To celebrate Elon University’s Spring Undergraduate Research Forum on April 28, Today at Elon is highlighting several students presenting their research at the annual campus tradition.
For Ryder Hutchinson ’28, impactful research was not something to be completed towards the end of his college experience. The nursing student began research on how to fight various cancers with different viruses after only his first semester at Elon.
“We use a type of virus that does a really good job at not killing your healthy cells but does a really good job at killing cancer cells,” Hutchinson said. “They use this technique at clinical trials right now for common cancers such as breast and colon cancer in combination with chemotherapy drugs. But my big question was: what about the other cancers?”
Hutchinson began this research with Efrain Rivera-Serrano, assistant professor of biology. While taking his cell biology course, Hutchinson began shadowing Rivera-Serrano weekly in the lab as he worked with other students on research projects. Hutchinson was then accepted by Rivera-Serrano as a research student, in addition to his acceptance into Elon’s Summer Undergraduate Research Experience, where he stayed on campus over the summer of 2025 with a grant to continue research on the project.
Given his grandmother’s diagnosis of leukemia, Hutchinson was initially interested in exploring this specific type of cancer. However, given the difficulty in testing certain types of cancers, the pair compromised and used existing research and expanded upon it with Hutchinson’s desire to help cancer patients.
“It was a different way of using what he knows, with what I know, and making a really cool research project out of it,” Hutchinson said.
When describing the various types of viral strings, Hutchinson compared them to “personalities,” for the layman viewer of his project to understand.
“This one virus can have many different strings, or as I like to say, many different personalities,” Hutchinson said. “And they’re using a specific string or specific personality in clinical trials, but there’s so many more out there. So, I did testing on 35 different strings and found that within the rare cancers I tested on, the one I found is different than the one in clinical trials, and it shows to be better at killing than the one’s they’re currently using.”
During SURF Day on April 28, all other campus activities are suspended so the Elon community can come together around students’ creative endeavors and research efforts. Undergraduate research is also one of the five Elon Experiences, which provides a natural extension of the work students do in the classroom and ensures that Elon graduates are prepared for both graduate school and careers.
After he presents at SURF, Hutchinson plans on conducting more specific research to the field of nursing with chemotherapy patients at Cone Health hospital that align more closely with his goal of a profession in nursing.
In addition to his research project, he is in the process of receiving feedback for two professional articles: one of which he is publishing himself, and another in which he is the co-author.
“I have always wanted to have a purpose,” Hutchinson said. “I wanted to make an impact, and I feel like I’m slowly doing that, or headed in the right direction of making a difference or impact on people’s lives.”