Montreal teen bags award for cancer research

MONTREAL – Abicumaran Uthamacumaran reaches into his backpack and pulls out a tangled mess of ribbons with shimmering medals and plops them down on a workstation in one of his science classrooms at Marymount Academy. These four awards are just the latest for the 16-year-old student whose trophy case is running out of room from his years on the science fair circuit.

Uthamacumaran won gold at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in May for his research on reducing the spread and growth of cancer cells. The project secured him a spot at a prestigious international youth science fair in Slovakia next spring.

Radiation therapy for cancer patients can damage healthy cells as well as cancer cells, and Uthamacumaran’s ultimate goal is to develop a treatment that will only target the cancer cells.

“It’s one of the Holy Grails of medicine at the moment,” he says.

Though he just finished Grade 10, he’s already talking about continuing his research to the PhD level. His life’s goal is a Nobel Prize in medicine.

At 13, he contacted more than 100 researchers in Montreal in the search for a mentor. Phil Gold, a decorated professor of physiology and oncology at McGill University, was the only one to agree to a meeting.

“He came in, very serious, and he told me what his aspirations were, and I sort of looked at him and tried to keep my face straight because he was actually out to capture the world,” Gold recalls. “And what’s remarkable is that he may.”

He introduced Uthamacumaran to other McGill doctors who shared their lab space and helped guide his research.

“It was his intensity that got to me. I wish he could just relax a little and smile but that’s not quick his makeup at the moment,” Gold says.

Uthamacumaran may be focused on science, but Luigi Santamaria, the principal at Marymount Academy, says he also makes time for other activities.

“He’s known out there to be a science genius, but he’s a kid who’s involved with leadership, he’s a kid who’s involved in the organization called youth against smoking, he does improv,” Santamaria says. “He’s not just an intelligent guy. He is a well-rounded student.”

With school out for the summer, Uthamacumaran has plans to take his research to the next level, but he has scheduled some down time. And what does he do to relax?

“Interaction with family, literacy really helps, playing badminton,” he says. “Also writing poetry is an excellent way of getting relaxed, in my opinion. I just go outside, stare at the clouds and just start writing to clear my mind.”

When he recites a line off the top of his head, it’s clear that even when creating art, science is still on his mind.

” ‘It began with a string and a sound.’ Basically, it denotes the creation of the universe, the Big Bang, but it gives you two important pieces of information: the sound meaning that everything came from one sound and also string, which relates to string theory in physics.”

He’s always searching for a deeper meaning – he has 20 notebooks filled with notes and drawings for future consideration – and it’s by drawing connections between his experiences that he finds inspiration.