Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am a 10th grader in the my second year of scientific research. I had
wanted to complete an experiment on Autism, Down Syndorme, or Alzheimer's
Disease. My teacher suggested I choose another topic, because I didn't have
the resources available to complete these experiments at school.

I deceided to do an experiment on blood antibodies, and then he gested that
I add a twist. I deceied to do to research cancer and its occurence in
blood. Because recently, a doctor detected breast cancer in a woman's
blood. Unfortuately, you need live donors for testing.
Since science fair rules state that you can not use living donors, I am
stuck. I thought about doing the blood antibodies experiment on science
buddies, but it's rated for grades k-5.
I would appreciate an suggesetions that you have for me. I do have one
question, can I search experiments by level of difficulty or by grade.

I really need your help.

Hi,

I am not an expert, but seeing as I ran into a similar resource problem during my experiment, I can relate to your dilemma. If you have not submitted your application to your scientific review committee, you are a little bit late- I don't know whether they will be still willing to accept a project proposal. It will be pretty hard to conduct an experiment on the diseases that you mentioned if you are planning to work on those in a school facility. However, you can look around for a extracurricular mentor that may be able to help you, such as a professor. Those diseases are very hot topics of bioengineering and medicine, so there are a lot of labs that work on those subjects around here. If you want to look for ideas and late research, try this site: www.sciencedaily.com. It does not have detailed information, but I know that it covers a broad range of medical studies and should help with jogging your creativity.

Yes, it is true that you cannot work with living donors for blood antibodies. This holds true not only for human test subjects, but also for vertebrates as well. This means you cannot collect cells or tissue of ANY sort from a living animal with a spine. You can only collect waste products or monitor behavior, etc. This being true, I am not sure how you would be able to acquire blood samples-these types of projects are very interesting, but are limited by the rules.
The level of difficulty for an experiment should not deter you from your interests. If you want to do an antibody experiment but want to spice it up, consider integrating some of your own bio/chemistry knowledge to make it more difficult- you are not limited to the ideas posted on sciencebuddies.
In my opinion as a student, the level of difficulty on projects is based on time consumption in addition to the background knowledge required for the project. For example, if you are a 10th grader, your level will cover everything from chemistry and down. An example would be that a 9-rated experiment is difficult because it requires a lot of time or requires a broad range of knowledge in many fields.

Hope that helps!
Eric

There is a relatively new technology called Cell Search CTC (Circulating tumor cells). It is manufacture by Veridex, LLC a Johnson-Johnson company. In the metastatic process, tumor cells break away from the primary tumor, circulate in blood and traveled to different organs. Cell Search CTC is a high complexity test, and its availability is limited to few academic and research institutions. Here is an article in case you want to read more about CTC.

http://www.aacc.org/publications/cln/20 ... s1108.aspx

Michael

Perhaps you can think of ways to modify the blood antibodies experiment, to answer further questions and make it more challenging to you?