This young guy has made it easier to detect cancer!
He is now known as the ‘Cancer Test Kid.’ And for a true reason!
· The high school student- Jack Andraka- made a diagnostic strip to detect the disease in its early stages.
· When a relative died of pancreatic cancer.
· In 2011, 15 year old Jack read a lot about cancer after his family friend lost his life.
· He discovered that around 80% pancreatic cancers are detected too late.
· He saw that early detection tools are costly as well as incorrect.
· He thought about lacing mesothelin-specific antibodies into a network of tiny carbon nanotube cylinders- “the superheroes of materials science.”
· He then wrote a detailed research proposal and mailed it to scientists at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and was rejected by many but one- Dr. Maitra.
· For next 7 months, Andraka worked at Maitra’s lab on his own- although he had postdoc supervisor.
· He then showed that his dip-coated filter paper test strips when hooked up by electrodes to a easy to buy $50 ohmmeter; was capable of measuring mesothelin levels in the blood of transgenic mice with human pancreatic tumors.
· For this, he won a grand prize of $75,000 in scholarships at the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Pittsburgh
The young protégé surely has a lot to accomplish in life- biomedical science to be precise!