Cure For Cancer: A High School Student

I’m glad to know that there are still intelligent people out there, despite the stupidity being widely celebrated nowadays.

While most teenage girls spend their time gossiping around, trying to be popular and watching Jersey Shore, the 17-year-old high school student Angela Zhang has written a research paper in her spare time that provides us with, let me put it in a simple way, a possible cure for cancer.

Born to Chinese immigrants, she started reading doctorate level papers on bio-engineering when she was only a freshman.  By sophomore year she'd talked her way into the lab at Stanford, and by junior year was doing her own research projects.

"Cure for cancer -- a high school student," said her chemistry teacher at Monta Vista High School, Kavita Gupta. "It's just so mind-boggling. I just cannot even begin to comprehend how she even thought about it or did this."

"I just thought, 'Why not?' 'What is there to lose?'" said Angela.

“At first it was a little bit overwhelming,” said Angela, “but I found that it almost became like a puzzle, being able to decode something.”

Angela's idea was to mix cancer medicine and nanotechnology; the drugs, mixed in a polymer that would attach to nanoparticles, would then fasten themselves to cancer cells and show up on an MRI allowing doctors to exactly see where the tumors are. 

Then, she thought of using an infrared light aimed at the tumors so the polymer would melt and release the medicine, killing the cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

Although it will be years before scientists run tests on humans, the results on mice were pretty promising – the tumors almost completely disappeared.

Angela has deservedly won the prize of $100,000 in scholarships for college of the 2011 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology.

"Angela created a nanoparticle that is like a Swiss army knife of cancer treatment," said Tejal Desai, a bioengineer at the University of California, San Francisco, and a competition judge.

“This is a Cinderella moment for a science nerd like me,” Zhang told the Mercury News.
 

She also said she’s very excited to learn everything possible in the sciences – biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and even computer science -- to make new innovations possible. We are also very excited that you do, Angela. And Good luck!
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45571082/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/t/students-edge-innovation-win-prizes/#.T2znWMXy_nN

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57358994/calif-hs-student-devises-possible-cancer-cure/