Rock Canyon student wins national science contest

Develops pill for gluten intolerance

BY HALEY LENA HLENA@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Walking into the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas for the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, Aditi Avinash was overcome with nerves, but when she left, she took home an award and scholarship.

“I was absolutely shocked,” said Avinash, a Rock Canyon High School senior. “It was completely unexpected and I was over the moon.” e annual competition is the largest science competition for high school students across the globe. It has also been a program of the Society for Science for over 70 years. ere are di erent levels that students must go through in order to have the chance to compete at the International Science and Engineering Fair. First student’s must compete at the regional level, where they can qualify to the state level.

In mid-May for three days, more than 1,500 students from more than 60 countries competed in various categories, ranging from animal sciences to behavioral and social sciences to environmental sciences. Nineteen students represented Colorado.

Avinash was one of four students representing the Denver Metro Regional Science and Engineering Fair and quali ed at the regional and state level.

Avinash took rst in the Transitional Medical Science category and was awarded a special award worth $52,000 in tuition

From Arizona State University during the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair.

Her project was a Model Validation and Preclinical Testing of Digestive Enzymes for Gluten Breakdown: A Move to Cure Gluten Intolerance and Celiac Disease.

While learning about enzymes and the lactate pill in a biology class during her freshman year, Avinash became curious as to why there wasn’t an option like the lactose pill for people who are gluten intolerant.

An idea sparked.

“Essentially what my project is trying to do is nd a solution for celiac gluten intolerance,” said Avinash.

Avinash realized in her everyday life, there are family members and friends who have gluten intolerance or celiac disease. Although there are some solutions such as gluten free diets and gluten free sections at the grocery store or restaurants, Avinash says those are avoiding the problem.

“ ey’re just telling people to not eat the food,” said

Avinash. “I wanted to create some kind of solution that tackles the problem more head on rather than just avoiding it.”

Building on her project each year, Avinash rst competed during her freshman year, however, it was during the pandemic, so the competition was held online.

Not able to conduct any research at her school or in a lab, Avinash focused on doing a literature review and conducted a preliminary test using a testing lab that she got online and shipped to her house.

Sophomore year, Avinash conducted the majority of testing at school with some supervised testing in a lab.

She presented this research at the International Science and Engineering Fair.

Once junior year came around, Avinash conducted research at a professional lab at the Anschutz Medical Campus where she had the opportunity to use equipment like a mass spectrometer.

Avinash conducted four main types of testing. One of which being an antibody test called ELISA Assay test.

“ at tests the prevalence of certain subjects,” said Avinash. “In 2020, COVID tests, those were all ELISA tests because they were testing how much COVID you had. In this case, I was testing how much gluten I had.”

Avinash also conducted a Western blot test, which visualized how much gluten was present and used the mass spectrometry as a way to separate complex proteins. e last test Avinash conducted was the Cytokine Assay to measure the amount of cytokine production. Cytokine is a wide group of signaling proteins and acts as humoral regulators that modulate functions of individual cells.

“How celiac disease occurs [is] by cells recognizing an amino acid sequence and causing an immune response,” said Avinash. “Cytokine Assay is measuring immune response.” rough Avinash’s lengthy research, she found three enzymes that work e ectively in di erent environments that break down gluten proteins.

Between the biotechnology program at Rock Canyon and working with mentors at the lab, Avinash learned how to write and document in a legal lab notebook, pipette, do gel electrophoresis and run analyzers.

According to Avinash, the lactate pill has speci c enzymes that are able to break down milk and sugar.

“My hope is that these enzymes can be used to make some kind of pill for gluten intolerance and for celiac disease,” said Avinash.

As COVID restrictions were lifted, the competition was fully back this year and Avinash had nearly

80 people competing in her category, transitional medicine.

While standing at her booth, waiting for judges to come by, Avinash got to know the people next to her.

“I got to learn so much about di erent aspects of the eld we’re studying, but the interesting thing about the medical eld and, I guess, science in general is even though a lot of projects are clumped under a broad sphere, each project in that broad sphere is so di erent,” said Avinash.

Looking forward, Avinash wants to continue her research during her senior year of high school. And although she is not certain where she wants to attend college, Avinash is thankful for the Arizona State University scholarship.

Inspired by her love of research and medicine, Avinash aspires to become a MD-PhD as she believes some of the best doctors are those who have both the clinical aspect and compassion as well as the research knowledge about conditions and treatments.

“I think the reason I love the eld of medicine and the eld of research is it’s a eld that is constantly evolving and changing,” said Avinash. “And as someone who just loves learning, I just love the eld of medicine, so I just want to be completely involved in it to every extent possible.”