

Down the line Flores envisions himself conducting clinical trial research that benefits the community he comes from.  

“I can definitely see myself doing research that benefits our community as a whole,” Flores said. “Here, we’re trying to improve Hispanic and Latino [cancer] outcomes, just because they’re been really underrepresented in research. If we can do that here, that directly translates back home in the [Rio Grande] Valley.”