Immersion Science Symposium for Philadelphia Students

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  The Immersion Science Program at Fox Chase Cancer will be hosting a mini-symposium for Philadelphia public school students from the Academy at Palumbo and Abraham Lincoln High Schools on June 6, 2016 from 10:30-11:30AM in the Reimann Auditorium on the Fox Chase Cancer Center campus. 

  Student participants recently completed an exciting pilot project aimed at developing a crowdsourcing model for cancer research that was funded by the Society for Developmental Biology. The scientific goal of the project is to determine how dietary components influence cancer signaling, with the idea that diets may be tailored to enhance the efficacy of chemotherapies. 

  The program also aims to develop a new educational model of authentic research experiences in public school classrooms to train and recruit diverse high school students to careers in biomedicine. On June 6, student teams consisting of four AP Biology students from the Academy at Palumbo paired with four 9th-grade biology students at Abraham Lincoln High School will present the results of developmental genetics and biochemistry experiments that have uncovered unexpected effects of three dietary components on specific cancer pathways.

  This will be the very first demonstration of novel cancer research performed in high school classrooms here in Philadelphia, a success that will serve as a model for a large scale expansion of the program going forward.