The team is researching a rare liver cancer called fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma. With Elana's inspired idea to apply genomic sequencing to her own kind of cancer, they "...uncovered an abnormal protein (in young people) that forms inside the tumors, but not in normal liver tissue, suggesting it might fuel cancer growth." They found the same results in all 15 cases they studied, strongly implicating the protein. In the ABC.com article, Dr. Sanford Simon, Elana's father and senior author of the study cautioned, "It's a small study, and more research is needed to see what this gene flaw really does."

Elana notes, "This work is an outgrowth of the Dalton Science Research Program, run by Lisa Brizzolara."

Given her path, Elana should achieve further success in the study and we are sure she has a bright future ahead at Harvard, which she will attend in the fall to study computer science.