San Diego Student's Tumor Tactics Card Game Wins Global Award

A San Diego high schooler who lost his grandmother to pancreatic cancer has built a card game that teaches elementary and middle schoolers the biology behind the disease, and the project just picked up an international award while spreading through Title I classrooms across the county. Tumor Tactics tasks players with becoming the first doctor to cure three tumors, using cards modeled on real chemotherapy, immunotherapy and targeted-therapy treatments. The game was created by Daniel Zhang, a senior at Canyon Crest Academy, who according to the San Diego Union-Tribune lost his grandmother to pancreatic cancer when he was nine years old and spent six months with her during her treatment. Zhang has said the game was motivated by his own difficulty as a child understanding cancer and what its treatments actually did to the body, and he has said his goal was to give children hope by presenting cancer as a treatable scientific disease rather than an abstract fear. Canyon Crest Academy, where Zhang is a senior, has long ranked among San Diego County's top-rated public high schools, maintaining an overall A+ grade on academic rating platforms. Before he ever sketched a card layout, Zhang was doing actual cancer research. He worked as a state-selected High School Affiliate Scholar at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center on computational cancer biology and analyzed multi-omics datasets alongside Cambridge University's Cancer Research Institute, according to the American Society for Cell Biology. That background is part of why the game's mechanics track real oncology concepts rather than a simplified fiction of them. Every player starts with three tumors — lung, colon and skin — and has to knock them out using tactic cards representing treatments and cancer-fighting actions, per the Union-Tribune's reporting. Chemotherapy cards can target any tumor but require a die roll, while utility cards cover things like diagnostic scans and research funding. Event cards throw in new clinical-trial results and other twists that shake up a round in progress. Zhang and co-founder Zachary Tou have said they wanted kids to learn the material through something they'd actually want to play, an approach that traces back to the pair bonding over Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering, per the Union-Tribune. Tou co-founded the effort with Zhang, and Carina Wu, who lives in Los Angeles, serves as the game's student chief design officer. The team built the first 100 game kits using bake-sale funds combined with a grant from the American Society for Cell Biology's COMPASS Outreach program. That grant, numbered 179665, funded complete production of the kits — 72-card decks, 56 tumor tokens, rulebooks, dice and custom packaging — letting every K-8 workshop participant in San Diego take home a full set for free, according to the American Society for Cell Biology. The card decks were printed by GreenerPrinter, and the game's tokens were made by The Game Crafter. The game has already run through five student-led workshops in San Diego this year, held at Deer Canyon Elementary, Encanto Elementary School and the Pacific Highlands Ranch Library, reaching about 150 children. Assessment data collected during those sessions found that student scores improved from an average of 37% passing to over 90%, per the Union-Tribune's reporting, and the American Society for Cell Biology separately reported that 95% of participating K-8 students improved their performance on a five-question oncology assessment after a single 45-to-60-minute gaming session. The team has also received feedback urging it to add phonetic spelling and vocabulary definitions to make the science more accessible, and Zhang's group plans to release a version 2 after further sessions at the Pacific Highlands Ranch Library. Beyond the classroom pilots, Tumor Tactics has been distributed more broadly: more than 225 game decks have gone out to Scripps and Rady Children's Hospital, and the game was demonstrated at the San Diego County Fair. STEAMLabs International, the nonprofit Zhang co-founded at the start of his sophomore year in 2024, focuses locally on Title I schools within the San Diego Unified School District, where roughly 80% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, according to the Union-Tribune. Ten percent of proceeds from Tumor Tactics kit sales go directly to the American Cancer Society to support oncology research and patient programs, per The Smile Project. The recognition has been building. Tumor Tactics won an international Serious Play Award, an honor the Serious Play Conference gave out after evaluating educational and healthcare game entries from 16 countries in its student K-12 tabletop category, calling Tumor Tactics an exceptional educational game product. Ahead of that honor, the North American conference itself was held at Duke University in June. The game and STEAMLabs International were also featured in September during a joint youth education session at the UN-affiliated Science Summit in New York City, according to Science Summit NYC. STEAMLabs International has grown into 18 chapters in two years and has hosted more than 150 events, aiming to bring experiment kits and free science camps to underserved youth both in the United States and abroad. The organization has partnered with Henosis International to bring hands-on STEM curricula and lab kits to over 100 students in Ghana and Nigeria, according to background compiled by California Senate District 38. The team behind Tumor Tactics is now planning to launch the game with STEAMLabs chapters in Texas, Alabama and Kenya, and to expand workshops into additional Title I schools across San Diego. California State Senate District 38 named Zhang its Community Champion of the Month for August, citing his work hosting free STEM summer camps at the Pacific Highlands Ranch Library and fundraising for science equipment in Title I schools. Outside his science work, Zhang is also an All-State pianist who organizes monthly classical music performances with 15 student musicians for residents of San Diego assisted living facilities, according to the senate district's release. Hoodline has previously covered Canyon Crest Academy's standing among the county's top public schools and, more recently, a yearbook free-speech dispute at the school. Tumor Tactics marks a different kind of Canyon Crest story — one built not around controversy, but around a student translating a personal loss into a tool now reaching classrooms, hospitals and an international stage.