Toxicology Research
I walked on the muddy ground in the springtime rain. On this particular day, we were commemorating Qing Ming, a Chinese holiday in which we pay respect to the departed. Flowers in my grandfather's memory were soaked by the rain as they laid on the ground at the cemetery. I held to my mother's sleeves that morning, a month before my sixth birthday, and finally discovered why he died.
Cancer had claimed the life of my grandfather. All treatment was ineffective since the diagnosis occurred too late. I stomped fiercely in the dirt as my mother murmured this to me, her eyes filled with sorrow. When I learned that he had cancer, I blamed the doctors who didn't locate it in time. One of the most common wishes of my young life was to aid in the fight against cancer. That rainy morning, however, ignited my passion for this life-altering goal. Knowing that early detection is the greatest way to protect yourself from cancer, I researched the most commonly used methods. I was shocked to hear that mammography misses a substantial percentage of breast cancer patients when I read about it. XYZ Cancer Center's research internship program piqued my interest just as I was contemplating ways to improve detection accuracy. I seized the chance with both hands.
During my time there, my mentors urged me to look into cancer's underlying genetic causes. I became interested in a gene that has been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer development. While the sequence of DNA was not altered, the process of gene-silence known as methylation was explored. We discovered the methylation regions in the gene sequence that identify healthy breast cells from malignant ones using a variety of experiments. This was a sign of illness! The excitement was sparked by the realization that this discovery had potentially life-saving potential. The discovery of these indicators is a first step toward personalized cancer treatment. Using genomics-based diagnostics, cancer can be detected much sooner than in the past. Methylation is reversible because it doesn't alter the DNA sequence. In order to minimize damage to healthy tissue, therapeutics could target specific areas.
In the future, personalized cancer diagnostics promise a new dawn, but they aren't here yet. Before we can fully understand the disease's foundations, we need to study many more genes. It dawned on me that my dream was far more complicated than I had originally thought. In spite of everything, I never lost my enthusiasm for medicine. Instead, it developed into a strategy as it grew and matured. My thirst for knowledge grew as my imprecise aspirations became concrete questions. My love for science was reaffirmed by the thrill of discovering something new. It's my generation's responsibility to push the boundaries of knowledge forward, and nothing would make me happier than to continue my cancer research.
On a wet Qing Ming morning, I stood at my grandfather's cemetery and thought about him. Wish I could tell him about the journey he sparked in me. Every "eureka!" is a harbinger of success in this long and grueling battle.
