Clams as an animal model for testing blood cancer drugs
Iris Shen · The Woodlands, Texas
Third Place ($150,000) · Regeneron Science Talent Search · 2026
Candidate blood-cancer drugs tested in clams, which develop a naturally transmissible leukaemia-like disease, as a cheaper and more accessible animal model than the mammalian systems normally used.
Drug response in clams tracked what researchers observe in human cells, and treatment slowed tumour growth.
The model organism is the contribution. Showing that clam response matches human cell response is what converts a convenient animal into a usable one — without that validation step there is no result.
- Clam model system
- Drug response assay
- Comparison against human cell response
- Tumour growth measurement
- A new model system must be validated against the established one before any result from it counts
- Cheap and accessible model organisms open up work that mammalian models put out of reach for a student
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