Mepham junior is a rising star in science research

Bilal Siddiqui, who is all of 17, began work on a research project aimed at understanding how cancer cells hijack the body’s own enzymes in order to metastasize, or spread, when he was still a sophomore at Mepham High School last year.

Now a junior, Siddiqui came up big at the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair recently with his paper on his research –– “The Effects of Indoleamine 2, 3-dioxygenase Expression on Tumor-Induced Immunosupression.” At LISEF, Siddiqui took first place in the Microbiology category, earning a trip to the Los Angeles Convention Center from May 8 to 13 to compete in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. There he will go head to head with the top high school scientists from around the world, from the Czech Republic to South Africa, Saudi Arabia to China. In all, more than 1,600 students are expected to take part in the event.

Siddiqui did his research at the prestigious Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Normally, high school sophomores are only beginning to become acquainted with the rigorous methods required of high-level science research. Not Siddiqui. As a sophomore he had already plunged headlong into his research, impressing the scientists at Sloan-Kettering with his intelligence and determination during his very first interview with them, said Dr. David Kommor, a Mepham advanced science research adviser who is also a chiropractor.

“He really sold himself well,” Kommor said. By understanding how the body’s indoleamine enzyme –– ido enzyme for short –– is used and abused by cancer cells, researchers hope to develop drugs to shut down the malignant cells before they can get to the ido enzyme. Siddiqui, who worked side by side with Sloan-Kettering’s Dr. Taha Nerghoub, proved definitively that cancer cells use the ido enzyme to spread by measuring what Siddiqui called “ido expression” in them. He did so using tissue samples of cancer patients that are stored at Sloan-Kettering, examining the samples with a powerful, computerized microscope.