Jack Andraka
Cancer detector inventor
A paper on carbon nanotubes, a biology lecture on antibodies and a flash of insight led 15-year-old Jack Andraka to design a cheaper, more sensitive cancer detector.
Why you should listen
After Andraka’s proposal to build and test his idea for a pancreatic cancer detector was rejected from 199 labs, the teen landed at Johns Hopkins. There, he built his device using inexpensive strips of filter paper, carbon nanotubes and antibodies sensitive to mesothelin, a protein found in high levels in people with pancreatic cancer. When dipped in blood or urine, the mesothelin adheres to these antibodies and is detectable by predictable changes in the nanotubes’ electrical conductivity.
In preliminary tests, Andraka’s invention has shown 100 percent accuracy. It also finds cancers earlier than current methods, costs a mere 3 cents and earned the high schooler the 2012 Intel Science Fair grand prize.
What others say
This kid is the Edison of our times. There are going to be a lot of light bulbs coming from him
Jack Andraka’s TED Talk
More news and ideas from Jack Andraka
Q&A
On raising kids who are more than “hoop jumpers”: A teenage TED speaker’s mom on how she encourages her sons to innovate
April 13, 2015
Jane Andraka has raised two remarkable sons. Luke, age 20, is studying electrical engineering at Virginia Tech. “He was always tinkering and taking things apart — wondering how they worked, wondering how they could be made better. He had ideas coming out of his brain like a firehose,” she says. Meanwhile, Jack, age 18, is […]
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TED News in the Brief: J. Craig Venter creates biological fax machine, Jack Andraka honored by Vatican, and more
November 19, 2013
Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of TED-related news items in the ether. Here, some highlights: J. Craig Venter (watch his talks on creating “synthetic life” and sampling the ocean’s DNA) has come up with what The New York Times describes as “a biological fax machine.” Huh? In brief, Venter wants to detect life […]
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The one rule in Jack Andraka’s basement laboratory—don’t burn the house down
October 14, 2013
A stark contrast on last night’s episode of 60 Minutes: veteran journalist Morley Safer, age 81, interviewing Jack Andraka, age 16, who has developed a promising new test for pancreatic cancer. In the segment, Andraka tells the story he told on the TED2013 stage, of how a family friend succumbing to this deadly disease triggered […]
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