– Reshma Ravishanker

Bengaluru student Keerthana Rajesh received international acclaim and earned a special award at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (Regeneron ISEF) 2024 recently.

Keerthana participated in a pre-college STEM competition at Regeneron ISEF 2024 hosted by the Society for Science at Los Angeles, USA last month. She presented a project on Translational Medical Science at the event and was a finalist among top 20 projects that constituted Team India at ISEF. The event hosted 1,700 finalists from 67 countries.

An IB Grade 11 student of Bengaluru’s Greenwood High International School, Keerthana first had to compete in the national fair, IRIS (Initiative for Research and Innovation in STEM) by the Department of Science and Technology Government of India, EXSTEMPLAR Education Linkers Foundation and Broadcom held in January 2024, at New Delhi.

The research she presented at the Los Angeles event in Translational Medicine was titled ‘Wound Simulator: an in-vitro study of a novel biological growth factor concentrates on Oral Mucositis’. Oral mucositis is a chronic wound and a prevalent side-effect of most cancer treatments which impacts the quality of life of patients by deteriorating their nutrition, course of cancer treatment and lowering their life expectancy.

Through this project, Keerthana sought to find an accessible and cost-effective treatment for this condition by using a biological concentrate composed of natural growth factors and cytokines. By using an in-vitro model of cancer cells treated with chemotherapeutic drugs, she was able to demonstrate that this treatment could potentially accelerate wound healing by lowering inflammation and increasing cell proliferation.

Out of 2,000 participants, 100 finalists were selected from 27 states. At this national fair, Keerthana won a Grand Award for her research and qualified as a finalist for ISEF at the global level. Both these programmes are highly acclaimed among STEM enthusiasts. She heard about IRIS and ISEF by watching the documentary ‘Science Fair’ on National Geographic, speaking to alumni and through social media.

“STEM has been and will continue to be the most constant and important aspect of my academic journey. While it might sound clichéd, I fell in love with research and biology from the day I observed mitosis under the microscope in middle school; and since then, I knew I wanted to use biomedical health sciences to spread knowledge and hope. This project came to fruition with the support of many mentors. I worked with iCREST (International Stem Cell Services ltd.) lab and mentors in Bangalore to learn the techniques needed for high-level research and also did a shadowship at a cancer hospital, along with guidance from mentors from the IRIS scientific review committee,” she said.

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