Eva Vertes: Cancer Researcher

- (Announcer) Funding for the secret life of scientists is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation .

(upbeat music) - Prepare to be humbled.

Time to meet Eva Vertes.

She's a 17 year old grade 11 student and she just won the world's top science fair and she joins me this morning.

Good morning.

- Good morning.

The moment that I knew that I really loved medical sciences was when I was nine years old on a camping trip with my parents and my mother bought this book called The Hot Zone about the outbreak of the Ebola virus.

She said something about this deadly virus that had come to America and I stole it from my mother.

(chuckles) I'd never read much as a child.

The moment I opened it, I was just engrossed by how this disease came from monkeys and very gruesome parts about how your organs essentially disintegrate inside of you, and you die from vomiting your dissolved organs.

I began to read the gory parts to my younger sister.

She was seven years old, I was nine years old and she would have nightmares about monkeys with Ebola.

(monkey screeching) And then my parents would say, why did I read her the terrifying parts of the novel?

I thought she'd be interested.

(laughing) After I read The Hot Zone, I was very fascinated just by disease.

It was something that was scary, but interesting and it just sort of pulled me towards it.

So, in grade nine, I emailed professors at the local university saying I'd love to do research.

I'm only a high school student, but I'm willing to learn and I ended up working in a neuroscience lab studying Alzheimer's.

I was working in the lab two hours every morning and about three, four hours after school.

In Alzheimer's, the cognitive decline, the loss of memory is associated with neuronal brain cell death.

So I worked trying different Compounds to see what might be able to inhibit or at least reduce that brain cell death.

And then after a year I uncovered something.

And I said okay, you have to be skeptical in science and when I did it again and saw the same thing I got very excited.

I presented my research on Alzheimer's at the Intel international science fair.

Judges came by and grilled me on my research.

I thought if this cell death is so programmed, then it must be possible to inhibit this cell death.

I remember that when they got to best in medicine, they announced my name.

And I was just so excited to even get there, let alone to do well there.

I walked up to that stage and that was when I realized that this is the beginning of the rest of my scientific life.

- How do you explain how a 17 year old girl is coming up with something that is baffling some of the leading minds around the world?

- I mean, I said this is a goal for myself and I just loved doing the research and I loved being a part of it.

(upbeat music) I work in a cancer research lab trying to understand how leukemia, specifically, but cancer in general arises and moves throughout the body and how it resists therapy.

I do this by studying cells in culture, I do this by studying mice, which have different types of cancer, and I try to figure out in them why cancer is there, what's it doing and how we can hopefully develop mechanisms to better treat it and one day take it to the clinic.

Was that 30 seconds?

(laughing) Yeah.

(upbeat music) Yes.

I was called Doogie in the first lab I worked in.

(laughing) My basement lab was when I was 11.

14.2 miles.

The killers, Beach Boys, sometimes classical Microscopes.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Is that right?

Wait, sorry?

The Canadian way.

George Clooney.

House.

(laughing) Does that count?

Cancer.

It affects so many people and it's just such a terrible disease.

Even the way that it's treated.

Understanding disease in a human being.

(upbeat music) I love to run.

And for me, that is my number one outlet.

When I'm in the lab, when I get frustrated, when I need to just get away I just put on my running shoes and go running.

I run in Manhattan or Central park between 30 to 35 miles a week.

I began running my first year of high school.

My teacher in my geography class was also the cross country running coach.

I think I was laughing in class (laughing) and he said you're disrupting the class you have to come to cross country running practice after school.

So I showed up and he said, oh, I was kidding why are you here?

And ever since then I've run.

Running and research for me are very similar in the sense that you need a inner drive in both.

In running it's how to do it faster, how to do it longer.

In research it's, is there another way to do it?

Is there another way you can prove this or disprove something?

In both it's always a battle trying to take it one step further.

Sure you've answered one question but what about another question that comes from there?

And so it is very much a inner competition in both running and research.

It's funny because my friend actually commented on that the other day.

I had just run a race and I said, oh, I don't care if I had done worse it would've been fine.

I'm happy I beat my last time.

And he said, no, you really do care and it's pretty obvious that you do care where you finished.

The truth is I don't have to be number one, I don't have to be the best, but I do like to see progression.

It's that progression that sort of excites me and I like getting better.

So it's a constant battle yet very satisfying.

I don't really like competing with other people but with myself, I'm a fierce competitor.