How my project was successful/not successful -e.g. What went well and what didn’t

Some of the successes in my project were that I was able to digest the information I read and rewrite it in my own words. At the beginning of the project, I was worried that I would not be able to understand anything, and while this was a challenge by the end, I had a somewhat basic understanding of my extremely complicated topic. I was also happy with the fact that I was able to produce my information in a report. I have never written a formal report before, so it took some time to understand the structure, but in the end, I am happy with the structure of my report. I think my question was unsuccessful, I think I could have rephrased my question since it is impossible to have a conclusive answer to something even renowned scientists are not aware of. I think it would have been better if I had rephrased my question to “how can genetic engineering be a possible cure to cancer” rather than “is genetic engineering a possible cure to cancer”.

What have I learned through this whole process? – science and personal skills

I have learned a tremendous amount through this process. I have learned a lot of new scientific processes and terminology. I learned more about how our immune system works to fight pathogens and how cancer manages to evade our immune system. I remember asking my parents this a few years ago because I was so curious as to why cancer is so hard to solve, and I remember them giving me an extremely simplified answer. Now that I know how cancer manages to evade our system, I also was able to understand how these treatments work in treating cancer. I have gained numerous personal skills, the biggest one being, the skill of being able to sift through dense scientific studies. I had to constantly search up words and the functions of different proteins in order to understand the studies I was reading, at first this was extremely intimidating to see a 90-page document full of complex terminology and graphs. Then I realised that for my purpose simply reading the introduction and the conclusion was enough, and as and when I didn’t understand a word, I would search it up.

What impact might the results of my project have on other people/the wider world?

Genetic engineering in relation to using it for curing diseases which have perplexed scientists for years has been much anticipated in recent years. Since such methods have already proved useful in cancer therapy, it is likely that we can use similar models for other such diseases such as HIV. Genetic engineering is a revolutionary technology, this has a huge wider implication because not only does it stand the chance to be a cure for certain types of cancer but can also be the inspiration behind the cures for other diseases. Also, through my project, the reader will be able to understand more about how this upcoming technology works. Additionally, cancer is a disease which we are all aware of, but do not always understand how it works, through my report the reader will be able to understand more about what it is and how it evades our immune system.

What I would have done to improve my work?

I think something I could have done to improve would be to add some visuals to my report so that the reader can better follow the explanations I was giving. I think adding diagrams would have also made my report more engaging to read. Additionally, I feel I could have perhaps tried to further condense my report as it was extremely long.

What I’d do to develop the project in the future?

I think to further develop my project and to take it one step further, I could have gotten some primary sources. Perhaps I could have interviewed a scientist in this field to understand more about this, and their opinions on if it has the potential to be an effective cure to certain cancers. Additionally, to consider various perspectives, I could have also interviewed past cancer survivors to see if they would consider doing either of the treatments in order to gain different perspectives on why they would/wouldn’t consider the treatment.

I knew I wanted to do a project around Human Biology because this has always been one of my interests. When doing the inspiration presentations in class, I was researching to find current medical advancements that would change healthcare, and I found the topic of genetic engineering really interesting. It was also the perfect opportunity for me to do more research on cancer, which is something I have wanted to do for a while so that I can become more knowledgable in the topic. At first, I was thinking of exploring how genetic engineering could be used to prevent such diseases (for example, how we can edit our DNA so that we cannot inherently be more prone to cancer) and how we can use it is as a cure for HIV. I realised that this would be an extremely broad question and that there would need to be a lot of research to be done in different fields. Hence, I decided to just focus on cancer and evaluate how effective the genetic engineering of T cells would be as a form of cancer therapy as opposed to current methods of cancer therapy.

My initial approach is just to do some research generally about scientifically, how cancer works, just so I have a better understanding of this so that I can evaluate if the genetic engineering of T cells will be beneficial. I think after this initial research, I can decide based on the amount of detail that I find, which aspects I want to go more in-depth for. From my very basic research I have already done, it seems that that genetic modification in this field has just been trialled on a few people. As of now, I would like to explore how theoretically this would work, and then practically, what were the results of these experiments, however, this approach may change based on the research I find. I am currently thinking of doing a research report, however, I think I may change this to a presentation since it may be easier to explain things.

In the report, I will add pictures, and diagrams to represent the information creatively and effectively. Apart from considering the science behind it, I will also consider the ethics and the moral dilemmas which arise when discussing this topic, and also use some of these arguments to evaluate whether this would be an effective form of treatment.

I think my next steps are just to research and gain a better understanding of this myself. I think I have a limited understanding right now, so it would be most useful for me to understand how this works so that when I am reading studies, I have a better understanding of what they are saying. I think a hurdle will be understanding some scientific terminology used in reports because oncology is obviously a very specialised field and the studies are written for scientists who have a lot more knowledge than me to read. I think I will try to overcome this by doing some reading, but worst case, I can always simplify this information a bit and I can use other articles which are written.

Here is my analysis of my project skills and abilities before starting my G10 CREST project in science: