Junior Matthew Moser qualified for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), held in Pittsburgh on May 10 through 15, for his Independent Science Research class project.
Moser’s experiment, titled “The Metalloprotease Inhibitor, 1, 10 Phenanthroline as a Lead for Finding Drugs to Kill Microfilariae and Adult Brugia pahangi,” won grand prize at the Marin County Science Fair in the Life Science category, first place in Life Science at the San Francisco Bay Area Science Fair (SFBASF), and the grand prize for all Life Science, including Behavioral and Environmental Science sub-categories, which advanced him to the state and international science fairs.
“I was shocked to even place at the Bay Area Science Fair, let alone win grand prize,” Moser said. “That was actually the greatest moment of my life.”
Moser studied parasites that cause infections and tissue swelling leading to elephantiasis, a disease that causes limbs or other body parts to become grossly enlarged. He created an inhibiting solution that killed parasites before they reached the reproductive stage of their life cycle, which cause elephantiasis. These findings could be used as a potential drug to cure the disease, according to Moser.
“My parents are both parasitologists, so I was working with my mother, Dr. Judy Sakanari at UCSF Research, who was my mentor through this,” he said. “I worked in her lab, she gave me all the materials, and I kind of went for it.”
Before the California State Science Fair (CSSF) on May 18 and 19 in Los Angeles, Moser intends to further analyze his data to better understand and potentially expand his experiment.
“I would like to look at it, maybe even replicate it once or twice just to make sure what I have is solid data. They really grill you on everything so you really need to know what you’re talking about,” Moser said. “One of my concepts is a further study aspect where I would want to look at a different variety of this one compound and actually find an FDA approved drug with a similar structure, and then do my same experiment.”
Moser said that he is humbled to be included in the international fair.
“To go to internationals is the biggest honor because I am going to be seeing people from around the world and see how amazing their projects are, and it’s such an honor just to have my project with theirs,” Moser said.
In addition to Moser, seven sophomores in Honors Integrated Science qualified for the CSSF for their independent science projects, after placing first or second in the SFBASF. Parker Addison, Ashlyn D’Orazio, and Natalie Epstein won first place in their respective categories. Ben Lloyd, Filip Platek, and Cecilia Wolf received second place.
