An Indian named girl Shivani Sud won the top prize at the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search competition in the U.S. on Tuesday, March 11 2008. She gets a scholarship worth of 100,000$ from the Intel Foundation. This is the first and foremost occasion that an Indian girl has won the top prize which is often termed as Junior Nobel Prize. Shivani Sud had submitted a project to Intel Corporation that is aimed in identifying stage II colon cancer patients at high risk for recurrence and the best therapeutic agents for treating their tumors. The incident which inspired her to work on a project like this was that one of her immediate family member was found to have brain tumor and was at last saved by all the doctors.
Colo rectal cancer, also called colon cancer or large bowel cancer, includes cancerous growths in the colon, rectum and appendix. It is the third most common form of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the Western world. Colo rectal cancer causes 655,000 deaths worldwide per year. These mushroom-like growths are usually benign, but some may develop into cancer over time. The majority of the time, the diagnosis of localized colon cancer is through colonoscopy. Therapy is usually through surgery, which in many cases is followed by chemotherapy.
The standard method of characterizing colon cancer relies on visual information, including size, degree of metastasis and microscopic structure. Shivani's gene model for predicting the recurrence of colon cancer instead uses gene expression profiles to link multiple genetic events that characterize various tumor types. She created her model using two public data sets containing 125 patient samples and coupled it with clinical data to plot statistically significant survival curves. She then used her model to identify drugs that may be effective in treating stage II colon cancer. The Science talent search is a prestigious competition and winning in such an event has brought noble laureates to her family and to India.
The chairman of Intel Craig Barrett congratulated Shivani for her achievement. Thus Shivani has made both her family and India proud by the work she has done which no one might have thought even in their wildest of dreams.
Colo rectal cancer, also called colon cancer or large bowel cancer, includes cancerous growths in the colon, rectum and appendix. It is the third most common form of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the Western world. Colo rectal cancer causes 655,000 deaths worldwide per year. These mushroom-like growths are usually benign, but some may develop into cancer over time. The majority of the time, the diagnosis of localized colon cancer is through colonoscopy. Therapy is usually through surgery, which in many cases is followed by chemotherapy.
The standard method of characterizing colon cancer relies on visual information, including size, degree of metastasis and microscopic structure. Shivani's gene model for predicting the recurrence of colon cancer instead uses gene expression profiles to link multiple genetic events that characterize various tumor types. She created her model using two public data sets containing 125 patient samples and coupled it with clinical data to plot statistically significant survival curves. She then used her model to identify drugs that may be effective in treating stage II colon cancer. The Science talent search is a prestigious competition and winning in such an event has brought noble laureates to her family and to India.
The chairman of Intel Craig Barrett congratulated Shivani for her achievement. Thus Shivani has made both her family and India proud by the work she has done which no one might have thought even in their wildest of dreams.
No comments:
Post a Comment