High school student Jaden Blankenship, who was part of the Cancer Health Equity Summer Scholars (CHESS) program at the University of Illinois Cancer Center, was featured on Chicago’s WGN News for his research on triple negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Blankenship, now a senior at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, was part of the 2023 CHESS cohort, and he is mentored by Cancer Center member Richard Minshall, PhD, Professor of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine Chicago.
“I was always someone who was kind of passionate about science and really wanted to answer questions that are really hard to answer,” he said. “And cancer is one of those questions. It’s a puzzle you don’t really know what you are solving.” TNBC is an aggressive type of breast cancer that tends to be more common in women younger than age 40, who are Black, or who have a BRCA1 mutation, according to the American Cancer Society.
The CHESS program Blankenship participated in is an eight-week summer program that trains and mentors underrepresented minority high school students interested in careers focusing on cancer research and other health professions. CHESS is a collaboration between the Cancer Center and the UIC Urban Health Program. You can apply for the 2025 CHESS program here and watch a video about the program featuring Blankenship here.