American Association for Cancer Research Recognizes Engineering Student

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Jimmy Vo, working in the lab

Jimmy Vo, a junior Honors College student studying biomedical engineering, has received the Thomas J. Bardos Science Education Award for Undergraduate Students from the American Association for Cancer Research. This award will fund Vo’s attendance at the association's annual meeting for the next two years.

At this year’s conference, which takes place in Chicago in March, Vo will present his findings from research he conducted regarding a new approach to treating cancer. Vo has been working with David Zaharoff, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering. They are studying Interleukin-12 (IL-12), a protein that stimulates the body’s immune system to attack a range of cancerous tumors.

In his research, Vo used a mouse model of breast cancer to demonstrate that  a combination of IL-12 and chitosan, a polysaccharide derived from the shells of crustaceans such as shrimp and lobsters, can reduce breast cancer metastasis and increase overall survival.

“Jimmy has done a remarkable job showing that chitosan and IL-12 can train the immune system to seek out and destroy tumor cells in a very aggressive preclinical model of breast cancer, ” said Zaharoff. “He is very deserving of this honor.”