A Promising Test for Pancreatic Cancer ... from a Teenager
Welcome back, incredible BookDuck fans. Did you know that 85 percent of all pancreatic cancers are diagnosed late when someone has only a two percent chance of survival? Have you ever wondered why are we so bad at detecting pancreatic cancer? Well, Jack Andraga addresses this issue in his TED talk.
He begins his talk by discussing why we are bad at detecting pancreatic cancer, and that is because current "modern" medicine is a 60-year-old technique. He jokes that it's older than his dad. But also, it's costly, costing 800 dollars per test, it's inaccurate, and often misses 30 percent of all pancreatic cancers. Doctors must be very suspicious that you have cancer to give you this test.
Learning all of this, he knew there had to be a better way. So, he set up a scientific criteria for what a sensor would have to look like to diagnose pancreatic cancer effectively. His criterias were that the sensor must be inexpensive, rapid, simple, sensitive, selective, and minimally invasive.
There are reasons why this test has yet to be updated in over six decades. And that's because when looking for pancreatic cancer, doctors look at your bloodstream, which is already abundant in tons of protein, and you have to look for the minuscule difference in a tiny amount of protein.
He found an article that listed a database with over 8,000 different proteins that are found when you have pancreatic cancer. So he decided to go and make it his new mission to go through all the proteins and see which could serve as a biomarker for pancreatic cancer. To simplify it, he decided to map out a scientific criteria and it's the following.
First, the protein would have to be found in all pancreatic cancers at high levels in the bloodstream in the earliest stages but also only in cancer. After plugging and chugging through the enormous task and finally, after so many tries and being close to losing his sanity, he found the protein. The name of the protein he found was mesothelin, and it's just an ordinary type of protein unless you have pancreatic, ovarian, or lung cancer because, in these cases, it's found in very high levels in your bloodstream. But also, the key is that it's found in the earliest stages of the disease when someone has a close to 100 percent chance of survival.
After finding a reliable protein he could detect, he then shifted his focus to actually detecting that protein and, thus, pancreatic cancer. His breakthrough came in a very unlikely place for innovation, and that was his high school biology class, the absolute stifler of innovation. He then talks about choosing to create a cancer sensor out of paper. It's a simple process you start with some water, pour in some nanotubes, add antibodies, mix it up, take some paper, dip it, dry it, and you can detect cancer.
After all this, he realized he couldn't do cancer research on his kitchen countertop. So he decided to go for a lab. He typed up a budget, a materials list, a timeline, and a procedure, and he emailed it to 200 different professors at Johns Hopkins University and the National Institutes of Health. But instead of positive emails, he got 199 rejections out of the 200 emails. The professors did not have as high of an opinion of his works as he did. However, there was a silver lining. One professor said that he might be able to help.
Finally, three months later, he nailed down a harsh deadline with that professor. He got subjected to an interrogation by many professors when he stepped into the lab. He answered all their questions and landed the lab space he needed. But shortly after, he discovered his brilliant procedure had a million holes in it, and over seven months, he filled all of the holes.
After discussing all of this, he ends his talk with the results. One paper sensor that costs three cents and takes five minutes to run makes it 168 times faster, over 26,000 times less expensive, and over 400 times more sensitive than the current standard for pancreatic cancer detection. One of the best parts of the sensor is that it has close to 100 percent accuracy and can detect cancer in the earliest stages when someone has a close to 100 percent chance of survival.
To sum up, in the next two to five years, this sensor could potentially lift the pancreatic cancer survival rates from a dismal 5.5 percent to close to 100 percent, and it would do similar for ovarian and lung cancer. After hearing this inspirational talk by Andraka, it shows us that hopefully, one day, we can all have that one extra uncle, mother, brother, sister, we can have that one more family member to love. Lastly, our hearts will be rid of that one disease burden from pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancer and potentially any disease. Remember, your ideas matter because you could be changing the world.
