Natalie Raso

Grade Category: 10-12

Team Size: 1

Subject Area: Health

Project Type: Experimental

Level: Advanced

Language: English

Project Summary: Ideally cancer treatments must meet two requirements: kill all cancerous cells and not harm normal cells. Traditional therapies, such as chemotherapy, have a therapeutic index of 6:1, meaning that for every 6 cancer cells killed, 1 normal cell is also killed.  Oncolytic virus therapy, using viruses to treat cancer, is expected to have a therapeutic index of 100,000:1. 

This experimentation investigated the role of a double-mutant Herpes Simplex Virus, HSV-1 called KM110r, to determine if it is a safe and effective oncolytic virus therapy.  Thorough in vitro proliferation assay and morphological analyses proved that KM110r can successfully destroy all cancerous cells under physiological conditions and completely ignore all non-cancerous cells despite induced genetic differentiation. During the course of experimentation, 80,000 cancerous cells were killed while none of the non-cancerous cells were harmed: a therapeutic index of 80,000:0.

Software used: MS Excel, MS Word, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Acrobat, MS Digital Image Suite, Microsoft Paint and Coffee Cup HTML Editor.

Hardware used: Scanner, Video Camera

Source of the Idea for the project: I was part of a youth science forum inBeijing, China in August, 2004 when I first heard of “virotherapy”.  I was intrigued by the idea of using viruses to kill cancer and so, upon return home, I approached the Centre for Gene Therapeutics at McMaster University in Hamilton, to learn more and to investigate possible experimentation opportunities. 

Special Skills:  An understanding of "html" and "dhtml" languages

Awards won for the project:

(1) At the Bay Area Science and Engineering Fair

-          Cancer Assistance Program Award

-          Ontario Association of Medical Laboratory Award

-          City of Hamilton Mayor’s Biotechnology Award

-          National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Award

-          Pfizer Canada Award of Excellence

-          Gold Medal

-          Canada Wide Science Fair Trip Award, Vancouver May 2005

-          Best-In-Fair Pinnacle Dofasco Award

(2) Selected by the Youth Science Foundation of Canada to be a member of Team Canada to participate at the Intel ISEF Competition in Phoenix, May 2005

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