April 15--Mira Loma High School's drill team captain is trying to develop a new treatment for liver cancer.
Selena Li, 17, has completed research that could offer an alternative to chemotherapy or transplant for liver cancer patients.
She found that by combining chloroquine -- generally used against malaria -- and a cancer drug, cancer cells in the liver are less likely to survive. The findings are expected to be published this summer in a scientific journal, Li said.
The teen said she was interested in doing the research because patients with liver cancer have a survival rate of less than 10 percent over five years. "It will definitely help," she said of her findings.
Li has spent thousands of hours over the past four years in a lab at UC Davis Medical Center doing cancer research.
"Her dedication to her work on cancer is amazing," said Austin Changou, a graduate student overseeing her research.
He said the treatment discovered by Li holds the promise of replacing chemotherapy and sparing cancer patients the suffering that accompanies it. This treatment targets cancer cells and spares normal cells, Changou said.
He said that if the research is borne out in clinical trials, it will be a significant breakthrough and could translate to treating other cancers.
On Tuesday, Li was pouring liquids from one beaker to another at a workstation in a closetlike room in the prostate cancer lab of Research Building III at the medical center. The teen in skinny jeans, a blue T-shirt and red flats stood out among the older university researchers in white lab coats.
Li often makes the 15-minute drive to the lab -- on Second Avenue in Sacramento -- from her home in Fair Oaks at 5 a.m. to begin experiments before school. She leads drill team practice after classes three afternoons a week and then sometimes works at the lab again until midnight.
When she's not in the lab or at school, Li is the director of the California Association of Student Councils North Region and has volunteered with the Leukemia Society and other organizations.
The busy schedule hasn't seemed to hurt her grades. Li is graduating from the International Baccalaureate program at Mira Loma with a 4.73 grade-point average, according to her mother, Jenny Jun-min Wang.
Wang and Changou say Li's success comes from exemplary time management skills. Wang said her daughter often completes her homework in the 25 minutes between school and drill team practice.
"She's always ahead of schedule and always does things ahead of time," Wang said.
But managing time well isn't the whole story. Changou said he has never seen a student as talented as Li, even in the university's master's degree and Ph.D. programs.
It probably doesn't hurt that both of Li's parents are doctors. One of the girl's first memories was playing with a model of a spinal column at the family's medical practice.
"When she was 3 or 4 years old, she would pick up the dirt from the ground and ask me to get her a microscope, so she could analyze it," Wang said.
When she was in second or third grade, she asked her parents for a stronger microscope. "She would carry stones, leaves and anything in her pocket to analyze later," Wang said.
Selena was 9 when she told her parents she wanted to be a doctor. At 14, she was observing and working in the lab at the medical center under the mentorship of Dr. Hsing-Jien Kung. Last year she started her own research on liver cancer.
Wang said her daughter is a happy, well-balanced teenager with many friends and interests.
Li is particularly enthusiastic about the Mira Loma Dance/Drill Team, named national champions in March.
Wang said she and her husband, Xin-nong Li, did not try to influence Selena to become a doctor. "She is self-motivated," Wang said. "There is no pushing in our house. Kids should be happy with what they are doing."
Li's razor-sharp focus and interest in medicine has paid off. Last month she was awarded $30,000 in the national Intel Science Talent Search in Washington D.C. as the fifth-place winner.
She was particularly excited about meeting other teenage scientists. "It really helped me decide science was what I wanted to do," Li said.
She also was a semifinalist in the national Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology in 2010.
The awards will help pay her tuition at Harvard or Yale -- the two universities she's deciding between. Yale already has paid for a visit by Li, and a school representative calls every week to check in, Wang said.
But Li is reserving her decision until next week, when she returns from a visit to Harvard. She'll be greeted by her sister, Diana, who is studying government there.
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Call The Bee's Diana Lambert, (916) 321-1090. Follow her on Twitter @dianalambert.
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