What I Did
My partner and I started by looking into BRCA2, a gene linked to breast cancer, but it didn’t show anything exciting in our data. So we explored other cancer related genes oncogenes, mismatch repair genes, and tumor suppressors. That’s when we came across KRAS. It immediately stood out because of how strongly it was expressed in the gastrointestinal tract. Since KRAS mutations are connected to poor outcomes in cancer patients, our research suggests it could play a major role in how GI cancers develop and progress.
How You Can Help
There’s still a lot to figure out about KRAS. What’s going on in the early stages of cancer when it first becomes overactive? Could tracking how KRAS behaves across different tissues help improve outcomes? These are the kinds of questions that still need answers. One thing I really loved about working on this project is that even when things didn’t go as planned, we ended up discovering something so unexpectedly interesting.