JACKSONVILLE, Fl. – Tom Commander, an 11th grader at the Episcopal School of Jacksonville, hopes his nanotechnology research will treat one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of brain cancer.
He analyzes how Iron Oxide nanoparticles can treat Glioblastoma Multiforme, the brain cancer that killed Sen. Ted Kennedy; President Joe Biden’s son, Beau; and Sen. John McCain.
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Tom told News4JAX, “One of the big things with this is trying to minimize collateral damage but also maximize damage on those specific cells.”
His research uses nanoparticles, coated in polymers, to specifically target cancer stem cells.
“I like to compare it to a firetruck,” Tom explained. “It takes those firefighters and they are loaded into the firetruck, and that polymer is able to target something that is frequently found on the surface of cancer stem cells and locally treat those stem cells.”
Tom is one of dozens of local students competing in the State Science Fair in Lakeland and is also among six of them who have been named finalists in the International Science and Engineering Competition in May.
Tom conducted this research last summer in the Ahmed Laboratory at Northwestern University’s neurosurgery department.
“I went into the Ahmed Lab knowing very little about glioblastoma and very little about how to work in a laboratory,” Tom said. “This is a very complex topic, and I’ve only taken Honors Biology in high school… A lot of the time, I’d just do something completely wrong. But they told me -- ‘You have to think about it in regards to this.’ And once people would explain that to me, I had such a great view of the topic.”
But Tom wasn’t always focused on brain cancer.
His research first started at Episcopal last year, when he started testing these nanoparticles on stem cells in a type of flatworm called planaria.
“I was focusing on those stem cells because I found them interesting,” Tom said. “And I was thinking about the greater impacts of this research, and I found there is a genetic similarity with cancer stem cells and stem cells in those flatworms.”
Tom plans to continue his work at Northwestern this summer.
He told News4JAX more research about this nanotechnology is needed, but the current results are promising.