Calgary student wins for his breast cancer research at Canada-Wide science fair
Posted May 18, 2018 12:54 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Some young Calgarians have won big at the Canada-Wide science fair in Ottawa.
Twelve students representing the Calgary Youth Science Fair were awarded nine medals and $44,500 in university scholarships.
One of those students is 17 year-old Nikko-Johan Lee from St. Mary’s High School who won the Youth Science Discovery Challenge award for his project: A Novel Strategy for Preferential Killing of Breast Cancer Cells.
“Cancer cells often experience uncontrolled growth and high metabolism leading them into something called oxidative stress. Now if I deplete or take away certain protein from cancer cells I can actually overwhelm a cancer cell with some of the oxidative stress and kill the cancer cell, so that’s what I hope to do and I was successful and I actually was able to kill a cancer cell.” Lee said.
He said it feels surreal to have won this award and hopes to do more experiments in the future.
Lee is currently enrolled at the University of Calgary majoring in Biological Sciences.
