Cancer, innovation & a boy named jack

By : Annam Lodhi
“Have you ever experienced a moment in your life that was so painful and confusing, you just want to learn everything you can to make sense of it all?” Jack Andraka asks.

Jack created a simple test for the identification of pancreatic, lung and ovarian cancer.

 Here are some of his facts:

·                     -His test is 168 times faster than what is currently available.

·                     -It’s 26,000 times less expensive.  That’s not a typo.

·                     -And it’s potentially almost 100% accurate.

Here’s what makes it even more astonishing:

·                     -Jack is 15 years old!

The journey began when he lost a close family friend he considered an uncle due to pancreatic cancer, the cancer was not detected in the early stages as the doctors didn’t anticipate its occurrence.

Jack didn’t even know then what pancreas was, so he began researching on the topic, on finding out that almost 100 people die every day due to cancer, he set on his mission. Science always did fascinate him as his parents never answered his questions so he learned how to make hypotheses and test them without knowing he was ‘doing science’!

Andraka started developing a new test for pancreatic cancer that’s inexpensive, rapid, simple, sensitive, selective and minimally invasive. He began by looking for a protein in the bloodstream that would be a biomarker for pancreatic cancer — one found in all cases, even in the earliest stages. The problem: there were 8,000 possible proteins. When Andraka was “close to losing sanity on the 4,000 protein,” he finally found one that could work — mesothelin.

During his science class it occurred to him — that he could lace antibodies to these nanotubes so that they would react to mesothelin. This gave him the idea to make his cancer sensor out of paper. He then realized that he needed to find a lab in which to do his work.

Andraka wrote to 200 scientists asking for space in their lab. He received 199 rejections. & finally Johns Hopkins University replied positively, where a professor was willing to entertain his theory.

In the end, Andraka has created a paper censor that costs 3, the test takes five minutes. This accomplishment not only made Andraka the winner of the Intel International Science Fair – it has the potential to save many lives.

 “Thorough this journey, I’ve learned an important lesson — that anything is possible with the internet,” says Andraka. “You don’t have to be a professor with multiple degrees to have your idea work.”