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One of Thomas Edison’s great sayings says that “Génius je 1% inspirace a 99% vytrvalost”. He himself lived by that motto.
He made the glass bulb of the lightbulb himself and tested 3000 different ways to reduce the amount of electric current needed to light the filament and 6000 materials that would extend its lifespan.
Few of us have the determination and endurance to create something similar.
That, however, does not apply to a 15 ročním boy named Jack Andraka, who with his persistence made something that will without a doubt change our future.
As a 15-year-old boy he discovered a new 100% test for cancer
Jack witnessed a family friend, who was like an uncle to him, die of pancreatic cancer. Instead of accepting the death as part of life, he decided to do something about it.
He realized that a big problem with pancreatic cancer is that 85% of cases are diagnosed too late, which gives people less than a 2% chance of survival.
The average survival time from diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is 3 months.
The question remains why such an advanced society as ours cannot detect this disease earlier?
How is it possible that today’s “modern medicine” uses 60-year-old and very inaccurate techniques that miss up to 30% of pancreatic cancer cases?
The main problem of early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer is a so-called asymptomatic disease, meaning it does not show symptoms.
Health insurance companies also do not want to reimburse these tests “blindly” without obvious symptoms of disease. For most patients who do not pay for them themselves, they remain inaccessible.
Jack therefore thought that there must be a better and more reliable way to detect this cancer. The new method should meet the following criteria:
- non-invasive
- fast
- cheap
- simple
- sensitive
- selective
The current biomarker test is focused on detecting a small amount of one specific protein and that is very problematic. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.
And not only that, in that haystack you are looking for one specific needle among other needles. Often it is virtually an impossible task.
At that time Jack began searching for information on Google, which was essentially the only thing a 15-year-old child has at his disposal.
During the search among 8000 proteins he found one called mesotelín . When you have pancreatic, lung or ovarian cancer, then this protein is present in the blood in extremely large amounts.
What is important, however, is that this protein occurs in the blood at a significant concentration already in the very early stages of the mentioned types of cancers, that is at a time when you still have almost a 100% chance of survival.
Therefore, if you are able to detect this protein (unlike the others that current tests target), then you no longer need to fear these cancers.
The question then is, how to detect this protein mesotelín ?
The idea with carbon nanotubes
He then came up with an idea using carbon nanotubes, which are only 1/150 the thickness of a human hair and as a material have amazing properties.
He also wanted to use antibodies that bind only to one specific protein. He planned to hide/attach them in the mentioned nanotubes.
He then sent his idea to over 200 university professors who were researching pancreatic cancer. He asked them if they would help him and also if they would provide their laboratories.
He received 199 rejections and one response along the lines of “maybe”.
Within 3 months he then arranged a meeting with this one professor, where he brought 500 scientific articles that he had studied on the topic so far.
During the interview the said professor called in other academics for help. They all tried to disprove his proposed procedure. In the end, however, Jack managed to gain access to the laboratory.
He expected that the work would take him 3 months, but it took 7 months.
At the end of this demanding period he ended up with a small piece of paper in his hand that was able to detect pancreatic cancer with 100% accuracy and that even in the very initial stage.
Moreover, his pancreatic cancer test is characterized by the following parameters compared to current tests:
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- is 168 times faster
- is 26000 times cheaper
- is 400 times more sensitive
To watch Jack’s TEDx appearance (in English) about his journey to this breakthrough discovery, here is the full video:
conclusion
On his path to success Jack learned one important thing: that with only the help of the Internet it is possible to obtain information you would not even have imagined.
That you do not need to be a professor with three degrees to be able to share ideas, thoughts and discoveries with others.
That with the help of the Internet even an ordinary person can sometimes literally change the world.
