17-Year-Old Wins $100K For Creating Cancer Killing Nanoparticle

An anonymous reader writes "17-year-old Angeloa Zhang was recently awarded the $100,000 Grand Prize in the Individual category of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. Her project was entitled 'Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells.' The creation is the so-called 'Swiss army knife of cancer treatment,' which allows a nanoparticle to be delivered to a tumor where it proceeds to kills cancer stem cells."

Biology Question

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems all prizes and research goes to Cancer and AIDS since they get the most newstime and general attention? But these two diseases seem to be extremely difficult to cure fully all the same when you consider the billions of dollars invested the last few decades.

Would it be that hard to cure ulcerative colitis or crohns with serious money invested like what we see with cancer/aids? Or it's equally difficult? Just asking from a purely scientific standpoint to discover a new drug that works, not about the process of bringing a "cure" to market with trials and approvals.

Having said that this girl sounds rather brilliant, so congrats to her!

Re:Biology Question

[Intropy]

Similarly, a lot of effort that goes into "AIDS research" is really more widely applicable virus research. Finding something practical that cured a major class of virus would be world changing on the level of antibiotics.

Re:Biology Question

[sg_oneill]

Because if you cure cancer (Somehow...... cancer really refers to a vast number of genetic defects each with its own kink), or AIDS (perhaps more likely) you'll save billions of lives over the course of history.

Malaria however is another one desparately in need of research. Kills more than aids and yet gets a fraction of the research dollars.

Re:Lousy t-shirt

[TheRaven64]

The Nobel Peace Prize pays out pretty well; generally $1-3 million USD depending on market variations.

So, somewhere between 5 and 15% of the golden parachute that Carly Fiorina got for running HP into the ground (on top of her salary)?

very impressive, but ...

[Lluc]

I don't want to minimize the achievement of this high school student, but it does look like she is repeating work that was published several years ago. (If this had been completely original work, I would expect her to already be a research professor instead of a HS student.)

Look at Naomi Halas at Rice University (http://chemistry.rice.edu/FacultyDetail.aspx?RiceID=863). Her group has been engineering nanoparticles for > 5 years for the exact same application, "The Halas Nanoengineering Group is actively pursuing applications of nanoshells in biomedicine, in applications relating to ultrafast immunoassays, optically triggerable drug delivery, early stage cancer detection and photothermal cancer therapy."

One other point: this student attends Oak Ridge High School. How much do you bet she has a parent (or at least a close adviser) who works at Oak Ridge National Lab within their biological systems division.