Cool HS Student

CBS News last week reported on a high school student from California named Angela Zhang who might have come up with a cure for cancer.

How's this for a science project? When she was a freshman, she read lots of stuff about bioengineering. Over a couple of years, she developed a theory about cancer cells and nanotechnology, and eventually got the chance to devise an experiment to test it out. Turns out her theory was right.


Her experiment involved mixing a cancer medicine with a polymer, which would cover the medicine. The polymer is then attached to a nanoparticle (an extremely tiny particle -- I've discussed this before), which then attaches to the cancer cell. These nanoparticles show up on MRIs, so the caner cells can be identified. Then, an infrared light is shone on the nonoparticles, causing the polymer to melt, exposing the medicine. The medicine is thus delivered directly to the cancer cells (since they have the medicine/polymer/nanoparticle attached to them) while sparing the healthy cells nearby.

The method has been tested on mice, with excellent results.
one of those promising nanotech methods that may prove useful in the near future. What they all have in common is an attempt at delivering some treatment directly to the cancer cells, in a wide and interesting variety of methods.

Angela won a national science contest for her project -- $100,000 for first place. She bought a bunch of purple shoes with some of the money, which is kind of awesome, since purple is the color for cancer awareness (though that's not why she chose purple).

Well done, Angela.