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Interesting and heart warming article in the Independent, hope for earlier diagnosis for pancreatic cancer?

A 15-year-old US high school student whose uncle died of pancreatic cancer has developed the first test for the disease that could detect tumours before they become too advanced to treat.

Pancreatic cancer has the lowest survival rate for any cancer,  which has remained unchanged for 40 years. It is symptomless in its early stages and strikes more than 8,000 people a year in the UK and 45,000 in the US. Four in five patients are inoperable by the time they are diagnosed and fewer than four in 100 live for five years.

Jack Andraka wrote from his home in Maryland to 200 professors seeking laboratory time to develop his idea for a screening test that would be as simple to use as a pregnancy test. The son of a civil engineer and an anaesthetist, he got the idea after researching the problem on the web and coming up with a system.

Of the 200 professors, 199 rejected or ignored him. But Professor Anirban Maitra, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, an expert in the genetics of pancreatic cancer, was intrigued. He invited Jack to come and speak to specialists in the disease who interrogated him for more than an hour.

At the end of the interview, the specialists were sufficiently impressed to allow him space in their laboratory to develop his system. The result was a dipstick paper sensor that detects the level of a protein called mesothelin in the urine (or blood) which is a biomarker for pancreatic cancer.

Click for full article.

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