Sachem's Ruchi Shah Spends Summer as Simons Fellow

The next time you think about how productive your summer was, think about Ruchi Shah.

The Sachem North senior spent her summer working as a Simons Summer Research Fellow at Stony Brook University.

Shah worked with Dr. Kennth Shroyer, the chair of Pathology at Stony Brook, for seven weeks doing ground-breaking research on cervical cancer biomarkers.

According to Shah, every minute, approximately 12 women in the united states alone contract the human papillomavirus or HPV, which is the precursor for cervical cancer, yet only a very small percentage of those women will later develop cervical cancer.

The goal of her lab as a whole was to create a more accurate molecular test to diagnose cervical cancer.

“My goal was to look at the change in expression of two proteins as normal tissue progresses to cancer,” said Shah, who received a $1,000 stipend from Simons. “I finished the preliminary testing of the first protein this summer and it exhibited a marked change in expression in the progression of human tissue to cancer. This is very exciting because it has great potential to be used as an adjunct biomarker for diagnosis.

She also performed HPV DNA hybridization, which allowed her to see in which specific cells the virus was present.

“This is important because I can then correlate the prevalence of the HPV virus with the expression of the proteins that I am studying,” she said, “which is my ultimate goal. Hopefully my research contribution coupled with the efforts of my lab will help reduce the millions of deaths that result from cervical cancer each year.”

Shah is no stranger to large scientific experimentation that is trying to make a difference. During the school year she focused on the creation and development of an all-natural mosquito repellent that is safe for the skin, as effective as commercial repellents, and is over 91 percent less expensive.

That project placed first in the category of Biochemistry at the New York State Science and Engineering Fair in April and won a full expense paid trip to the INTEL International Science and Engineering Fair, where she competed against students from over 60 countries and won two awards: AVASC special award for the humanitarian potential of my project ($500) and third place internationally in the category of behavioral and social sciences ($1,000).