Toronto High School Student Makes Groundbreaking Medical Discovery

A 16-year old currently attending high school in the Greater Toronto Area was awarded first place in the 2011 Sanofi-Aventis BioTalent Challenge on May 10^th for his groundbreaking scientific discovery in the treatment of cystic fibrosis. Marshall Zhang, a 11^th grade student attending high school in Richmond Hill was awarded this honour after finding a new combination of drugs used for the treatment of cystic fibrosis, a potentially fatal genetic disorder.

Zhang, under the supervision of Dr. Christine Bear at the Hospital of Sick Children Research Institute, used the Canadian SCINET supercomputing network at said mentor’s lab to investigate the behaviour of two promising drugs as it interacted on the flawed protein responsible for cystic fibrosis. Using computer simulations, Zhang analyzed the action of each drug individually on the target protein. He found that each drug worked completely independent of each other to produce different effects on the same protein. This result indicated that both drugs could be used simultaneously and optimally to achieve the best results when treating this genetic condition. After this realization, Zhang tested his idea of using both drugs at the same time on living cells and found that the two drugs used worked much better simultaneously than they did individually to provide corrective therapy on the target protein. While continued work may find that these drugs are too toxic to be used in humans, this discovery is important to future research endeavors for the treatment of cystic fibrosis.

The contest, which became Zhang’s medium for this discovery, allows students in high school or in the early years of university to conduct their own research under the supervision of mentors that are accomplished in their own right. This contest attracts over 3,000 participants of which millions of dollars in grants are awarded to these young researchers. The winners and runners-up of this challenge usually proceed to compete in the International BioGENEius Challenge held in Washington DC every year.