School: Holy Names Academy
City: Seattle, WA
Grades taught: 9-10

Principle Investigator: Danny Shen, Ph.D.
Department: Pharmaceutics
Institution: University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Project Description
The team I was working with at Fred Hutch was in the midst of a several-year-long project involving pain research for cancer patients and how the medications they took for this pain were affected by over-the-counter (OTC) herbal supplements. (My task was a capsule experiment of sorts, fitting into this larger project.) For my project, I analyzed twelve different over-the-counter St. John's Wort herbal supplements.

The idea was that St. John's Wort, a commonly used OTC anti-depressant, might be used by some cancer patients taking pain medication, and these patients might not necessarily reveal to their physicians that they were taking herbal supplements, most likely because they don't think it's of any importance.

But the active anti-depressant ingredient in St. John's Wort, believed to be a chemical called hyperforin, might have unknown effects when taken concomitantly with pain medication. My job was to determine the hyperforin content in the OTC St. John's Wort supplements we acquired.

I discovered that there are wildly varying amounts of hyperforin in what each supplement brand considered a "dose." I believe strongly that this is in no small part due to the fact that the contents of herbal supplements are not regulated (by the FDA, or anyone else).

You could be ingesting sawdust instead of gingko biloba...and you'd never know...and even if it was real stuff, you'd never know if it was somehow affecting your heart medication...for better or for worse...

To me, my findings made me realize how important research in this area is. Herbal supplements have to be researched and regulated. As a teacher, I want to communicate to my students that even simple experiments can have meaning in a much larger scientific context.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Danny Shen, Ph.D. for letting me work in his lab on his project, and for all the help he gave me in understanding the big picture of his research. And a huge thanks to Linda Risler, who worked with me on a daily basis and was extremely helpful, patient, and easy to work with.