Following the death of a close victim of pancreatic cancer, the young Jack Andraka, is interested in this disease and discovers that there is no screening test efficient to detect it.
An identified biomarker
the pancreatic cancer, which particularly affects men after 50 years, offers a grim prognosis. Symptoms often do not appear until late, which makes treatment less easy and reduces the chances of recovery. The survival rate is less than 5% 5 years after the diagnosis… This is why the idea of a simple and rapid screening test arouses so much enthusiasm.
It is while surfing the net via google and wikipedia that Jack Andraka conducts his research on pancreatic cancer. Among the thousands of proteins present in patients, the teenager focuses his attention on mesothelin. For him, it is a relevant biomarker for this cancer.
To make his idea a reality, Jack Andraka contacted no less than 200 scientists in the United States. Only Dr. Anirba Maitra, oncologist at Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, shows interest in the young man. He even goes so far as to invite her to conduct his research in his laboratory to the great relief of the boy’s mother who feared that her kitchen would turn into a research center.
A discovery subject to caution
The test is very simple. It suffices to place a drop of blood on a test strip of paper in order to detect the presence of mesothelin and therefore according to the boy, to identify a Cancer of the pancreas even at an early stage. Result: an effective test in 5 minutes, which costs only 6 cents and offers a reliability rate of 90%!
For his discovery, the 16-year-old young man won the International Scientific and Technical Prize – Intel 2012 accompanied by a nice check for $ 75,000. This prize rewards young adolescents with an original scientific project.
However, some members of the scientific community are cautious about this discovery. In fact, mesothelin is not specific to pancreatic cancer. This protein is also produced by cancer cells in the event, for example, of ovarian cancer or from mesothelioma (damage in particular of the pleura which covers the lungs).