After helping discover a drug that halts the spread of cancer cells in the human body, guiding the Johns Hopkins University football team to a fifth straight Centennial Conference title should be easy for senior defensive end Brian Nickel.
A native of Wisconsin, Nickel was chosen as one of 35 recipients of the Howard Hughes summer scholarship, allowing him to help research cancer cells with other brilliant minds from Hopkins and around the world. Nickel and his colleagues discovered the drug, called M4N, in a desert plant, and began running tests on cancer cells.
“When the tumor cell is about to grow, there?s a certain gene that flips on to tell the cell to start growing, and we found this drug that we isolated from a desert plant,” Nickel said, adding that his results will likely be published in a medical journal.
“They?ve started to do clinical research with this drug. … So far, there are no side effects,” Nickel said.
He aspires to be an orthopedic surgeon, and after spending the next year staying on to do research, the natural sciences major will start medical school.
Hopkins? head coach Jim Margraff sees a key similarity between Nickel the student and Nickel the 6-foot-2, 225-pound defensive end with a nonstop motor.
“A lot of that comes from the same things: being disciplined, being smart, being good under pressure and working hard,” Margraff said.
While he helps Margraff on the playing field, Nickel?s work off the field may serve all of mankind.
“Its not a cure,” Nickel said, “but it helps a lot if you can catch a tumor early and treat it.”
