Young scientists are leading the way in health care, said Forbes when they unveiled this year's list of 30 under 30. This isn’t something many expected, let alone believed, could be the case when Forbes first thought to include the category of science. And yet, 2014 was a particularly banner year for disease-related research and awareness, including but not limited to Ebola, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and cancer. It also wasn’t done solely by scientists. Nurses, cancer survivors, even golfers made contributions to medicine in one way or another. There are so many young and great minds hard at work that it’s impossible to round each of them up. However, we did our best to find eight of the most influential young people in 2014. Be warned: you’ll walk away feeling crazy-inspired. Salome Karwah, 26 This year, the world witnessed the worst outbreak of the Ebola virus. The latest report from the World Health Organizationtallies the number of deaths at 6,388, one of which bore from the first-ever reported cases in the United States. Doctors, nurses, caregivers, directors, and scientists have stepped up this year to care, prevent, and treat the virus, thus the Ebola fighters being named TIME magazine’s “Person of the Year.” Yet, Salome Karwah was one of the youngest nurse’s assistant at the Doctors Without Borders clinic in Monrovia. TIMEreported Karwah, “stayed at the bedsides of patients, bathing and feeding them, even after losing both her parents — who ran a medical clinic — in a single week and surviving Ebola herself,” which she described as a second chance from God to help others. Nina Pham, 26 Ebola originated in West Africa, but nurse Nina Pham found herself face-to-face with the virus when Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who was experiencing symptoms, was brought in to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. She toldTIME she was scared, but she wasn’t going to ask to be reassigned. “It’s part of who I am — nursing is a calling,” she said. “There was a patient who needed help, and I was going to help him. I wouldn’t have denied the assignment.” Duncan died at Texas Presbyterian, the first Ebola death in the U.S. And Pham herself contracted the virus, even though she followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended protocol. Luckily, the experimental drug Pham signed up to take worked, and she is now Ebola-free. Chris Kennedy, 26 Everyone, from you and me, to celebrities like Oprah and Mark Zuckerberg, spent their summer dumping buckets of ice cold water on their head to raise money for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALC) — also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. But when Jon Bullas, a golfer from Sarasota, Fla., challenged fellow golfer Chris Kennedy, it was considered the “24-Hour Charity Challenge.” Bullas donated to a children’s cancer charity, while it was Kennedy who chose to donate to ALS because of a suffering relative. So, he is technically who started the challenge we’re familiar with today. TIME reported there was a significant increase in donations to the ALS Association between July 29 and Aug. 4, coming in at over $15 million from existing donors and over $300,000 from new donors. “What started out as a small gesture to put a smile on [my wife’s cousin’s husband] Anthony’s face and bring some awareness to this terrible disease has turned into a national phenomenon, and it is something we never could have dreamed of,” Kennedy said. Elizabeth Holmes, 30 Elizabeth Holmes was 19 when she dropped out of Stanford University in 2003 to start her own company, Theranos. Her mission was to develop a new technology that would blood tests painless, more accurate, cheaper, and quicker. After a little more than a decade, Elite Daily reported, “Holmes has created hardware and software that allow for blood tests to be done by pricking someone’s finger and storing the blood in a tiny vial called a nanotainer.” Holmes’s company is now worth $9 billion, 50 percent of which she owns. This makes her the youngest women to become a self-made billionaire. “This is about being able to do good,” Holmes told Fortune. “And it’s about being able to change the health care system through what we believe this country does so well, which is innovation and creativity and the ability to conceive of technology that can help solve policy challenges.” Tanay Tandon, 17 Automated, cheap disease diagnostics and cell-counts within seconds? Yep, there’s an app for that. Tanay Tandon foundedAthelas, a malaria blood-testing kit for smartphones (after he founded a data-mining start-up called Clipped).The Next Web reported Athelas “won Y Combinator’s first ever hackathon, earning Tandon a chance to interview for a place on the well-respected accelerator program.” “The ultimate goal is to be able to detect malaria in blood samples within seconds, as well as eventually train the algorithms to identify a variety of other diseases and conditions,” Tandon said. Tandon added winning Y Combinator validated his decision to work on humanitarian and medical problems at the same time it showed him the interest in the biomedical field is growing. It’s encouraged him to work on more problems like Athelas in the future. Divya Nag, 23 You may remember Divya Nag from last year when Forbes named her the 2013 30 under 30 winner in Science & Healthcare. However, for those of you unfamiliar with her research, here’s some brief background. Most types of human cells, such as those found in the heart and liver, die when kept in a petri dish. This is why testing new drugs is such “a risky, costly and time-consuming business,” Forbes said. But the technology Nag has developed with her company Stem Cell Theranostics is in the home stretch. The technology would turn cells into embryonic-like stem cells that could be used to create heart cells capable of living in a petri dish. This way, new drugs could be tested to replace heart tissue and eventually, they could replace heart tissue that dies during a heart attack. It’s Nag’s experience with this research, and the FDA’s medical approach process, that inspired Apple to hire her as one of their health and fitness experts this year.The Mac Observer reported this move suggests Apple is working to go beyond just tracking steps and develop technology that requires FDA approval. Basically, her influence has just gone mobile. Ludmil Alexandrov, 28 Ludmil Alexandrov was also onForbes's radar in 2013 for his research regarding genetic mutations. A paper he published in the journal Nature included a technique that found a signature for each mutation, which paves the way for scientists to see what causes it in the first place. Forbes reported this could inspire new ideas for cancer prevention. Alexandrov maintained momentum in 2014 with more research on cancer, including a study published in the journal Science that focused on DNA sequences “hitchhiking” through the tumor genome. “Retrotransposons are DNA repeat sequences that are constantly on the move. By poaching certain cellular enzymes, they copy and insert themselves at new sites in the genome,” researchers wrote. “Sometimes they carry along adjacent DNA sequences, a process called 3′ transduction. [We] found that 3′ transduction is a common even in human tumors. Because this process can scatter genes and regulatory sequences across the genome, it may represent yet another mechanism by which tumor cells acquire new mutations that help them survive and grow.” Thomas Cantley, 31 We know, we know: Thomas Cantley is just shy of our cut-off — but he’s too ballsy not to include. Though diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2009, Cantley spent 2014 raising cancer awareness by first rolling a 6-foot-wide, giant rubber ball from Toronto to Vancouver in a homage to the testicle he lost, and then again from New York to Los Angeles. In an appearance on The Doctors, Cantley pointed out the over 3,500 signatures from both fellow cancer survivors and those otherwise touched by the disease, whether they knew someone fighting or someone who lost their battle, now on the ball. Cantley’s #BeBallsy campaign will appear in book form soon, according to hiswebsite, as a continued way to reach men in an honest way about the importance of cancer prevention and treatment. Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in males ages 15 to 35. You don’t have to roll a ball across the country, but you can get yourself checked by a doctor. source
