Have you ever experienced a moment in your life that was so painful and confusing, that all you wanted to do was learn as much as you could to make sense of it all? When I was 13, a close family friend who was like an uncle to me passed away from pancreatic cancer. When the disease hit so close to home, I knew I needed to learn more. So I went online to find answers. Using the Internet, I found a variety of statistics on pancreatic cancer, and what I had found shocked me. Over 85 percent of all pancreatic cancers are diagnosed late, when someone has less than a two percent chance of survival. Why are we so bad at detecting pancreatic cancer? The reason? Today's current "modern" medicine is a 60-year-old technique. That's older than my dad. (Laughter) But also, it's extremely expensive, costing 800 dollars per test, and it's grossly inaccurate, missing 30 percent of all pancreatic cancers. Your doctor would have to be ridiculously suspicious that you have the cancer in order to give you this test. Learning this, I knew there had to be a better way. So, I set up scientific criteria as to what a sensor would have to look like in order to effectively diagnose pancreatic cancer. The sensor would have to be: inexpensive, rapid, simple, sensitive, selective, and minimally invasive. Now, there's a reason why this test hasn't been updated in over six decades. And that's because when we're looking for pancreatic cancer, we're looking at your bloodstream, which is already abundant in all these tons and tons of protein, and you're looking for this miniscule difference in this tiny amount of protein. Just this one protein. That's next to impossible. However, undeterred due to my teenage optimism -- (Laughter) (Applause) I went online to a teenager's two best friends, Google and Wikipedia. I got everything for my homework from those two sources. (Laughter) And what I had found was an article that listed a database of over 8,000 different proteins that are found when you have pancreatic cancer. So, I decided to go and make it my new mission to go through all these proteins, and see which ones could serve as a bio-marker for pancreatic cancer. And to make it a bit simpler for myself, I decided to map out scientific criteria, and here it is. Essentially, first, the protein would have to be found in all pancreatic cancers, at high levels in the bloodstream, in the earliest stages, but also only in cancer. And so I'm just plugging and chugging through this gargantuan task, and finally, on the 4,000th try, when I'm close to losing my sanity, I find the protein. And the name of the protein I'd located was called mesothelin, and it's just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill type protein, unless, of course, you have pancreatic, ovarian or lung cancer, in which case it's found at these very high levels in your bloodstream. But also, the key is that it's found in the earliest stages of the disease, when someone has close to 100 percent chance of survival. So now that I'd found a reliable protein I could detect, I then shifted my focus to actually detecting that protein, and thus, pancreatic cancer. Now, my breakthrough came in a very unlikely place, possibly the most unlikely place for innovation -- my high school biology class, the absolute stifler of innovation. (Laughter) (Applause) And I had snuck in this article on these things called carbon nanotubes, and that's just a long, thin pipe of carbon that's an atom thick, and one 50,000th the diameter of your hair. And despite their extremely small sizes, they have these incredible properties. They're kind of like the superheroes of material science. And while I was sneakily reading this article under my desk in my biology class, we were supposed to be paying attention to these other kind of cool molecules, called antibodies. And these are pretty cool because they only react with one specific protein, but they're not nearly as interesting as carbon nanotubes. And so then, I was sitting in class, and suddenly it hit me: I could combine what I was reading about, carbon nanotubes, with what I was supposed to be thinking about, antibodies. Essentially, I could weave a bunch of these antibodies into a network of carbon nanotubes, such that you have a network that only reacts with one protein, but also, due to the properties of these nanotubes, it will change its electrical properties, based on the amount of protein present. However, there's a catch. These networks of carbon nanotubes are extremely flimsy. And since they're so delicate, they need to be supported. So that's why I chose to use paper. Making a cancer sensor out of paper is about as simple as making chocolate chip cookies, which I love. (Laughs) You start with some water, pour in some nanotubes, add antibodies, mix it up, take some paper, dip it, dry it, and you can detect cancer. (Applause) Then, suddenly, a thought occurred that kind of put a blemish on my amazing plan here. I can't really do cancer research on my kitchen countertop. My mom wouldn't really like that. So instead, I decided to go for a lab. So I typed up a budget, a materials list, a timeline, and a procedure, and I emailed it to 200 different professors at Johns Hopkins University and the National Institutes of Health -- essentially, anyone that had anything to do with pancreatic cancer. I sat back waiting for these positive emails to be pouring in, saying, "You're a genius! You're going to save us all!" And -- (Laughter) Then reality took hold, and over the course of a month, I got 199 rejections out of those 200 emails. One professor even went through my entire procedure, painstakingly -- I'm not really sure where he got all this time -- and he went through and said why each and every step was like the worst mistake I could ever make. Clearly, the professors did not have as high of an opinion of my work as I did. However, there is a silver lining. One professor said, "Maybe I might be able to help you, kid." So, I went in that direction. (Laughter) As you can never say no to a kid. And so then, three months later, I finally nailed down a harsh deadline with this guy, and I get into his lab, I get all excited, and then I sit down, I start opening my mouth and talking, and five seconds later, he calls in another Ph.D. Ph.D.s just flock into this little room, and they're just firing these questions at me, and by the end, I kind of felt like I was in a clown car. There were 20 Ph.D.s, plus me and the professor crammed into this tiny office space, with them firing these rapid-fire questions at me, trying to sink my procedure. How unlikely is that? I mean, pshhh. (Laughter) However, subjecting myself to that interrogation -- I answered all their questions, and I guessed on quite a few but I got them right -- and I finally landed the lab space I needed. But it was shortly afterwards that I discovered my once brilliant procedure had something like a million holes in it, and over the course of seven months, I painstakingly filled each and every one of those holes. The result? One small paper sensor that costs three cents and takes five minutes to run. This makes it 168 times faster, over 26,000 times less expensive, and over 400 times more sensitive than our current standard for pancreatic cancer detection. (Applause) One of the best parts of the sensor, though, is that it has close to 100 percent accuracy, and can detect the cancer in the earliest stages, when someone has close to 100 percent chance of survival. And so in the next two to five years, this sensor could potentially lift the pancreatic cancer survival rates from a dismal 5.5 percent to close to 100 percent, and it would do similar for ovarian and lung cancer. But it wouldn't stop there. By switching out that antibody, you can look at a different protein, thus, a different disease -- potentially any disease in the entire world. So that ranges from heart disease, to malaria, HIV, AIDS, as well as other forms of cancer -- anything. And so, hopefully one day, we can all have that one extra uncle, that one mother, that one brother, sister, we can have that one more family member to love. And that our hearts will be rid of that one disease burden that comes from pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancer, and potentially any disease. But through the Internet, anything is possible. Theories can be shared, and you don't have to be a professor with multiple degrees to have your ideas valued. It's a neutral space, where what you look like, age or gender -- it doesn't matter. It's just your ideas that count. For me, it's all about looking at the Internet in an entirely new way, to realize that there's so much more to it than just posting duck-face pictures of yourself online. (Laughter) You could be changing the world. So if a 15 year-old who didn't even know what a pancreas was could find a new way to detect pancreatic cancer -- just imagine what you could do. Thank you. (Applause)
Pasaron algunha vez na vida un momento tan doloroso e confuso que o único que querían era aprender del o máximo posible para darlle sentido? Cando tiña 13 anos, un amigo da familia, que era coma se fose meu tío, faleceu de cancro de páncreas. Cando a enfermidade golpeou tan preto da casa, souben que tiña que aprender máis, así que fun á web na busca de respostas. Atopei datos estatísticos sobre o cancro de páncreas e o que encontrei sorprendeume. O 85% destes cancros detéctanse tarde, cando a supervivencia é inferior ao 2%. Por que non o detectamos con eficacia? A razón? A medicina usa técnicas de hai 60 anos. É máis vella có meu pai. (Risas) Ademais, son moi caras. Cada exame custa 800 dólares$ e son inexactas: detectan o 30 % dos cancros. O voso médico tería que ter fundadas sospeitas de que tedes cancro para pedir este exame. Sabía que debía haber un sistema mellor. Por iso, establecín criterios científicos para determinar como debería ser un sensor que diagnosticase con efectividade o cancro de páncreas. O sensor tería que ser de baixo custo, rápido, simple, sensible, selectivo e pouco invasivo. Hai unha razón pola que esa proba leva sesenta anos sen actualizarse. Porque cando buscamos cancro de páncreas, analizamos a corrente sanguínea, que está repleta de proteínas e buscamos unha diferenza minúscula neste volume de proteínas. Só unha proteína específica. É case imposible. Pero, grazas ao meu optimismo adolescente (Risas) (Aplausos) fun consultar os dous mellores amigos do adolescente: Google e a Wikipedia. De aí sacaba todo o necesario para facer os deberes. (Risas) E encontrei un artigo que enumeraba unhas 8000 proteínas presentes cando se ten cancro de páncreas. Por iso decidín seguir e facer disto a miña nova misión: analizar todas estas proteínas e ver cales poderían ser biomarcadores do cancro. E para simplificar un pouco o traballo, tracei un mapa cos criterios científicos. Velaquí o está. A proteína debe estar presente en todos os cancros pancreáticos, en altas concentracións na corrente sanguínea, nas etapas temperás, pero só no cancro. Estaba toleando con esta enorme tarefa e ao final, despois de 4000 intentos, cando estaba a punto de perder o xuízo, atopei a proteína. Chámase mesotelina, unha proteína común e corrente, agás que teñas cancro de páncreas, ovario ou pulmón, nese caso a concentración é alta. A clave é que está no inicio da doenza, cando a supervivencia é case do 100%. Xa atopara unha proteína para detectalo, entón centreime en detectar a proteína e, con ela, o cancro de páncreas. O meu achado chegou nun lugar insólito, no lugar menos probable para a innovación: a clase de bioloxía de secundaria, o inhibidor absoluto da innovación. (Risas) (Aplausos) Lin este artigo sobre algo chamado nanotubos de carbono, que son tubos finos e longos de carbono, do grosor dun átomo e 1/50000 do diámetro dun cabelo. E a pesar das súas pequenas dimensións, teñen propiedades incribles. Son os superheroes da ciencia dos materiais. Mentres lía este artigo, que tiña agachado baixo o meu pupitre na clase de bioloxía, supoñíase que lles atendía a outros interesantes tipos de moléculas: os anticorpos. Son moi interesantes porque só reaccionan a unha proteína específica, pero non tanto como os nanotubos. Así que estaba sentado nesa clase, e de súpeto decateime: podía combinar o que estivera lendo sobre os nanotubos de carbono con aquelo ao que supostamente lle atendera: os anticorpos. Podía tecer un feixe destes anticorpos para formar unha rede de nanotubos que só reaccionase a unha proteína e grazas ás propiedades dos nanotubos, cambiaría as súas propiedades eléctricas en función do número de proteínas presentes. Pero hai un problema. Estas redes de nanotubos son moi débiles. Son tan finos, que precisan un soporte. Por iso elixín usar papel. Facer un sensor de cancro con papel é tan simple como facer galletas con labras de chocolate... encántame!. (Risas) Comézase con auga, bótanse uns cantos nanotubos, engádense anticorpos, mestúrase, cóllese papel, móllase, sécase e pódese detectar o cáncer. (Aplausos) Logo, de repente, caín na conta de que había un defecto no meu plan. Non podo investigar sobre o cancro no mesado da cociña. A miña nai non lle gustaría. Polo tanto, decidín buscar un laboratorio. Elaborei orzamento, material, calendario e procedemento e envieilles correos a 200 profesores distintos da Johns Hopkins University e dos Institutos Nacionais de Saúde. basicamente, a calquera que tivera algo que ver co cancro de páncreas. E senteime a agardar polas respostas positivas que dirían: “Es un xenio! Vasnos salvar!” E... (Risas) Despois impúxose a realidade e, ao cabo dun mes, rexeitáranme en 199 dos 200 correos. Un profesor revisou todo o procedemento, --non sei de onde sacou o tempo-- e explicoume punto por punto por que cada paso era un enorme erro. Obviamente, os profesores non tiñan unha opinión tan alta do meu traballo. Con todo, había unha físgoa de esperanza. Un dixo: “Talvez poida axudarche, rapaz”. Así que fun nesa dirección. (Risas) Nunca se pode dicir "non" a un rapaciño. E así, tres meses máis tarde, acordei unha reunión con este home, fun ao laboratorio, entusiasmado, senteime abrín a boca e comecei a falar. Cinco segundos despois chama a outro doutor. O cuarto énchese de doutores que comezaron a torpedearme a preguntas e sentíame coma un espectáculo de feira. Estabamos 20 doutores, o profesor e mais eu, amoreados nesa pequena oficina e eles bombardeándome a preguntas, tratando de afundir o meu procedemento. Que probabilidade ten? En fin… (Risas) Porén, sometinme ao interrogatorio, respondín todas as preguntas, algunhas ao chou, pero acertei, e conseguín o espazo de laboratorio que precisaba. Pouco despois descubrín que o meu brillante procedemento tiña un millón de buratos, e ao longo de 7 meses, fun tapando minuciosamente cada un deles. O resultado? Un sensor de papel de 3 centavos que funciona en 5 minutos. Isto é 168 veces máis rápido, máis de 26000 veces máis barato e 400 veces máis sensible ca o actual test de detección de cancro de páncreas. (Aplausos) Unha das mellores partes do sensor é que ten preto do 100% de precisión e pode detectar o cancro nos seus inicios cando se ten case o 100 % de posibilidades de supervivencia. E así, nos próximos dous a cinco anos este sensor podería elevar a supervivencia dun triste 5,5 % a case o 100 %, e o mesmo se podería dicir para os cancros de ovario e pulmón. Pero iso non é todo. Cambiando o anticorpo, podemos ver outra proteína e outra doenza, en teoría calquera enfermidade do mundo. Abrangue desde doenzas cardíacas ata malaria, VIH, sida,, así como outros tipos de cancro --todo. E quizais, un día, todos poidamos ter un tío extra, esa nai, ese irmán, esa irmá, todos poidamos ter ese familiar que amamos e que os nosos corazóns se libren da carga que supón a enfermidade vinculada ao cancro de páncreas, ovario e pulmón ou calquera outra enfermidade. Grazas a internet todo é posible. As teorías compártense e non é preciso ser un profesor con moitos títulos para que as túas ideas se valoren. É un espazo neutral, onde o aspecto, a idade ou o sexo tanto teñen. O que importa son as ideas. Trátase de utilizar internet doutro xeito e decatarse de que hai moito máis que publicar autofotos poñendo cariñas. (Risas) Poderiades cambiar o mundo. Se un rapaz de 15 anos que non sabía qué era o páncreas. atopou unha forma nova de detectar o cancro de páncreas imaxinade o que podedes facer vós. Grazas. (Aplausos)