Community Corner

Cancer Institute of New Jersey Holds Summer Camp for High School Students

Week long camp teaches about the biology of cancer, treatment, prevention and risk factors.

When recreating a cancerous cell, you'll need several people on hand to act as the different parts.

There are centrioles, DNA molecules, a tumor suppressor gene, a proto-oncogene, and the cell membrane.

On Monday, a group of 38 high school students from 22 high schools around the state learned how normal and cancerous cells function by acting as the parts of the cell during a program called BOLD, a new initiative by the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and the School of Public Health at UMDNJ.

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BioCONNECT Oncology Leadership Development is a week long camp that has students learning all about the biology behind cancer and cancer treatment.

Split into two groups, and holding string to represent the outside walls of a cell, the students moved in and out to represent a cell cycle. They held pencils to represent spindle fibers, and physically walked through the process of a cell dividing properly, and improperly, due to a mutation.

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Laura E. Liang, a coordinator of the program, is co-director of the Center for School and Community-Based Research and education at UMDNJ-School of Public Health.

Liang said the camp is an offshoot of a curriculum written by health professionals and educators at the School of Public Health and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

The free curriculum, which focuses on breast cancer, can be incorporated into grades K-12, Liang said.

"We were able to kind of partner together to to create this curriculum that is useful in teaching students some life long skills well as bringing genetics and biology and seeing how it applies to real life,'' she said.

Lynne Fox, a former South Brunswick school administrator and teacher and two-time breast cancer survivor, said the curriculum aligns with state and national standards, and spans literacy, science and health.

"(The curriculum takes) cellular and genetic biology and bring(s) it to  life through the real life application of cancer, so that's a win win and it hits several standards at once,'' Fox said.

During the camp, lessons are to be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. through Friday, and go over different parts of cancer: diagnostics, genetics, treatment, and career paths associated with cancer treatment and research, Liang said.

"They're either building or creating some biology information as it relates to cancer,'' Liang said.

There are only plan to hold the camp this week, Liang said.

"We just wanted to get our feet wet this year and hopefully next year we would have more camps,'' she said.

However, the Cancer Institute offers teacher training throughout the year, as recently as this past June, with educators from 14 counties participating, including those from New Brunswick Health Science and Technology High School.

Fox said the camp is also unique in that not only does it teach about cancer, it gives students an opportunity to see how different career paths can lead back to cancer treatment and research.

"(They're) understanding the researcher behind the scenes, to the med student who happens to be doing research here for the summer, to the treatment librarian, to the public relations person who was giving tours,'' she said. "Two girls are thinking of communication, one student was thinking of math and others were thinking science (and) all saw the huge connections in this one building to all those careers."


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