The winners of the Daily Telegraph young science writer awards were announced today. In the category for 15- to 19-year-olds, Arron Rodrigues, was the ‘stand-out candidate’ for his piece describing use of nanotechnology to successfully treat cancer in mice. Not afraid of his difficult and doubly contentious subject matter, Arron started:

For every 5,000 drugs that enter pre-clinical testing in the US, on average only five are ever tested on humans, and only one approved for use. This puts into context the many ‘magic bullet’ treatments that we hear so much about. However, as a result of promising lab results, Nanospectra Biosciences has gained approval to ‘commence a human trial in patients with head and neck cancer’ this year using ‘AuroLase Therapy’.

He continued:

The pioneering research was led by Dr Jennifer West at Rice University in Texas, before the technology was licensed to Nanospectra, based in Houston. West’s laboratory exposed mice with cancerous tumours to tiny ‘nanoshells’ and a special laser, which beams light similar to that used in your TV remote ….