Cracking the cancer puzzle

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At first glance, there’s nothing much that might differentiate Shree Bose from any other home-from-the US-on-a vacation teen. But as she begins to speak, you’re struck by just how unassuming she is — considering that the 18-year-old won the grand prize at the Google Global Science Fair in 2011 for her work in cancer research.
The first year Harvard student, a resident of Fort Worth, Texas, on her visit to India, says her story began in a classroom, where her parents were summoned by her elder brother’s teacher to “dumb him down” but they refused. Shree’s brother explored his intellectual capacities to the fullest and narrated the incident to Shree, who took the inspiration to heart.
In her ninth grade, she had “fallen in love” with Biology. At 15, when her grandfather died of cance, she wrote to many luminaries involved in cancer research, hoping that someone would agree to take her on as an assistant. “I dealt with rejection, until Dr Alakananda Basu finally agreed,” says Shree, who then began working at the University of North Texas’ health Science Centre.
The breakthrough came when she discovered that a particular protein (AMP Kinase) had a role to play in patients becoming resistant to chemotherapy. She then proposed a new way to treat patients who had developed resistance, especially those suffering from ovarian cancer.
“I realised what an impact I could have if I stuck to what I was passionate about,” she says.