[News] High school freshman wins at science, cancer research

[Piotyr]

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...tic-Cancer-179996151.html?c=y&story=fullstory

So, this is a little old, but I just heard about it yesterday, and didn't see anything about this.

I'm generally pretty skeptical about purported advancements in cancer research I hear about on the news, since news outlets are generally highly sensational and low on facts, but the more I read about this, the more promising it sounds.

Jack Andraka won last year's Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, the first time a freshman in high school ever won the award. What did he do, though? He created a method for early pancreatic cancer detection that is both insanely inexpensive ($3 per test strip compared to $800 per current test) and wildly accurate (99% effective in tests to this point compared to a 30% success rate of current tests for early detection).

From another article:

A nanotube sensor with a targeted antibody is extremely sensitive. In a single-blinded test of 100 patient samples, Andraka’s sensor spotted the presence of mesothelin, a protein commonly used as a biomarker for pancreatic cancer, at a limit of 0.156 nano grams per milliliter, well below the 10 ng/mL considered an overexpression of mesothelin consistent with pancreatic cancer. It’s also 100 times more selective than existing diagnostic tests, which means no false positives or false negatives. It ignored healthy patient samples as well as those with mere pancreatitis. Compared with the 60-year-old diagnostic technique called enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (or ELISA), used in pregnancy test strips and viral checks for HIV, West Nile and hepatitis B, Andraka’s sensor is 168 times faster, 26,667 times less expensive, and 400 times more sensitive. It can spot the presence of the cancer-linked protein well before the cancer itself becomes invasive. This could save the lives of thousands of pancreatic cancer victims each year. The sensor costs $3 (ELISA can cost up to $800) and ten tests can be performed per strip, with each test taking five minutes. It can be used also to monitor resistance to antibiotics and follow the progression of treatment of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiation.

The test is simply a strip of filter paper covered in a layer of nanotubes, and covered in antibodies designed to attract the mesothelin protein. Jack noticed that the conductivity of the paper changed when the protein attached itself to the paper, so detecting the cancer was as simple as noting the difference in conductivity using any electrical meter.

 

[Eriol]

Very cool. Great advancement. I hope it gets picked up and becomes widespread. And hopefully the cheapness continues, though they'll probably spend a couple of hundred-thousand more on "safety" trials, and then sell the strips for $799 dollars each, so that it's still "cheaper" than the $800. But I'm pretty cynical.

 

[Chad Sexington]

People just don't give kids enough credit. That's pretty freaking cool.

 

[blotsfan]

Wait, the old tests were 30% effective? Wouldn't that mean its 70% effective but they read it backwards?

 

[Chad Sexington]

Wait, the old tests were 30% effective? Wouldn't that mean its 70% effective but they read it backwards?

Huh? If a test is right 30% of the time, then it's wrong 70% of the time. I don't see how reading it 'backwards' is meaningful?

 

[Eriol]

Wait, the old tests were 30% effective? Wouldn't that mean its 70% effective but they read it backwards?

They mean that this test can detect it very VERY early, whereas at the point where this test is 99% effective, the "old" tests were only effective at detection 30% of the time. And this test remains effective after that too.

At least that's how I read it.

 

[GasBandit]

Or, to put it another way, given the old test, for every 3 people who came back positive, 7 more came back negative but were found later to have that cancer after all, and accurate negatives don't figure in at all.

 

[drawn_inward]

I was skateboarding and generally being an asshole teenager when I was his age. Damn. Good for him - hope it goes somewhere and not swallowed up by some biotech firm and squashed.

As for being skeptical about cancer research, I certainly am. The way science is funded pretty much guarantees no one "curing" cancer. Though, I am a bit cynical. The kind of science this kid did is what is needed. Discovery based, let's-figure-this-shit-out kind of work.

 

[PatrThom]

So the lesson we learn is:
Pay attention, look for things that don't fit the expected, form and test hypotheses, ???, profit.

--Patrick