Each week, Sharon Patch will seek suggestions from readers for individual kids, youth groups, teens, and even sports teams that wow us with their accomplishments. We want to hear about these amazing children and teens and select one each week as the Patch Whiz Kid.  Submit your nomination in our comment box below or e-mail the information to Michael.Gelbwasser@patch.com.

Here's our story on this week's Whiz Kid:

Emmarose Safran, 13, and Sydney Mayo, 12

Seventh-graders at Sharon Middle School

Whiz Kids' Accomplishment:
 

Two stage 3 lung cancer patients recently began a clinical trial supported by $7,000 from a foundation started in Sharon.

By Sharon Middle School seventh-graders and good friends Emmarose Safran and Sydney Mayo, about eight months ago.

LOVE FOR LUNGS addresses a void in the medical community, says Dr. Thomas Dipetrillo, one of the clinical leaders in the Brown University Oncology Research Group's clinical trial, which involves guiding "high doses of radiation to very small targets."

"All the money is drying up nationally for cancer research," Dipetrillo says.

The study will include 20 to 25 patients, and will be "a preamble to what would be a national study," DiPetrillo says.

Emmarose says the idea for LOVE FOR LUNGS started with a conversation she had with her father, Dr. Howard Safran, MD, who is the Brown University Oncology Research Group's director.

"He was telling me about a lung cancer project, and he was telling me how his hospital really didn't have an organization or money being donated to lung cancer research," Emmarose says.

"I looked online to see if there was already an organization that we could donate to lung cancer, and it turns out there wasn't."

The students' nonprofit foundation has raised about $7,000.

The total includes $750 raised during a Feb. 4 macaroni and cheese fundraising dinner held by Tikvah Teens, a group of students in grades eight through 12. This group is part of Temple Kol Tikvah, where Emmarose and Sydney's families are members. The duo also has donated its tzedakah money to the foundation.

Sydney says some people they've approached for donations have been "wondering what the money is going toward."

"I think they're kind of unsure because we're so young if it's a good organization or if it's going to actually keep going," Emmarose adds.

"But, it's gotten a lot bigger than we thought it would," she continues, adding that they're trying to find someone to create a website for the foundation.