10-24-2020, 03:16 AM
https://www.thelily.com/anika-chebrolu-j...t-shes-14/
Anika Chebrolu just discovered a potential covid-19 treatment. She’s 14.
She won $25,000 and America’s top young scientist prize
Lena Felton
As the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies race to find treatments for the novel coronavirus, one scientist has been working for months on a potential treatment in her bedroom. Her name is Anika Chebrolu, and she’s only 14.
A freshman at Independence High School in Frisco, Tex., Chebrolu this week won the 3M Young Scientist Challenge and $25,000 for her discovery: a compound that can bind to the coronavirus, inhibiting its ability to infect people. She beat out nine other finalists — whose own projects ranged from a robotic glove to a device that detects invisible particles in water — to be named America’s top young scientist.
Chebrolu first started working on her project last year when she was in eighth grade, initially looking to find a treatment for the influenza virus. But then the pandemic hit. With her mentor, 3M corporate scientist Mahfuza Ali, she changed tack. She’s just finalized her research, and she’s hoping to start reaching out to virologists to develop her finding into an antiviral drug.
[ FDA approves first covid-19 drug: Antiviral remdesivir]
With more than 220,000 people in the United States dead because of covid-19, viable treatments are crucial. On Thursday, remdesivir, a drug that inhibits a substance the virus uses to make copies of itself, became the first medicine to win full Food and Drug Administration approval for treating covid-19.
We caught up with Chebrolu days after she found out she was this year’s winner.
Anika Chebrolu just discovered a potential covid-19 treatment. She’s 14.
She won $25,000 and America’s top young scientist prize
Lena Felton
As the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies race to find treatments for the novel coronavirus, one scientist has been working for months on a potential treatment in her bedroom. Her name is Anika Chebrolu, and she’s only 14.
A freshman at Independence High School in Frisco, Tex., Chebrolu this week won the 3M Young Scientist Challenge and $25,000 for her discovery: a compound that can bind to the coronavirus, inhibiting its ability to infect people. She beat out nine other finalists — whose own projects ranged from a robotic glove to a device that detects invisible particles in water — to be named America’s top young scientist.
Chebrolu first started working on her project last year when she was in eighth grade, initially looking to find a treatment for the influenza virus. But then the pandemic hit. With her mentor, 3M corporate scientist Mahfuza Ali, she changed tack. She’s just finalized her research, and she’s hoping to start reaching out to virologists to develop her finding into an antiviral drug.
[ FDA approves first covid-19 drug: Antiviral remdesivir]
With more than 220,000 people in the United States dead because of covid-19, viable treatments are crucial. On Thursday, remdesivir, a drug that inhibits a substance the virus uses to make copies of itself, became the first medicine to win full Food and Drug Administration approval for treating covid-19.
We caught up with Chebrolu days after she found out she was this year’s winner.