one of the most dangerous and lethal kinds of brain cancer. His work examines the potential of Iron Oxide nanoparticles to cure Glioblastoma Multiforme, which is the brain cancer that claimed the lives of Senator Ted Kennedy, President Joe Biden’s son, Beau, and Sen. John McCain.
During the media interview, he said, “One of the big things with this is trying to minimize collateral damage but also maximize damage on those specific cells.” His technique employs polymer-coated nanoparticles to selectively target cancer stem cells. Tom explained his research work. He said, “I like to compare it to a firetruck. It takes those firefighters and they are loaded into the firetruck, and that polymer is able to target something that is frequently found on the surface of cancer stem cells and locally treat those stem cells.”
Tom is one among the local students contesting in the State Science Fair in Lakeland and is also one of the six finalists in the International Science and Engineering Competition, which will take place in May. Tom carried out this study last summer at Northwestern University’s Ahmed Laboratory in the neurosurgery department. Tom intends to pursue his work at Northwestern this summer. During the media interview, he said that while further research on this nanotechnology is necessary, the current results are encouraging.
Tom shared his journey to success. He said, “I went into the Ahmed Lab knowing very little about glioblastoma and very little about how to work in a laboratory. This is a very complex topic, and I’ve only taken Honors Biology in high school… A lot of the time, I’d just do something completely wrong. But they told me — ‘You have to think about it in regards to this.’ And once people would explain that to me, I had such a great view of the topic.”
However, Tom’s concentration was not always on brain cancer. His study began in 2021 at Episcopal, when he began examining the effect of these nanoparticles on stem cells in a flatworm called planaria. Tom expressed his interest in the research. He said, “I was focusing on those stem cells because I found them interesting. And I was thinking about the greater impacts of this research, and I found there is a genetic similarity with cancer stem cells and stem cells in those flatworms.”
