Third-year medical student Zachary Tan was a big winner at the annual National Students Research Forum in Galveston, Texas - taking home the Excellence in Oncology Research award and second place overall for Outstanding Oral Presentation.
"It was very unexpected because there was a lot of strong and exciting research at the conference," said Tan.
The research looked at a specific protein's involvement in melanoma, the most deadly of the three common skin cancers. He found that when the protein called PAX3 was artificially modified in the melanoma cell, it resulted in significant changes in cancer cell cycling and growth potential.
"When we looked at these cells under the microscope, the controls grew and moved rapidly into the space we gave it," said Tan, who did six months of research in Alan Underhill's lab in the Division of Experimental Oncology over the summers during his first two years of medical school.
"The melanoma cells that had PAX3 knocked down didn't grow as fast, they looked less invasive and they even became pigmented, getting back a degree of cell differentiation that was previously lost."
The research group has a way to go before understanding the mechanism by which PAX3 helps cancer cells grow and spread, but once this becomes clearer, it could be a new target for future therapies.
"I think it's amazing that we have so many opportunities at the U of A to pursue our curiosities with a support network of amazing professors, graduate students and laboratory assistants, all of whom willingly provide indispensible guidance throughout the entire research process," said Tan.
Getting results early in his career has Tan excited about a future in research, but first comes the medical degree. Tan will present at the CanadianNational Medical Student Research Symposium (CNMSRS) conference in Winnipeg in June 2012.