[Aijin]

It said she started reading papers so it's not like she's just woke up one morning with all this knowledge. I think it's really impressive. Good on her.

[Rescue Remedy]

the idea itself is perfect medicine goes in finds the cancer cell and only the cancer cell is detroyed leaving healthy cells intact!

its working in mice aswell nearly completely gone. ive no idea if it will work in humans like it said it will take years. but its so good to see ideas and people working to try and cure cancer. i know there is alot of research going into it already but how often do you get a insight into it. im not going to knock down her research. i wish the best to her in her future

[thelooby94]

(Original post by Chucklefiend)
A degree is a piece of paper; degrees don't cure diseases, minds do.

I wonder who negged you...

[Arcanine]

Inb4 she disappears.

[Chucklefiend]

(Original post by thelooby94)
I wonder who negged you...

Most probably an unemployed biomed graduate.

[kingme]

(Original post by hslakaal)
If true, that means she didn't really invent anything, but rather refine, which is hardly worth so much talk.

Tbf there's one news article about it.

[kingme]

(Original post by Rescue Remedy)
the idea itself is perfect medicine goes in finds the cancer cell and only the cancer cell is detroyed leaving healthy cells intact!

its working in mice aswell nearly completely gone. ive no idea if it will work in humans like it said it will take years. but its so good to see ideas and people working to try and cure cancer. i know there is alot of research going into it already but how often do you get a insight into it. im not going to knock down her research. i wish the best to her in her future

that's a pretty big word. don't know much about any of it but I doubt she'll go down in history as 'killer of all cancer'

[JustRollingAlong]

Media use of the term "cure for cancer" is misleading, there are many, many different types of cancer and it is extremely unlike that there would ever be one cure that is effective against all of them. From the information in the article the student hasn't come up with a novel treatment, rather a novel way of delivering existing cancer medications. It wouldn't actually improve effectiveness (i.e. it wouldn't make a cure anymore likely) but could potentially reduce side effects as it would be more targeted thus leaving healthy cells untouched (this is still a noble goal as side effects can be lethal and nearly always reduce patient quality of life). It wouldn't work for all types of cancer (most likely it could only be applied to solid tumours that have not metastasized) and there are similarities with existing treatments, e.g. radiation beads. It would also likely be too expensive to use in the majority of cases as it would require an MRI scan for every patient each time they received a dose this way. Although, a caveat with all this is that I've only read the media report not the actual research paper, so there may be more to it than that.

Nonetheless her intelligence is certainly impressive and if she chooses to follow a career in cancer research she may well help the field move forward. I also think it's good to see the media reporting on something positive a teenager is doing rather than focusing on negative teenage behaviour. In case anyone is interested, Eva Vertes is a similarly gifted scientist (she made a novel discovery in Alzheimer's research when she was 17 and is now a cancer researcher), and there is video of her on TED from when she was 19.

http://www.ted.com/talks/eva_vertes_..._medicine.html

[Revd. Mike]

Good on her for reading ahead of her level etc. However, she did not come up with this idea, the whole magic bullet, targeted chemo, light activated, nanobead technology ideas have been around for years, and preclinical studies in mice are well underway, as well as a few clinical studies in humans.

On a side note, it really bugs me when people say 'a cure for cancer'. You know cancer is over 300 different diseases, requiring different therapeutic strategies right?

(Original post by kingme)
She doesn't really need much money to do what she did on a small scale.

I'm sorry, but you've just demonstrated that you really don't know how much research actually costs. A single assay kit that only contains enough reagent for 10 samples can easily cost well over £1000. Hell, even the delivery costs on a bio-reagent can be as much as £50-100!

[kingme]

(Original post by Revd. Mike)
I'm sorry, but you've just demonstrated that you really don't know how much research actually costs. A single assay kit that only contains enough reagent for 10 samples can easily cost well over £1000. Hell, even the delivery costs on a bio-reagent can be as much as £50-100!

That's because I don't. But I was responding to someone who seemed to think she had designed this therapy from the ground up and had run extensive tests on it. I was just pointing out that the scale of what she needed to do was pretty small.

[.eXe]

There is no doubt that her achievement is very commendable. However, I'm afraid this idea isn't something that is very new or revolutionary. We examined something very similar in my undergrad degree in order to destroy pancreatic tumors without touching the healthy Islet cells within.

Still, pretty remarkable to do all of this on her own.

[mrshinyshoes]

(Original post by PinkMobilePhone)
No I don't think she does, but at the end of the day a degree is just a piece of paper. You do just get people who just have natural ability sometimes. Otherwise known as child prodigies. Mozart didn't have a degree in music either. This girl clearly has a gift in science.

To be fair to leeC, maybe she is not thinking it as in depth as she should be, one missed step or over simplified step could ruin her theory.

[Shabalala]

(Original post by LeeC)
She won't be right. I'm not knocking her, but the media has blown this well out of proportion to say that it could be a cure for all cancer. Does she even have a degree?

[Shabalala]

(Original post by mrshinyshoes)
To be fair to leeC, maybe she is not thinking it as in depth as she should be, one missed step or over simplified step could ruin her theory.

What you really think that others haven't checked what she had done do you think they just gave her a few mice to experiment on without supervision don't be ridiculous.

[jdj96]

Is there a link to her paper? I would like to know how the nanoparticles will target the cancer cells.

Did she actually develop a drug to be contained in the nanoparticles that would be capable of killing the cancer cells or did she only develop the technique for administering the drg?

[hslt]

(Original post by jdj96)
Is there a link to her paper? I would like to know how the nanoparticles will target the cancer cells.

Did she actually develop a drug to be contained in the nanoparticles that would be capable of killing the cancer cells or did she only develop the technique for administering the drg?

She developed a variation on a technique that is already in preclinical and clinical trials - its novelty is probably that it's specific for a cancer of different aetiology to what is already in development.

Impressive, nonetheless.

[mrshinyshoes]

(Original post by Shabalala)
What you really think that others haven't checked what she had done do you think they just gave her a few mice to experiment on without supervision don't be ridiculous.

I'm just saying they won't be as hard on her due to her age thats all, no need to take offence at what i put

[LeeC]

(Original post by Bobifier)
"It didn't happen because I feel emotionally that it shouldn't be able to happen".

This argument is sufficiently weak that I am genuinely shocked anyone on this thread is even taking it seriously.

"It can happen because I feel emotionally that it should be able to happen". I can say exactly the same thing about what you have said. People are taking it seriously not because it's to do with my emotions, but to do with reality.

Of course it CAN happen, but the chances are so slim they are wholly unrealistic if you know anything about cancer research, or scientific research in general. Science generally isn't the lone genius finding the solution to the problem, although the media loves to portray it this way since it sells papers.

"It didn't happen because it hasn't actually happened", would be better.

[Jale]

If it were not for her age, this minor advance in a fairly established field would not be in any way newsworthy.

[Craig_D]

People like that show such promise in youth, then they get a doctorate and become slaves to the research councils and funding bodies. Few professionals in the lab get to let their mind run wild, because they are constantly being told what they should be researching.