Om Gandhi said a chance encounter with a family in Kensington that had lost their son to cancer inspired him to research ways to holistically fight the disease.
As the son of a physician and an accountant, Om Gandhi envisioned himself entering the world of public policy and politics, using those avenues to address the barriers that block access to health care for so many people across the world.
But a chance encounter in Kensington in 2021 inspired him to take a more direct approach.
That encounter carried him through a change to his major at the University of Pennsylvania, research at Penn and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and, ultimately, to being recently awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to further his work with cancer treatments at the University of Oxford.
Gandhi is one of 100 students expected to receive a Rhodes Scholarship this year, of which 32 were chosen from the United States.
"Originally, I was going down two different paths, one where I was so interested in driving change using policy levers, and another where I was using chemistry to treat disease on a smaller level," Gandhi, 20, said. "In college they interact to create a niche: How can we create policies to help children with cancer, and also how can we help patients and their families live through cancer by changing public policy?"
While a freshman at Penn, Gandhi was handing out food to families outside of Prevention Point, a Kensington nonprofit that provides services to people experiencing addiction, when he met a couple who had turned to narcotics after a personal tragedy. Their son, he learned after befriending them, had died from neuroblastoma, an aggressive cancer targeting nerve cells.
Suddenly, his mission in life shifted. He switched majors to neuroscience and health and societies, and dedicated the rest of his time at Penn to researching ways to holistically fighting cancer.
"Talking to them firsthand, hearing the problem from their perspective, showed me the best way to handle the problem," Gandhi said. "Cancer is bad, regardless, but I saw this aggressive type of tumor affecting the entire family, and an entire community."
Gandhi stayed in contact with that couple, and he proudly said that they are in treatment. Their success, he said, has redoubled his dedication to his goal.
While at Penn, the Illinois native researched ways to fight the metabolism of tumors, starving them to reveal weak points that can be targeted by immunotherapy and other treatments.
He's hoping to build on that work at Oxford, whose researchers have developed ways to force tumors to create specific proteins that make them more visible to our natural immune systems, and therefore easier to fight.
After his time in Oxford, he hopes to return stateside, armed with the experience to one day run his own cancer research center.
"I see myself creating groundbreaking therapy in the lab, and also translating them so they can be used in clinics that treat all patients, not just those who can afford them," he said.