Inventing a Low-Cost Test for Cancer at Age 15 - Jack Andraka at TEDxMidAtlantic

Jack Andraka is a fifteen year old freshman in high school. He recently developed a novel paper sensor that could detect pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancer in 5 minutes for as little as 3 cents.

Earlier this year,
I won an International Science Fair.

Ever since then, a bunch of people
have been asking me,

"How on earth could a 15 year old
have developed a new way

to detect pancreatic cancer?"

My response?

A year and half of hard work
and over millions, millions of failures.

It was pretty depressing.

Recently, I developed
a novel paper sensor

for the detection of pancreatic,
ovarian and lung cancer.

The sensor -- what's so cool about [it] is
it is 168 times faster,

over 26,000 times less expensive
and over 400 times more sensitive

than the current method of detection.

The best part, it costs 3 cents
and takes 5 minutes to run.

It all began one day
when I was researching

online statistics
about pancreatic cancer.

You might ask,

"Why on earth would a 15 year old
be interested in pancreatic cancer?

Shouldn't he be interested in
video games?"

What actually
got me interested is

a close family friend who's like
an uncle to me, had passed of the disease.

What I found on the Internet
was eye-boggling.

What I found was 85 percent
of all pancreatic cancers are diagnosed late,

when someone has less
than 2 percent chance of survival.

The average survival time
is about 3 months.

So, there is demographic of about
how 2 percent of people will survive.

Now, I was wondering why are we so bad
at detecting pancreatic cancer?

I mean, a society is advanced as ours

should have already been
able to detect this long ago.

What I found is that our "modern medicine"
is a 60 year old technique.

That's older than my dad.

(Laughter)

Also, it is grossly inaccurate.

It misses over 30 percent
of all pancreatic cancers.

In addition, it's pricey.

It costs over 800 dollars
and it is not covered by insurance plan.

So, it's not an option
to lower income patients.

In addition, it is rarely ordered

because pancreatic cancer is,
what we call, non symptomatic disease.

It doesn't show any symptoms.

Usually, they are just like really random
symptoms like abdominal pain.

Who doesn't have
abdominal pain sometimes.

(Laughter)

Then, what happened is --

I thought there has to be a better way
than this really crappy technique.

I started to setting up
the scientific criteria,

"How was I going to
detect pancreatic cancer?",

I mean, I was a 15 year old.

What I said, is it would have to be
inexpensive, rapid, simple,

sensitive, non-invasive,
and also selective.

So, then, I was researching.

I began to realize why we haven't
been able to detect pancreatic cancer.

What I found is that --
What you are doing is you are looking for

this tiny biomarker of protein
that is found in your blood stream.

And, that sounds very straightforward,
but it's anything but.

The problem is that, your blood,
it is already abundant in proteins.

You have liters and liters of it
in your body.

So, find this tiny increase
in this tiny amount of protein in there

is next to impossible.

Then, what I realized is that

what you are trying to do is kind of
like find a needle in a haystack.

Only worse, it is trying to find a needle
in the stack of nearly identical needles.

From there, what I did is
I began looking at my search online

because what other source does
a 15 year old kid have.

(Laughter)

I actually started with a database
of over 8,000 different proteins.

I just started chugging through these.

And, luckily, on the 4,000th try
and I hit gold.

I finally found this one protein

and I was next to insanity there.

The protein I found
was called mesothelin.

It is essentially your ordinary
run of the mill protein

unless you have pancreatic,
ovarian, or lung cancer.

In which case, it's found these extremely
high levels in your blood stream.

Then, the key here is that this protein
is found in the earliest stages of the disease

when you have close to
a 100% chance of survival.

So, if you could detect this, you would barely
have to worry about the cancer, then.

So then I started
shifting my focus to

how I was actually going to
detect this protein.

It came in the most unlikely of places.

My big breakthrough.

High school biology class.
(Laughter)

It is stifling of innovation.

Terrible!

(Laughter)

(Applause)

What I did is I kind of smuggled in
this scientific article

on these really cool things
called carbon nanotubes.

It was like under my jacket and I was
reading it under my desk.

A carbon nanotube,
you might wonder, what on earth is that?

It's essentially is a long thin
pipe of carbon.

It is one 50,000th of the diameter
of your hair and it is an atom thick.

So, it is extremely small.

But, it has extremely
amazing properties.

That's like the super hero
of material science.

Now, just as we were learning about --
or I was learning about these --

while I was reading the paper
and the amazing properties,

we were learning about this things
called antibodies.

An antibodies are
these super cool organic molecules.

They basically attach to
one protein and only that protein.

They are really particular.

It is kind of like
a lock and key molecule.

I was rolling around this concept,
how could I connect the carbon nanotube's

amazing properties to how this antibody
reacts with the only protein?

In this case,
the cancer biomarker, mesothelin.

Then it hit me.

What I could have, is this antibody,

I could put it in this network
of carbon nanotubes

such that it would react only
to the specific protein biomarker,

but also what I would do
is I changes its electrical properties

based on the amount of the protein present,
so much that I can measure it with

the 50 dollar ohmmeter
that I got from Home Depot.

Then, what I did is,

my biology teacher, she spots me,
she is like an eagle here.

She storms up red in the face.

She is like,
"What are you doing, young man?"

Snatches it out of my hand.

And, after the class, I finally beg with her
to give me back the article,

and, she eventually complied,

and, that was really all I cared
about from that experience.

(Laughter)

From there, what I did was
I started refining this cool idea I had.

Then, what happened is
I need a lab space

'cause I can't do cancer research
on my kitchen counter-top.

(Laughter)

So, then, what happened is
I wrote up this idea.

I made a materials list,
a procedure, a budget, and a timeline.

I emailed it
to 200 different professors

at Johns Hopkins University,
the National Institute of Health.

Basically, anyone who had
anything to do with pancreatic cancer.

They kind of expected I could sit back and
just relax, wait for the positive emails

to flow in and
me get accepted into a lab.

(Laughter)

Then, reality took hold.

And I got 199 rejections out of those 200
and 1 lukewarm "maybe."

That was kind of downheartening.

But, then what happened is
I pursued this maybe professor.

And, 3 month later,
I landed down a date with him.

I go in, on with the 500 plus
journal articles I have read.

What happened is
over the course of the interview

he keeps calling in more and more experts,
more and more.

They keep firing more and more questions
at me trying to pop a hole in my procedure.

Actually, I was kind of prepared for this
because, [in] one of the rejection emails,

the professor systematically went through
each of my procedure points

and slowly ripped it apart saying
how each and every one of them was a mistake.

So, I was kind of prepared for this.
I had a study guide.

(Laughter)

Then, what happened is
I finally got the lab space I needed.

Then, I began
on the 7 month long journey.

As soon as I started,
I was expecting,

"Oh, I am just going to chug through this
and be done in 3 months."

Actually,
it turned out to be 7 months

because, as soon as I started,
millions of mistakes started coming in.

I have realized my procedure wasn't
as perfect as I had initially thought.

Also another valuable lesson
I have learned from this is

that nothing is as simple
as it seems on paper.

From there, what I happened is
I painstakingly filled

each every one of those holes
in my procedure that I had found.

These include like blowing up
my cells in a sensor fridge,

killing my cells, and killing proteins,
and then, killing my carbon nanotubes.

I seemed to be killing everything.

But, eventually at the end,
I ended up with one small paper sensor

that could detect pancreatic,
ovarian, and lung cancer

with 100 percent accuracy.

Through this, I have learned a very
important lesson.

Through the Internet,
anything is possible.

Theories can be shared

and you don't have to be a professor
with multiple degrees

in order to have
your ideas valued.

It is just your ideas
that count on the Internet.

Being brave
and being fearless here to me is

that you don't have to use the Internet
in conventional ways.

We don't really need to see
your duckface pictures on the Internet.

(Laughter)
(Applause)

Instead, you could be changing the world
with the stuff you do on the Internet.

So, if I had done all my research on Google
and Wikipedia, and I am a 15 year old,

imagine what you could do.

Thank you.

(Applause)
(Cheers)