Award-winning teen-age science in action

Lauren Hodge: If you were going to a restaurant and wanted a healthier option,

which would you choose, grilled or fried chicken?

Now most people would answer grilled,

and it's true that grilled chicken does contain less fat and fewer calories.

However, grilled chicken poses a hidden danger.

The hidden danger is heterocyclic amines --

specifically phenomethylimidazopyridine,

or PhIP --

(laughter)

which is the immunogenic or carcinogenic compound.

A carcinogen is any substance or agent

that causes abnormal growth of cells,

which can also cause them to metastasize or spread.

They are also organic compounds

in which one or more of the hydrogens in ammonia

is replaced with a more complex group.

Studies show that antioxidants

are known to decrease these heterocyclic amines.

However, no studies exist yet

that show how or why.

These here are five different organizations that classify carcinogens.

And as you can see, none of the organizations consider the compounds to be safe,

which justifies the need to decrease them in our diet.

Now you might wonder how a 13 year-old girl could come up with this idea.

And I was led to it through a series of events.

I first learned about it through a lawsuit I read about in my doctor's office --

(Laughter)

which was between the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine

and seven different fast food restaurants.

They weren't sued because there was carcinogens in the chicken,

but they were sued because of California's Proposition 65,

which stated that if there's anything dangerous in the products

then the companies had to give a clear warning.

So I was very surprised about this.

And I was wondering why nobody knew more

about this dangerous grilled chicken,

which doesn't seem very harmful.

But then one night, my mom was cooking grilled chicken for dinner,

and I noticed that the edges of the chicken,

which had been marinated in lemon juice, turned white.

And later in biology class, I learned that it's due to a process called denaturing,

which is where the proteins will change shape

and lose their ability to chemically function.

So I combined these two ideas and I formulated a hypothesis,

saying that, could possibly

the carcinogens be decreased due to a marinade

and could it be due to the differences in PH?

So my idea was born,

and I had the project set up and a hypothesis,

so what was my next step?

Well obviously I had to find a lab to work at

because I didn't have the equipment in my school.

I thought this would be easy,

but I emailed about 200 different people

within a five-hour radius of where I lived,

and I got one positive response that said that they could work with me.

Most of the others either never responded back,

said they didn't have the time

or didn't have the equipment and couldn't help me.

So it was a big commitment

to drive to the lab to work multiple times.

However, it was a great opportunity to work in a real lab --

so I could finally start my project.

The first stage was completed at home,

which consisted of marinating the chicken,

grilling the chicken, amassing it

and preparing it to be transported to the lab.

The second stage was completed

at the Penn State University main campus lab,

which is where I extracted the chemicals,

changed the PH so I could run it through the equipment

and separated the compounds I needed

from the rest of the chicken.

The final stages, when I ran the samples

through a high-pressure

liquid chromatography mass spectrometer,

which separated the compounds and analyzed the chemicals

and told me exactly how much carcinogens I had

in my chicken.

So when I went through the data, I had very surprising results,

because I found that four out of the five marinating ingredients

actually inhibited the carcinogen formation.

When compared with the unmarinated chicken,

which is what I used as my control,

I found that lemon juice worked by far the best,

which decreased the carcinogens

by about 98 percent.

The saltwater marinade and the brown sugar marinade

also worked very well,

decreasing the carcinogens by about 60 percent.

Olive oil slightly decreased the PhIP formation,

but it was nearly negligible.

And the soy sauce results were inconclusive

because of the large data range,

but it seems like soy sauce

actually increased the potential carcinogens.

Another important factor that I didn't take into account initially

was the time cooked.

And I found that if you increase the time cooked,

the amount of carcinogens rapidly increases.

So the best way to marinate chicken, based on this,

is to, not under-cook,

but definitely don't over-cook and char the chicken,

and marinate in either lemon juice, brown sugar or saltwater.

(Applause)

Based on these findings, I have a question for you.

Would you be willing to make a simple change in your diet

that could potentially save your life?

Now I'm not saying that if you eat grilled chicken that's not marinated,

you're definitely going to catch cancer and die.

However, anything you can do

to decrease the risk of potential carcinogens

can definitely increase the quality of lifestyle.

Is it worth it to you?

How will you cook your chicken now?

(Applause)

Shree Bose: Hi everyone. I'm Shree Bose.

I was the 17-18 year-old age category winner

and then the grand prize winner.

And I want all of you

to imagine a little girl

holding a dead blue spinach plant.

And she's standing in front of you and she's explaining to you

that little kids will eat their vegetables

if they're different colors.

Sounds ridiculous, right.

But that was me years ago.

And that was my first science fair project.

It got a bit more complicated from there.

My older brother Panaki Bose

spent hours of his time explaining atoms to me

when I barely understood basic algebra.

My parents suffered through many more of my science fair projects,

including a remote controlled garbage can.

(Laughter)

And then came the summer after my freshman year,

when my grandfather passed away due to cancer.

And I remember watching my family go through that

and thinking that I never wanted another family

to feel that kind of loss.

So, armed with all the wisdom

of freshman year biology,

I decided I wanted to do cancer research

at 15.

Good plan.

So I started emailing all of these professors in my area

asking to work under their supervision in a lab.

Got rejected by all except one.

And then went on, my next summer,

to work under Dr. Basu

at the UNT Health Center at Fort Worth, Texas.

And that is where the research began.

So ovarian cancer

is one of those cancers that most people don't know about,

or at least don't pay that much attention to.

But yet, it's the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths

among women in the United States.

In fact, one in 70 women

will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

One in 100

will die from it.

Chemotherapy, one of the most effective ways

used to treat cancer today,

involves giving patients really high doses of chemicals

to try and kill off cancer cells.

Cisplatin is a relatively common

ovarian cancer chemotherapy drug --

a relatively simple molecule made in the lab

that messes with the DNA of cancer cells

and causes them to kill themselves.

Sounds great, right?

But here's the problem:

sometimes patients become resistant to the drug,

and then years after they've been declared to be cancer free,

they come back.

And this time, they no longer respond to the drug.

It's a huge problem.

In fact, it's one of the biggest problems

with chemotherapy today.

So we wanted to figure out

how these ovarian cancer cells are becoming resistant

to this drug called Cisplatin.

And we wanted to figure this out,

because if we could figure that out,

then we might be able to prevent that resistance from ever happening.

So that's what we set out to do.

And we thought it had something to do with this protein called AMP kinase,

an energy protein.

So we ran all of these tests blocking the protein,

and we saw this huge shift.

I mean, on the slide, you can see

that on our sensitive side,

these cells that are responding to the drug,

when we start blocking the protein,

the number of dying cells -- those colored dots --

they're going down.

But then on this side, with the same treatment,

they're going up -- interesting.

But those are dots on a screen for you;

what exactly does that mean?

Well basically that means

that this protein is changing

from the sensitive cell to the resistant cell.

And in fact, it might be changing the cells themselves

to make the cells resistant.

And that's huge.

In fact, it means that if a patient comes in

and they're resistant to this drug,

then if we give them a chemical to block this protein,

then we can treat them again

with the same drug.

And that's huge for chemotherapy effectiveness --

possibly for many different types of cancer.

So that was my work,

and it was my way of reimagining the future

for future research, with figuring out exactly what this protein does,

but also for the future of chemotherapy effectiveness --

so maybe all grandfathers with cancer

have a little bit more time to spend with their grandchildren.

But my work wasn't just about the research.

It was about finding my passion.

That's why being the grand prize winner

of the Google Global Science Fair --

cute picture, right --

it was so exciting to me and it was such an amazing honor.

And ever since then,

I've gotten to do some pretty cool stuff --

from getting to meet the president

to getting to be on this stage

to talk to all of you guys.

But like I said, my journey wasn't just about the research,

it was about finding my passion,

and it was about making my own opportunities

when I didn't even know what I was doing.

It was about inspiration

and determination

and never giving up on my interest

for science and learning and growing.

After all, my story begins

with a dried, withered spinach plant

and it's only getting better from there.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Naomi Shah: Hi everyone. I'm Naomi Shah,

and today I'll be talking to you about my research

involving indoor air quality

and asthmatic patients.

1.6 million deaths worldwide.

One death every 20 seconds.

People spend over 90 percent of their lives indoors.

And the economic burden of asthma

exceeds that of HIV and tuberculosis combined.

Now these statistics had a huge impact on me,

but what really sparked my interest in my research

was watching both my dad and my brother

suffer from chronic allergies year-round.

It confused me;

why did these allergy symptoms persist

well past the pollen season?

With this question in mind, I started researching,

and I soon found that indoor air pollutants were the culprit.

As soon as I realized this,

I investigated the underlying relationship

between four prevalent air pollutants

and their affect on the lung health of asthmatic patients.

At first, I just wanted to figure out

which of these four pollutants have the largest negative health impact

on the lung health of asthmatic patients.

But soon after, I developed a novel mathematical model

that essentially quantifies the effect

of these environmental pollutants

on the lung health of asthmatic patients.

And it surprises me

that no model currently exists

that quantifies the effect of environmental factors

on human lung health,

because that relationship seems so important.

So with that in mind,

I started researching more, I started investigating more,

and I became very passionate.

Because I realized

that if we could find a way to target remediation,

we could also find a way

to treat asthmatic patients more effectively.

For example, volatile organic compounds

are chemical pollutants

that are found in our schools, homes and workplaces.

They're everywhere.

These chemical pollutants

are currently not a criteria air pollutant,

as defined by the U.S. Clean Air Act.

Which is surprising to me,

because these chemical pollutants, through my research,

I show that they had a very large negative impact

on the lung health of asthmatic patients

and thus should be regulated.

So today I want to show you

my interactive software model that I created.

I'm going to show it to you on my laptop.

And I have a volunteer subject in the audience today,

Julie.

And all of Julie's data has been pre-entered

into my interactive software model.

And this can be used by anyone.

So I want you to imagine that you're in Julie's shoes,

or someone who's really close to you

who suffers from asthma or another lung disorder.

So Julie's going to her doctor's office

to get treated for her asthma.

And the doctor has her sit down,

and he takes her peak expiratory flow rate --

which is essentially her exhalation rate,

or the amount of air that she can breathe out in one breath.

So that peak expiratory flow rate,

I've entered it up into the interactive software model.

I've also entered in her age, her gender and her height.

I've assumed that she lives in an average household

with average air pollutant levels.

So any user can come in here

and click on "lung function report"

and it'll take them to this report that I created.

And this report really drives home the crux of my research.

So what it shows -- if you want to focus on that top graph in the right-hand corner --

it shows Julie's actual peak expiratory flow rate

in the yellow bar.

This is the measurement that she took in her doctor's office.

In the blue bar at the bottom of the graph,

it shows what her peak expiratory flow rate,

what her exhalation rate or lung health, should be

based on her age, gender and height.

So the doctor sees this difference between the yellow bar and the blue bar,

and he says, "Wow, we need to give her steroids,

medication and inhalers."

But I want everyone here to reimagine a world

where instead of prescribing steroids,

inhalers and medication,

the doctor turns to Julie and says,

"Why don't you go home and clean out your air filters.

Clean out the air ducts in your home,

in your workplace, in your school.

Stop the use of incense and candles.

And if you're remodeling your house,

take out all the carpeting and put in hardwood flooring."

Because these solutions are natural,

these solutions are sustainable,

and these solutions are long-term investments --

long-term investments that we're making

for our generation and for future generations.

Because these environmental solutions

that Julie can make in her home, her workplace and her school

are impacting everyone that lives around her.

So I'm very passionate about this research

and I really want to continue it

and expand it to more disorders besides asthma,

more respiratory disorders, as well as more pollutants.

But before I end my talk today,

I want to leave you with one saying.

And that saying is that genetics loads the gun,

but the environment pulls the trigger.

And that made a huge impact on me

when I was doing this research.

Because what I feel, is a lot of us think

that the environment is at a macro level,

that we can't do anything to change our air quality

or to change the climate or anything.

But if each one of us takes initiative in our own home,

in our own school and in our own workplace,

we can make a huge difference in air quality.

Because remember, we spend 90 percent of our lives indoors.

And air quality and air pollutants

have a huge impact on the lung health of asthmatic patients,

anyone with a respiratory disorder

and really all of us in general.

So I want you to reimagine a world

with better air quality,

better quality of life

and better quality of living for everyone

including our future generations.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Lisa Ling: Right.

Can I have Shree and Lauren come up really quickly?

Your Google Science Fair champions.

Your winners.

(Applause)