OTTAWA – The discovery of a drug cocktail that might have potential some day to help patients with cystic fibrosis took first place May 10 at a national science contest, and a method of making vegetarian-friendly sorbet was the runner-up.
The judges were left in awe at the level of science that participants brought to bear at a young age, said the chair of the judging panel, Dr. Luis Barreto, former vice-president of immunization and science policy at Sanofi Pasteur.
The students are driven by curiosity and "we know the future of Canada is in good hands as Canada looks into creating the R and D strategy for the country," he said in an interview after the awards were presented at the National Research Council Canada laboratories in Ottawa.
"The constant feeling with all the judges was I would hire these guys not as my summer student but as my post-doc … every one of them. It was very difficult to actually identify the first five."
Marshall Zhang, a Grade 11 student in Richmond Hill, Ont., used the Canadian SCINET supercomputing network at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto to identify how two drugs interacted with a specific part of a mutant protein that’s responsible for most cases of CF.
He then proved what he’d found using living cells in culture.
"Not only did they (the drugs) work together, they worked together so well that they actually allowed the cells that were treated with both compounds to function as if they were the cells of healthy individuals," said Zhang, who was awarded a $5,000 prize.
The second-place prize of $4,000 at the 2011 Sanofi-Aventis BioTalent Challenge went to three 19-year-old students from Montreal who made sorbet without gelatin, potentially opening up a large new vegetarian market for the dessert.
Jonathan Khouzam, Simon Leclerc and Francis Marcogliese also won a special $1,000 prize for the project with the greatest commercial potential.
They combined three polysaccharides: caraggeenan, pectin and gellan, Khouzam said. Gellan has similar properties to gelatin, but it’s relatively new on the market and hasn’t really been exploited as a sorbet stabilizer, he said.
"When used together, the combined effect is greater than that of each individual stabilizer, which means we used less, and in the process we make a more cost-effective product," he said.
Their experiments were done with sugar, water and a bit of acid.
"We’re hoping to test it with fruit as well and eventually take it to market," Khouzam said.
The first- and second-place winners will go on to compete against American and Australian teams at an international challenge in Washington on June 27.
Students in the contest were mentored by university professors and others who volunteered their time and expertise.
Third place went to Shannon Watson, 18, of Ottawa, who identified bacteria in a probiotic fermented milk product from Zambia that inhibit the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Yasamin Mahjoub, 16, of Calgary won fourth place for showing that hormones produced by pregnant women protect neurons from the effects of iron accumulation in the brain, a characteristic of multiple sclerosis.
Winnipeg student Siyuan Cheng, 18, finished in fifth place for combining a drug treatment for leukemia, fludarabine, with a lung cancer drug, gefitinib. The experiment showed an increase in the number of leukemia cells being killed.
Cheng said he’s hoping to pursue a career in medicine.
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