Local Students Turn to Duke Mentor for Help in National Science and Math Competition
Work done for Siemens-Westinghouse prize was done at Duke
When two area high school seniors wanted to make a contribution to breast cancer research, they turned to Duke's Dr. Jeffrey Marks for assistance. Their collaboration has brought the young girls a national science award and $50,000 each in scholarship money.
Yueqi "Lucie" Guo and Xianlin Li, both seniors at the North Carolina School for Science and Mathematics, were winners this week in the prestigious Siemens-Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science and Technology, the nation's top competition for young researchers.
The two were honored for their study of the effect of DNA methylation, a natural gene silencing process, on breast cancer. They showed that cancer cells are able to hinder a particular tumor-suppressor gene through methylation. The sites of methylation, therefore, could give researchers new markers to look for as they develop tests for early detection of breast cancer.
They worked with Marks, who researches the molecular biology and genetics of breast cancer. He was one of the team of scientists involved in the discovery of BRCA1 and 2, two genes that have been identified as increasing the risk of breast cancer.
Guo said winning the award was exciting, but the real thrill came in doing the research.
"You have this illusion that as a scientist, you're just going to walk into a lab one day and suddenly discover the cure for cancer," Guo told the News and Observer. "That's not going to happen. Researchers all over the world are just taking baby steps. ... But we have contributed to the war on cancer. This is a war we want to keep fighting in."