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The winner of the 13th European Union Contest for Young Scientists in Bergen, Norway on September 20th, 2001 was James Lee Mitchell of Newton Abbot, Devon and Torquay Boy's Grammar School.

James was part-funded for his award-winning project by the Fungal Research Trust and carried out the work under the supervision of Trust staff (Peter Warn) at Hope Hospital, Manchester, UK.
James (on the extreme left in this picture) wrote the following summary of his experiences in Manchester and Bergen:

"I conducted my project over a period of four weeks at Hope Hospital in Manchester. I investigated the development of resistance to azole (antifungal) drugs in the fungus Candida tropicalis. This organism causes serious infections and fatalities in immunocompromised patients, e.g. HIV, cancer, organ-transplant. Recently resistance has been seen in the organism to the azole class of drugs, which are currently the standard treatment.
First I investigated the development of resistance to fluconazole, which I modelled by two different methods: gradual exposure to drug and also exposure to a single high dose, both in-vitro.

I then went on to look at cross-resistance to see if fluconazole resistance conferred resistance to other azole drugs.
Finally I investigated the mechanism of resistance using a checkerboard titration with Cyclosporin A. The findings of my project
were that resistance can be generated quickly and easily by either method, that the organism does display cross-resistance (important clinical implications) and that Cyclosporin A reverses resistance by the inhibition of efflux pumps, indicating up regulation of efflux pumps as the mechanism of resistance.The project was completed as part of a Gold Crest Award under the Nuffield Bursary Scheme and it was subsequently awarded a Gold Crest Award. I then entered it into the British Youth Science Fair run by the BA, which was held at the Royal Society in London.

The project won a prize, which was to represent the UK at the 13th Euro an Contest for Young Scientists held in Bergen Norway. At this competition my project won First prize, presented by Crown Prince Haakon of Norway.
I also won an honorary prize, which involves attending the 100th Nobel Prize ceremonies in Stockholm in December, as a guest and also presenting my project at the Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar."

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