There is an extremely young scientist

For a long time, the world science world is buzzing about the case of Jack Thomas Andraka, which is considered an American inventor, scientist and researcher.

The first tumult because I was very young, was born in 1997, which means that this year is just 21 years old, but usually it will take another year to finish college, and the second is that I have launched and won an award for a potential method to detect the early stages of pancreatic cancer and some other cancers that she had done while still a high school student, at the age of 17.

Young scientist Jack Thomas Andraka in the laboratory.

According to Andraka , she invented a new type of sensor, similar to diabetes test strips, to screen early pancreatic cancer. This sensor is a strip of paper coated with single-walled carbon nanotubes to help increase electrical conductivity and resist human biological resistance, to measure the level of mesothelin (a biomarker of suspected cancer. ) in a sample to check for the presence of cancer in the patient. Samples containing mesothelin have been applied to these test strips , and the attachment of mesothelin to antibodies is quantified by measuring changes in the electrical properties of the strip.

Andraka said that human serum tests were obtained from both healthy people and patients with chronic pancreatitis, pancreatic carcinoma (precursor to pancreatic cancer), or pancreatic cancer showed reactions. dose-dependent.

In my opinion, this method is 168 times faster than traditional methods, 1⁄26.667 more expensive and 40 times more sensitive than LAISA, 25% to 50% more accurate than CA19-9 and more 90% accurate in detecting the presence of mesothelin.

Andraka's device has been tested on a patient with a feeling of pancreatic cancer in 2012 in the presence of the media. She also said that the motivation for her to carry out this work was due to the death of pancreatic cancer of a close friend with her family, as well as the inspiration from previous professors' materials.

And the biggest thing she learned was that patients died of pancreatic cancer due to lack of early detection and lack of effective screening methods. So, I began to think about various ways to detect and prevent the development of cancer and stop growth before cancer cells become invasive.

In an interview with the BBC, Andraka said the idea of ​​testing pancreatic cancer until she was studying biology at North County High School (Maryland, USA), drawing lessons on antibodies and article on analytical methods using carbon nanotubes. Later, with the help of free online scientific journals, she continued to study more about nanotubes and cancer biochemistry.

Andraka said, when the study was successful, she contacted 200 professors at Johns Hopkins University and the National Institutes of Health to apply for funding, plans and time for the project, hoping to receive it. a place in the laboratory. 199 professors refused and finally only TS. Anirban Maitra, Professor of Pathology, Cancer, Chemical Engineering and Molecular Biology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, accepts Andraka to work at his lab. In October 2013, Andraka appeared as a guest on US television show The Colbert Report to give a presentation on her work.

Before the great success of Andraka, of course, there was no shortage of criticism in the scientific world. What is the concentration in mesothelin in healthy blood donors is not statistically different from the serum concentration in pancreatic cancer patients. And according to TS. Ira Pastan, who discovered mesothelin, said that Andraka's method "has no scientific meaning" .

So, waiting for a few more years of testing will be necessary to determine Andraka's method. However, it is important to know that I won the Gordon E. Moore Prize (2012, age 15), Intel's International Science and Technology Fair in 2013 (at age 16), the 4th Prize in Chemistry from the National Jefferson Award 2014 (at the age of 17), Samuel S. Beard Award for the largest public service for people under thirty-five and in 2015 (at age 18) won the Coca-Cola Foundation scholarship.