Deep inside the bowels of the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria building, past rows of equipment and lab samples, are two high school teenagers working toward completing complex scientific papers on cancer research.
Not all summer jobs are the same, apparently.
Jane Zhang of Peoria and Miller Eaton of Colfax are two of 35 high school students from the state of Illinois selected for the American Cancer Society?s summer high school research program. Most of the selected applicants work in the Chicago area, but Zhang and Eaton are working alongside top researchers in the Cancer Research Center at UICOMP for eight weeks this summer.
?One of the interviewers told me they had a very tough time this year choosing from so many good applicants,? Zhang said. ?There?s only five of us that were chosen from downstate Illinois.?
Zhang, 17, is less than a month away from beginning her senior year at Richwoods High School, which seems like a distant future with a 10-page research paper due in a week and a presentation on that same research in front of the state?s top cancer researchers standing in her way.
Her research is focused on glioblastoma, the most common and most aggressive malignant primary brain tumor in humans. Specifically, Zhang has worked with a protein called Galectin-1 that is highly expressive glioblastoma, growing cell strands and examining DNA sequences along the way.
The daily workload both Zhang and Eaton undergo seems like it would strain a seasoned medical professional, and both will concede the learning curve was steep at first compared to their freshman biology class.
?The first week I hadn?t touched any equipment like it,? Zhang said. ?I can?t say I operated them all successfully every time.?
?Everything is expensive and a little intimidating,? Eaton said. ?Honestly, I just didn?t want to break anything.?
Eaton, 17, discovered the summer program through a guidance counselor at his high school in Colfax, which is about 25 miles east of Bloomington. The summer program was met with apathy by most of the students except Eaton.
He had little medical training before this summer outside of a biology class and a research paper in an English class that tackled cellular biology, but he?s kept pace at UICOMP researching meningioma, which is a brain cancer found most frequently in older women, according to Eaton.
Both 17-year-olds plan on furthering their medical training beyond high school and have expressed interest in continuing to work at UICOMP on cancer research.
Dr. Jasti Rao, who oversees the program, said that they cannot keep them within the American Cancer Society grant parameters. He always accepts volunteers year-round, though.
?Especially an active group like these two,? Rao said. ?They?re really serious with the research they?re doing.?
Before the students can ponder the future, they still have to present their research findings at the end of next week. Not surprisingly, standing up and speaking in front of a group of people ? no matter how prominent ? is not worrisome to these medical prodigies.
?I?ve learned a lot from the research, and I know what I?m talking about,? Zhang said.
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Thomas Bruch can be reached at 686-3181 or tbruch@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @ThomasBruch.
Article source: http://www.pjstar.com/news/x356061978/Teenagers-take-on-cancer
Source: http://cancerkick.com/2012/08/02/teenagers-take-on-cancer/
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