Dalhousie soccer players co-author study on treatment for rare blood disorder 

Dalhousie University men’s soccer players Andrew Chen and Ricky Schwarzkopf are making their mark on the pitch and in the lab, recently co-authoring a scientific research journal paper.

Chen, a fourth-year biochemistry student, and Schwarzkopf, a fourth-year neuroscience student, recently co-authored a peer-reviewed research paper, alongside other researchers from Dalhousie and the University of British Columbia, published in the Journal of Human Immunity by Rockefeller University Press. The paper, published in September 2025, presents research on the treatment of severe refractory immune neutropenia, a rare blood disorder, with ruxolitinib, a drug used to treat some bone marrow and blood cancers and disorders.

“It feels amazing to be able to have your name out there on something that’s going to help impact medicine and other people,” said Schwarzkopf. “It’s definitely one of my biggest achievements, and I will always be proud of it.”

Research

Chen and Schwarzkopf’s research focused on two patients with immune neutropenia, a disease that attacks white blood cells, making it hard to fight off infections. 

Both patients weren’t responding to the standard treatment and were declining in health, so the research team repurposed ruxolitinib to treat the patients. Ruxolitinib improved conditions in both patients, marking the first time in 25 years that these types of neutropenia have had a new treatment introduced.

“The idea with this is to show that it’s important to think about ways we can repurpose the drugs we already have,” said Chen. “It costs millions of dollars and decades of research to produce one new drug.”

Chen’s father, who founded the Coastal Rare Inflammatory Diseases Program, brought both his son and Schwarzkopf onto his team as student volunteers and asked them to work on the project.

“It was definitely a great opportunity,” said Schwarzkopf. “Being able to extract the important information, then put it together into a publishable-quality paper, is a great skill to have.”

“With Andrew’s dad helping us out with these various projects that we’re working on, we have a huge support system … I just want to give them some credit for our success.”

Athletics and friendship

Chen and Schwarzkopf quickly became close friends, on and off the pitch, as part of a small rookie class in their first year at Dalhousie.

“We realized we were in a lot of the same classes in our first year, and we’ve done a lot of things together since then,” said Chen.

Alongside their scientific contributions, Chen and Schwarzkopf remained committed to Dalhousie’s men’s soccer team. This year, the team won the Atlantic University Sport championships and attended the U Sports national championships in Toronto. 

Both defencemen said it can be difficult to balance athletic and academic demands, but added that they received support from coaches, professors, tutors and other players.

“We had some great mentors in our first years,” said Schwarzkopf. “There were some fourth or fifth year guys that really took us under their wing and made sure that we had a good transition, especially during our first, second and third years. We’re still in touch with them now.”

Both Chen and Schwarzkopf will graduate in June and have applied to medical school for next year.