2026 SPARC Spotlight

By IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center
July 30, 2026

The IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center offers summer programs for high school and undergraduate students to explore career paths in cancer research. Students work directly with a mentor physician or researcher, while participating in a wide range of basic science, translational, and clinical research activities.

We asked Arya Shah a few questions about her summer experience.

Name: Arya Shah
School: University of Southern Indiana, rising junior
Hometown: Carmel, Ind.
Summer program: Summer Program for Academic Research in Cancer (SPARC)
Summer mentor: Wen Zhang, PhD
Career aspirations: Physician-scientist

What can you tell us about the research you are doing this summer?

This summer, I am working on developing a more stable and efficient drug delivery system for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive subtype of breast cancer with limited targeted treatment options.

Our approach uses mirror-image RNA (L-RNA) instead of naturally occurring D-RNA to construct RNA nanostructures. L-RNA is the non-superimposable mirror image of the RNA found in the body. Because of its opposite chirality, ribonucleases have difficulty recognizing and degrading L-RNA, allowing these nanostructures to remain stable for longer periods and potentially improve therapeutic delivery. My project involves assembling L-RNA nanocubes and loading them with therapeutic cargo, including gene-silencing siRNA and chemotherapeutic drugs, to evaluate their potential as an effective cancer drug delivery platform.

What surprised you most about working in a research lab?

What surprised me most about working in a research lab was how much time and preparation goes into collecting a single set of data. Before this experience, I didn't realize that generating one western blot could represent weeks of work. Long before running the assay, we have to maintain healthy cell cultures by routinely splitting, plating, transfecting and freezing cells. Only then can we begin the western blot workflow, which includes lysing the cells, normalizing protein concentrations, preparing samples, casting and running gels, transferring proteins to a membrane, incubating with primary and secondary antibodies, probing for actin as a loading control, and finally imaging the results.

Throughout the entire process, there is very little room for error; one small mistake can require weeks of preparation and experimentation to be repeated. This experience has taught me that successful research depends on patience, precision, careful planning and consistency.

How has working with your mentor or research team shaped your experience?

Working with my mentor and research team has been one of the most rewarding parts of this experience. From the moment I joined the lab, they have been incredibly supportive and patient, taking the time to teach me techniques and answer my questions, even though I was new to molecular biology research.

The lab has a collaborative environment where we regularly share protocols, troubleshoot experiments together, and learn from one another's experiences. Being part of such a supportive team has made the learning process much less intimidating and has helped me become more confident and independent as a researcher.

Has this experience influenced your future education or career goals?

This experience has reinforced my passion for combining medicine with cancer research in my future career. Seeing how laboratory discoveries can contribute to developing new therapies has strengthened my desire to become a physician who is also involved in translational cancer research.

Cancer is a field that is personally meaningful to me, and I want to do more for the members of my community that go through this. This experience has confirmed that I want to continue contributing to research while caring for patients.