Get Your Hands Dirty. Make a Difference

(Intro music) Possibilities. We live in a world full of them, just waiting to be found. Often great discoveries are hidden in plain sight, even in something as simple as a scoop of dirt. However, a possibility is just a possibility, unless someone takes the time to look. What if the ground below your feet could hold the key to a cure for a cancer? COLLINS: I would say Citizen Science is like crowdfunding for soil fungi. CICHEWICZ: Our Citizen Science Soil Collection Program is aimed at trying to obtain soil samples from across the United States in order to access the fungal diversity that exists out there. MOTLEY: The overall project is to find new...new drugs. BROOKFIELD: People outside of our laboratory actually send in soil samples for us to extract and find new compounds. MOTLEY: I look for new drugs in places that other people don't. CICHEWICZ: Our hope is that we would find different molecules that'll affect these different pathways, on the path towards a cure towards different types of cancers. COLLINS: We had a huge surge of samples because somebody posted on Reddit about us. MOTLEY: We went from having about 200 samples total in two or three years to 2,000 requests for kits in four days. CICHEWICZ: Over that first weekend, we got about 2,500 hits, and it grew to over 12,000 by the end of the year. The Chemical Zoo is the first stop in the process of where a sample arrives. COLLINS: We collect the samples. We plate them initially and get the fungi out of them. CICHEWICZ: It's in that zoo that the microbiologists take the soils, they culture the fungi out of them, grow those fungi, then, for the biologists and the chemists to work with. MOTLEY: They will hand me a large bag of fungi growing on Cheerios, and I will take that, extract all of the compounds that that fungi produces, and then start to cut them down. DU: We are the first step of drug discovery. We look for compound candidates. BROOKFIELD: So once we find that compound, then we can proceed to the next step of drug discovery process. COLLINS: So there are millions of kinds of fungi, and most of them we've never even studied before, so we're looking for those one or two that might be used to cure cancer. CICHEWICZ: So every sample that comes in through the Citizen Science program helps us expand those opportunities and make sure that we're ultimately going to achieve those goals of finding those molecules that will make a difference. The sample from Alaska turned out to be a very unique and wonderful sample for us. COLLINS: This woman dug some soil out from under a tree in her backyard. MOTLEY: And she sent us this sample, and it has turned into one of the most important samples that we've ever seen. DU: We screened this fungus in different tumor cells, and we found that it shows very potent activities. CICHEWICZ: And it turns out that it does a pretty good job at inhibiting the growth of a variety of cancer cells, including melanoma and breast cancers. MOTLEY: This project means a lot to me because my family has been so impacted by cancers, so the thought that I'm on the forefront of discovery, it's awe-inspiring. COLLINS: I never thought that when I came to the University of Oklahoma that I would have the possibility to help cure cancer. CICHEWICZ: Nature is full of potential, and here at the University of Oklahoma and in the College of Arts and Sciences, working with the students and researchers that we have, we have the real possibility of finding those cures for cancers. BROOKFIELD: And that's one of the reasons why I joined this lab, is so we can change the world together.