As a South Dakota native and a first-generation college student, DeLaney Anderson (NEURO ‘26) was unsure about traveling too far from home for her education. But after she stepped onto BYU campus, she knew it was the university she’d been looking for. She joined the life sciences with a pre-med focus only to discover there was something at BYU she loved more.
“After being at BYU for a semester or two, I realized that research was really cool, and that it was definitely something that I wanted to pursue as a career,” Anderson says. She explored the variety of research opportunities offered at BYU, searching for places where she could make an impact, and soon discovered Dr. Jared Barrott’s research on personalized cancer treatment. Motivated to help others going through the struggle many of her family members had already faced, Anderson joined a team of students working on improving tumor sampling and storage for cancer diagnoses.
Conducted within Dr. Jarod Barrott’s cancer research lab, this project focused on discovering the differences between formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) preservation techniques and cryogenic preservation to determine which was most effective. The FFPE tissue preparation process involves fixing the cancerous tissue in formalin, dehydrating it, and embedding it in wax, while cryopreservation uses temperature-controlled vials and liquid nitrogen to store specimens for study. Anderson and her team extracted DNA from a total of 38 preserved tumors and found that cryopreservation yielded four times more DNA than FFPE.
These findings have significant implications for current cancer treatments. Because cancer is unique to every patient, individual and accurate testing is required to find out which medications and procedures will help each patient the most. Tissue samples stored using FFPE have a higher likelihood of DNA degradation, making sequencing—and therefore specialized treatment—more difficult. “If there was a false positive, their treatment actually isn't going to work,” Anderson explains. “It's just going to make them sicker.”
Anderson’s work on cryogenic preservation won third place at the Life Sciences Research Conference, an achievement that highlights the need for more studies aimed at improving current cancer treatments. Anderson intends to continue her work in the Barrott Lab and plans to apply for a PhD program in 2026. “The ultimate goal is to do translational and clinically relevant research,” Anderson says. She’s already working on making that goal a reality by interning this summer at the Huntsman Cancer Institute through the BYU Simmons Center.
Though Anderson didn’t originally expect to make research her career, she believes her path through college wasn’t a coincidence. “It's like God is really watching out for me, and He's really leading me to the places I need to be,” she shares. And as her passion for research has grown, Anderson has only become more grateful for the skills God has helped her develop and the mentorship of professors like Dr. Barrott.
“It's amazing how BYU creates so many opportunities for students,” Anderson says with a smile. She’s determined to make the most of those opportunities to create better cancer care for those in need.