The Fred Hutchinson Explorer program was a great experience overall. Although I didn’t get the full effect by traveling to Seattle and attending in person, I still had an amazing time, and would do it again. The highlight of the camp for me was doing the experiment with strawberries and DNA. I’d done this experiment in high school biology class, but I was given a procedure to follow the whole time. What set this apart was that I had to brainstorm and create my own procedure. This allowed for variation among groups, and led to the comparison of different procedures.
Cancer clinical trials exclude too many patients: That’s changing
This study talks about the inability for many cancer patients to participate in clinical trials because of the restrictive criteria. The term “cancer olympians” is used to describe the 1 in 1000 patient that matches the criteria, and is able to participate in the research. The problem with this is that without testing the average patient, they won’t know if it works. The goal of this study is to make clinical trials available to the average cancer patient. This however, comes with risks, because the average patient would be much more susceptible to nasty side effects than a “cancer olympian” with the perfect criteria. This study is very important because it will help to open up treatment options for many more people than before. If trials can be performed on anyone who is willing to participate, then many more lives will be be saved. I chose this study because I think it is both a very interesting and urgent topic. If the final goal of researchers is to be able to use medication on an average person, It seems beneficial to do testing on an average person. One of the researchers, who focuses on elderly patients, says “We cannot just say you’re doomed, there has to be science to say: Can we change things around to make your life better, or longer?” - Mohamed Sorror, M.D., M.Sc.
Original article by Diane Mapes
The photo above shows the lab equipment used to perform the strawberry DNA separation experiment.