Award-winning teen scientist using cold virus to fight cancer

WATCH: At the age of 18, our Everyday Hero is already working in a professional lab on a new cancer treatment. As Laura Stone report, he’s just been named Canada’s biogenius of 2015.

OTTAWA – At first glance, Aditya Mohan seems like any other soon-to-be high school graduate. He likes basketball, painting, and hanging out with his friends.

But when he talks about science, you know he’s different.

For two years, the 18-year-old Ottawa high school student has worked in a professional lab to help develop cancer-killing treatments.

The hard work paid off: he recently beat out students from across the country to win the Sanofi Biogenius Canada competition.

“When the name was called it was the most amazing feeling ever,” Mohan says.

His research is cutting-edge biotechnology stuff – the kind of science that uses cells to create potentially life-saving drugs.

In Mohan’s case, he worked with a common cold virus to attack cancer cells.

“My research involved finding a different way to get these viruses to identify cancer cells and kill them. And at least based on pre-clinical testing, it seemed to be very promising,” he says.

But it wasn’t exactly easy to get started.

“I e-mailed I think nearly 300 professors throughout Ottawa and I had interviews with them and some of them didn’t go well at all.”

But Angela Crawley, an associate scientist at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, took a chance.

She was impressed with Mohan’s dedication and skills.

“You could see that he had a lot of ideas and he had done a significant amount of reading of really complex material, and he understood it, he could actually dictate the science to me and the findings and their relevance,” she says.

“You don’t see that normally among junior researchers, let alone a high school student.”

Mohan’s parents say he’s always been a focused kid.

“He tries to do things his own way. He’s very inquisitive. He’s not shy about anything,” says his mom, Monika Kumar.

“He’s not shy about anything. If there’s an idea that comes to his mind, he’ll go out and explore, even if it means staying up till 12 o’clock, 1, 2 o’clock in the night.”

Their pride is showcased in a living room shrine to his achievements. And there are many.

But in Mohan’s quest for the best, there have been setbacks.

He had to deal with coming in second last year – not first.

“He turned that disappointment into a further sort of a challenge. And said that, ‘I’ll basically come up with something even bigger,’” said his dad, Dinesh Mohan.

Next up for the biogenius?

Like every teen, he’s looking forward to summer, before he starts at McGill University in Montreal this fall.

But unlike them, he’s up for a major international award this weekend – and he’ll spend most of pool season in a lab.

“If you are really interested, there’s no point waiting years,” he says.

“Just go on any opportunity that you have and just build on whatever you have right now.”