By Khalida Sarwari
Like everybody else, Thomas Hunt wants to live in a world without cancer. But unlike everybody else, he didn’t want to sit around and wait for that world to materialize. Three years ago, Thomas dropped out of high school to help make that world a reality.
After completing his freshman year, Thomas, now 17, traded in the grounds of Saratoga High School for the SENS Research Foundation lab in Mountain View. There, he has devoted the last three years of his life to studying Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres, or ALT, a mechanism that is suggested to be indirectly responsible for all cancers. He is using automated high-throughput drug screening to find treatment that can reduce ALT activity.
“I’d like to see cancer in history books the same as how polio and smallpox are written in history books,” Thomas said.
One disadvantage up until now has been finding money for lab equipment, but a $100,000 award should go a long way toward addressing that problem. In April, Thomas was one of 20 young people selected through a competitive process to receive $100,000 over two years to forego traditional education and pursue scientific research.
The fellowship was created by Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, through the Thiel Foundation and offers students under the age of 20 not only financial support, but guidance and other resources. Thomas said he plans to use the money to buy lab equipment and travel to other labs and meet others in the field.
“I’m excited to have the resources now to seriously tackle this problem,” he said.
Dressed in jeans and a green T-shirt featuring the Periodic Table of Elements, Thomas said he has had a lifelong passion for science and traces his interest in cancer research in particular back to his eighth-grade life science class at Redwood Middle School. While looking for a lab to do an experiment to determine if corn-based products are genetically modified, he learned about SENS, an organization that focuses on age-related diseases and cancer. There, he wasted no time in speaking with researchers about the difficulty in treating cancer.
A further impetus to go into the field of cancer research for Thomas was learning that his grandfather had been diagnosed with skin cancer.
“Watching him, the pain that he’s in, the difficulty in doing basic things–it’s really depressing,” Thomas said, adding that in most cases, “it’s all downhill” soon after a patient is diagnosed. “You can see they’re not quite the same person.”
In the past four months, Thomas has revved up his research by trying to find a way to cut off the life support of cancer. One possibility lies in lengthening telomeres, the strands of DNA found at the end of each chromosome. Every time a cell divides, the telomeres become a little shorter, Thomas explained.
“For most human cells, this is OK, because human cells don’t divide as much, but a cancer cell is a cell that’s dividing uncontrollably,” Thomas said. “Without a mechanism to lengthen telomeres, cancer wouldn’t pose a threat to people. So I’m trying to find ways to stop these mechanisms.”
So how possible is a cure in the foreseeable future? As difficult as cancer is to understand, let alone treat and cure, Thomas chooses to remain optimistic.
“I see it as easily as I see a world without smallpox, a world without cholera and a world without saber-toothed cat attacks,” Thomas said.
Thomas said his family has been very supportive of his work and decision to drop out of school. If he had stayed in school, he would have just finished his junior year. He receives his education from books, online sources such as the Khan Academy and courses at local community colleges.
“I’ve found it’s very necessary to know how to teach yourself,” said Thomas.
He said he still keeps in touch with several friends and teachers at Saratoga High, but that he doesn’t regret his decision to leave because he realizes what he’s able to do is important.
“I see a value in things like high school, but I don’t think that cookie-cutter concept quite works for everybody,” Thomas said.
While he doesn’t see it as a job, Thomas spends eight hours a day, five days a week at SENS. His ultimate goal, Thomas said, is to leave the world a better place than when he came into it.
“It feels good not to say, ‘I hope they find a cure for cancer,’ ” he said. “I’m glad to be doing something about it.”
A cure for cancer? Well, not yet, but Thomas Hunt’s working on it
