Friday, May 13, 2011

16-year old Does Science Project, Finds Possible Cure for Cystic Fibrosis

I hate kids.
And I'm guessing there weren't any baking soda volcanoes in the competition.
From CTV:
Ont. teen wins top prize for cystic fibrosis discovery
A promising discovery has been made that could one day help in the fight against cystic fibrosis -- and the researcher behind it is just 16 years old.

Toronto-area high school student Marshall Zhang took first place this week at a national science contest for developing what could become a new drug cocktail to treat patients with CF, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs and digestive system.

Zhang, a Grade 11 student in Richmond Hill, Ont., used the Canadian SCINET supercomputing network at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto to identify how two compounds interacted with a protein on a mutant gene that's responsible for most cases of CF, called Delta F508.

Using the computer modeling, he looked at what these compounds might do at the molecular level to "correct" the genetic defect that marks CF. He found that two drugs each interacted with different parts of the mutant protein and then worked together in a whole new way as well....MORE