Jack Andraka

Jack Andraka is an American high school student and the 2012 Intel Science Fair grand prize winner. Andraka was awarded the Gordon E. Moore Award for his work in developing a new method for detecting pancreatic cancer. The Gordon E. Moore Award, named in honor of the co-founder of Intel, is for $75,000. He also won other prizes in smaller individual categories for a total award of $100,500.

Background

Pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease with a five-year survival rate of 5.5%. One reason for this is the lack of a rapid, sensitive, inexpensive screening method.

Andraka won the award as a 15 year-old high school freshman at North County High School in Glen Burnie Maryland, United States.

As part of his project he created a new dipstick type diagnostic test for pancreatic cancer using a novel paper sensor that is, according to him, 168 times faster, 26,000 times less expensive (costing around three cents), and over 400 times more sensitive than the current diagnostic tests. He says the test is also effective for ovarian and lung cancer.

His inspiration to work on the project was brought about by the death of his uncle, who had suffered from pancreatic cancer. In an interview with the BBC, he said the idea came to him when he was "chilling out in biology class", and read about analytical methods using carbon nanotubes. He then did more Google research about them and cancer biochemistry, aided by free online scientific journals.

Subsequently, he began to think of various ways of preventing cancer growth and terminating the growth before the cancer cells become pervasive. He contacted around 200 professors from Johns Hopkins University with a plan and budget for his project in order to receive laboratory help from the professors. He received around 197 rejection letters until he received an acceptance from Dr. Anirban Maitra, Professor of Pathology, Oncology and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Maitra is very enthusiastic about Andraka's future. He told the Baltimore Sun "You're going to read about him a lot in the years to come... What I tell my lab is, 'Think of Thomas Edison and the light bulb.' This kid is the Edison of our times. There are going to be a lot of light bulbs coming from him."

Andraka's older brother, Luke, a junior at North County High, won $96,000 in prizes at the Intel ISEF two years ago, with a project that examined how acid mine drainage affected the environment. Last year Luke won an MIT THINK Award (Technology for Humanity guided by Innovation, Networking, and Knowledge), which recognizes students whose science projects benefit their communities.

The boys' father, Steve Andraka, is a civil engineer. Their mother, Jane Andraka, is an anesthetist. She told the Sun "... we're not a super-athletic family. We don't go to much football or baseball." "Instead we have a million [science] magazines [and] sit around the table and talk about how people came up with their ideas and what we would do differently."

Method

Andraka cultured MIA PaCa cells, from a commercial pancreatic carcinoma cell line, which overexpress mesothelin, a biomarker for pancreatic cancer; the mesothelin was isolated, concentrated and quantified with ELISA. After optimization with the Western Blot assay, the antibody to human mesothelin was dispersed with single walled carbon nanotubes and used to coat strips of filter paper. A scanning electron microscope was used to verify layering. Cell media spiked with varying amounts of mesothelin was applied to the paper and the change in electrical potential (due to the conditivity of the nanotubes) was measured before and after the application. A dose-response curve was constructed with an R² value of 99.92%. Tests on human blood serum obtained from both healthy people and patients with chronic pancreatitis, pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (a precursor to pancreatic carcinoma), or pancreatic cancer showed a similar response. The sensor’s limit of detection was found to be 0.156 ng/mL; 10 ng/mL is considered the level of overexpression of mesothelin consistent with pancreatic cancer. The sensor costs $3.00 and 10 tests can be performed per strip, taking 5 minutes each. The methos is 168 times faster, 26,667 times less expensive, and 400 times more sensitive than ELISA, and 25% to 50% more accurate than the CA10-9 test.

Officials at Intel have said that Andraka's method is more than 90 percent accurate in detecting the presence of mesothelin.

External links

• BBC page with video interview of Andraka