A tragedy struck seven months after Phuc (James) Chau Nguyen immigrated to the U.S. with his mother and brother. His grandmother passed away in Vietnam from glioblastoma, brain cancer.
“That trigger(ed) a question in my head,” said the La Quinta High School student. Nguyen wondered why she couldn’t survive, why cancer is such a deadly disease. And so he turned to scientific research.
Fast forward two years and Nguyen has developed a cancer-detecting toothbrush that earned him recognition as a finalist for the Rise Challenge, a global philanthropic initiative that provides support to young people who are working toward solving humanity’s most pressing problems. He won a full scholarship to a university of his choice, seed investment to fund a company that can produce the product for consumers and a network of mentors.
This is his way of honoring his grandmother, who Nguyen says was a big part of his childhood in Vietnam.
“My grandma was like my second mom because whenever my (single) mom goes to school, she will drop me off at grandma’s house and then she will take care of me,” Nguyen, 18, a senior at the Westminster public school, said.
Talking about this matriarch, his face lights up, remembering carefree days at his grandmother’s home spent playing card games and board games, watching movies and overindulging in homemade delicious Vietnamese meals.
“There wasn’t any specific memory or anything; it was just the time we spent together,” Nguyen said.
Her death in 2020 hit Nguyen hard. He remembers feeling helpless and depressed and turned to research for answers. This helped him understand the disease, and he published three lecture-review cancer research papers in various scientific journals. Another three other papers are in the process of being published. In his last article, he came across a microchip.
Nguyen described the chip as a filter for cancer cells: “You know how a filter works. You have a filter and run water through the filter … water will go through, but the big thing will stay on top. That’s how the chip works. They run your bodily fluids through the chip, and everything goes through except the cancer cells.”
The toothbrush he designed has a dual filtration system that increases the accuracy of cancer detection.
“I could have put this chip inside a big old white container and made it look like some medical device,” Nguyen said. Users then would have had to spit in a tube and stick the tube into a device to detect cancer cells. Consumers, he said, could have found this tedious.
Instead, Nguyen wanted zero effort on the part of the user.
But the idea to put the chip into a toothbrush didn’t come to him in a eureka moment. He has a distinct memory of visiting his cousin, once he moved to Orange County, who cracked a joke that became the catalyst for his idea.
“He said, ‘Look, you brush your teeth three times a day. Me, I brush my teeth once every three days,’” Nguyen recalled his cousin saying.
On one of these visits, Nguyen said, his aunt wet a toothbrush, squeezed some toothpaste on it and gave it to his cousin, chiding him to brush his teeth.
This seemingly innocuous memory inspired Nguyen to implant the filter microchip in a toothbrush.
“Our most creative idea doesn’t come when we force it. It just comes when we’re taking a shower, washing the dishes or walking the dog,” the teenager said.
When someone brushes their teeth using the cancer-detecting toothbrush and places it back in its holder, a sound will go off after only a few seconds to warn them that cancer cells have been detected. The toothbrush will also be fitted with a compartment where the cells’ mRNA, or the genetic material that tells the body how to make proteins, will be stored. This can be used to formulate a treatment plan.
Nguyen is working with mentors to build a prototype of the product. His initial focus is cancers of the head and neck.
“Because we are working with a circulating tumor cell, the distance that the cell travels is probably short before it reaches saliva,” Nguyen, who has already taken 10 AP STEM classes, said. “If you have, let’s say, colon cancer all the way down here, it’s less likely to reach your saliva up here.”
Bob Harden, Garden Grove Board of Education president, said: “We are impressed and inspired by the dedication and academic discipline James has demonstrated as he works toward his important goal of early cancer detection innovations. James is a wonderful representation of La Quinta High School and as a scholar who is well on his way to achieving lifelong success.”
His grandmother, Nguyen said, would be proud.
“She would have just smiled,” he said.
And his mother is “dancing in the streets,” sharing her son’s triumphs with family and friends.
Nguyen hopes to apply to the top 30 schools in the country to pursue his academic and scientific dreams.
Source: Orange County Register
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