Most high school students spend their free time sleeping, hanging out with friends, playing sports or doing other hobbies teenagers do. While high school students are living their everyday lives, 17-year-old Angela Zhang is working on an in-depth dramatic experiment. Working for hours nearly everyday in a science lab, and experimenting to find a possible cure for cancer isn’t very common among teenagers, or adults for that matter. Zhang, on the other hand, would be lucky to have free time to do what average people do, but a hopeful cure for cancer is worth the hard work.
While most freshmen in high school read Romeo and Juliet, Zhang was reading doctorate level papers on bio-engineering at that age. By her sophomore year, Zhang had talked her way into a lab at Stanford. By her junior year, the rest was history.
What started as Zhang’s science fair project could turn into a cure for cancer. Zhang entered her research project into the National Siemens Science Contest, where she won a check for $100,000.
Zhang’s theory is that if cancer medicine was put in polymers, the polymers would attach to nanoparticles. The nanoparticles would then attach to cancer cells, making tumors easier for doctors to locate. From there, doctors can point infrared light at the polymers and melt them, which releases the medicine and kills cancerous cells, while leaving the healthy ones alone.
So far, this method has been tested on mice, and the results show great success. Almost all of the tumors in the mice disappeared.
Sophomore Alexis Logan thinks that Zhang’s possible cure is exciting. Logan was diagnosed with thyroid cancer but has since been cancer-free.
“I wasn’t really scared because I knew [the cancer] was curable,” Logan said. “It made me think a lot more about life and I learned not to take things for granted. It just made me look at the bigger picture.”
Sophomore Shannon Herra also has had a personal experience with cancer. In 2008, her mother was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and thyroid cancer.
“It literally made me sick to my stomach for the first few days after I found out,” Herra said. “When people would see my mom with no hair, it seemed like they were almost judging her. I don’t think people realize what it’s really like unless they experience it. It changes your perspective on life, the small problems don’t seem bad anymore, and you realize that people are always going through something worse.”
Cancer does not only affect students. English teacher Kurt Green lost his father to prostate cancer in 2005.
“When I found out my dad had cancer, I was in shock. I denied it at first, I couldn’t believe it,” Green said. “We thought he was perfectly healthy, but when he went in for his physical that’s when he found out he had prostate cancer. He caught it at an early stage, and the doctors said that he would probably die of old age before he would die of cancer.”
Green said he was so concerned for his dad’s health that he began losing sleep over it.
“I knew that he was slowly dying. I eventually had to feed him and the doctors would tell me to try and get him up and moving, but it was hard for him to stand up or walk because the cancer had spread to his bones,” Green said.
Though his father’s cancer led to the worst, Green has decided to stay positive about the whole situation.
“My dad dying really made me realize the importance of each day,” Green said.
Cancer is not just one disease. It is many diseases with different variations. According to the National Cancer Institute, the most common types of cancer are prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, and melanoma. All of the common cancers have estimated in thousands of deaths per year; melanoma estimates at about 9,000 deaths per year while lung cancer results in about 159,000 deaths, according to the NCI.
However, there is somewhat good news pertaining to cancer. The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer shows that cancer death rates are dropping in the U.S. However, the report also shows that the death rate for men with melanoma is increasing, as is the death rate for women with pancreatic and liver cancer. Some doctors believe that this can be prevented with a human papillomavirus vaccination (HPV).
“The continuing drop in cancer mortality over the past two decades is reason to cheer. The challenge we now face is how to continue those gains in the face of new obstacles, like obesity and HPV infections. We must face these hurdles head on, without distraction, and without delay, by expanding access to proven strategies to prevent and control cancer,” John R. Seffrin, Ph.D., chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, said.
A recent study by the American Cancer Society (ACS) shows that women are at a greater risk of dying from lung cancer than ever before. The study compares the 1960s to nowadays. In the 1960s, the risk of dying from lung cancer was 2.7 times higher than that of a never-smoker. Now, the risk of dying is up to 22.5 times higher.
“The steep increase in risk among female smokers has continued for decades after the serious health risks from smoking were well established, and despite the fact that women predominantly smoked cigarette brands marketed as lower in ’tar’ and nicotine,” Michael J. Thrun, M.D., who led the study, said.
Medical experts like Thrun are working hard towards a cancer cure. Whether it is medicated polymers or an HPV vaccination, the human race is striving towards a cure for cancer that might soon be here.
