There is hope for American youth. He is seeking a patent.http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=24773
New test for pancreatic cancer
- Thread starter Gregadd
- Start date
It is a great story. Comments were interesting too. This one caught my eye. Love to hear from the medical folks here:
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I don't know if this kid did it almost entirely by himself, maybe he did, and kudo to him.
But how many other kids project are their parents/relatives doing?
Here is a comment posted on Slashdot by vlm that is really interesting.
quote:
Who did the work? I'm not thinking the kid did. He may have "developed" it in the same sense that modern americans talk about how they are "building a house" when they really mean cutting a check for someone else to build it.
I'm thinking most of the list is "This is what my dad does at work and this is what they did while I watched them".
Plausible projects that could actually be done by kids would be:
"Euglena: The Solution to Nanosilver Pollution" Nothing too unobtainable here, nothing requiring a weird environment, clearly possible in a basement, or in my basement anyway.
"Design and Creation of Small Wind-Power Engines for Low Wind Speeds Based on Magnus Effect" Totally designable and buildable by a kid, key word being "small" and "low speed"
"Repelling Effect of Plant Extracts on Bees-A Study on Preventing Bees from Pesticide Toxicity" Plenty of normal civilians keep bees, at least in rural areas, coincidentally same place plants to extract and pesticides to sample also reside. Totally believable that a smart hard working kid could do this alone.
"Effect of Food Types on Quantity and Nutritional Quality of Weaver Ant". Ants, we got em. Food, we got it too. Can we count? Yes we can. Sounds like good science doable by an actual kid.
Implausible projects that could not have been done by kids:
"A Study of the Endogenous Activity Rhythms of the Marine Isopod Exosphaeroma truncatitelson" Where does a kid get that and the testing environment necessary?
"Analysis of Photon-Mediated Entanglement between Distinguishable Matter Qubits" Oh come on. Well I'll head on over to home depot and get a can of qubits on the way home from school, and then...
"DNA Repair Mechanisms: Investigations of Base Excision Repair Pathway in Differentiated and Proliferative Neuronal CAD Cells" Oh come on. How big was the lab that did this work? 50 people and 10 million bucks of gear maybe?
"Synthesis of Trimethylguanosine Cap Analogues with the Potential Use in Gene Therapy" Oh come on
"Synthesis of Triazene Compounds and Their Application in Spectrophotometric Determination of Cadmium" Nobody's doing cadmium work outside a lab, at least without turning the basement into a "radioactive boyscout" situation. I would promote this to "possible" if and only if it were done as independent study at a high school chem lab.
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I don't know if this kid did it almost entirely by himself, maybe he did, and kudo to him.
But how many other kids project are their parents/relatives doing?
Here is a comment posted on Slashdot by vlm that is really interesting.
quote:
Who did the work? I'm not thinking the kid did. He may have "developed" it in the same sense that modern americans talk about how they are "building a house" when they really mean cutting a check for someone else to build it.
I'm thinking most of the list is "This is what my dad does at work and this is what they did while I watched them".
Plausible projects that could actually be done by kids would be:
"Euglena: The Solution to Nanosilver Pollution" Nothing too unobtainable here, nothing requiring a weird environment, clearly possible in a basement, or in my basement anyway.
"Design and Creation of Small Wind-Power Engines for Low Wind Speeds Based on Magnus Effect" Totally designable and buildable by a kid, key word being "small" and "low speed"
"Repelling Effect of Plant Extracts on Bees-A Study on Preventing Bees from Pesticide Toxicity" Plenty of normal civilians keep bees, at least in rural areas, coincidentally same place plants to extract and pesticides to sample also reside. Totally believable that a smart hard working kid could do this alone.
"Effect of Food Types on Quantity and Nutritional Quality of Weaver Ant". Ants, we got em. Food, we got it too. Can we count? Yes we can. Sounds like good science doable by an actual kid.
Implausible projects that could not have been done by kids:
"A Study of the Endogenous Activity Rhythms of the Marine Isopod Exosphaeroma truncatitelson" Where does a kid get that and the testing environment necessary?
"Analysis of Photon-Mediated Entanglement between Distinguishable Matter Qubits" Oh come on. Well I'll head on over to home depot and get a can of qubits on the way home from school, and then...
"DNA Repair Mechanisms: Investigations of Base Excision Repair Pathway in Differentiated and Proliferative Neuronal CAD Cells" Oh come on. How big was the lab that did this work? 50 people and 10 million bucks of gear maybe?
"Synthesis of Trimethylguanosine Cap Analogues with the Potential Use in Gene Therapy" Oh come on
"Synthesis of Triazene Compounds and Their Application in Spectrophotometric Determination of Cadmium" Nobody's doing cadmium work outside a lab, at least without turning the basement into a "radioactive boyscout" situation. I would promote this to "possible" if and only if it were done as independent study at a high school chem lab.
AMIR- I saw his interview on one of the morning shows. It aopears one of his relatives died from undetected pancreatic cancer. he sought a solution. His mother is a anesthesiaologist and his father is a civil engineer. I am sure he had help.
Yeh, I just thought it was strange that his brother also got a $90K award. I think the real story is that medical people are useless without an engineer helping them. 
I wouldn't get too excited about this. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is a horrible disease. Even if detected at it's earliest stage it has ~14% five year survival. Even so, stage is often underestimated. Treatments are draconian and often worse than the disease.
Ultimately, a screening test is only good if early intervention significantly improves survival. Unfortunately, this is not the case for pancreatic carcinoma. I once had an attending describe detecting early stage pancreatic carcinoma akin to being a long term survivor at Auschwitz; you live a bit longer in absolute misery and death is inevitable.
Ultimately, a screening test is only good if early intervention significantly improves survival. Unfortunately, this is not the case for pancreatic carcinoma. I once had an attending describe detecting early stage pancreatic carcinoma akin to being a long term survivor at Auschwitz; you live a bit longer in absolute misery and death is inevitable.
Mark: But wouldn't this test possibly change what might be defined as early stage and perhaps increase survival.
But you and Steve are right. Prognosis isn't good; best Rx I know is this doc out in LI (who started at NJCMD) who uses radiolabelled Ab to treat pancreatic cancer. Might give them 2 years or so.
The radio labeled monoclonal antibodies approach is very clever. I think that the development of biologics is very interesting, though not quite as standarized as that for small molecules...yet.
If that means what i think it does it says thats sad. From someone who lost one friend to pancreatic cancer and another to ovarian. cancer My niece enjoyed early detection of ovarian cancer. She was saved by surgical intervention and is now the mother of two beautiful children.
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/pancreatic/Patient/page2
http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/PancreaticCancer/DetailedGuide/pancreatic-cancer-survival-rates
Pretty dismal and maybe only matched by glioblatomas. The only caveat and Mark or Steve could confirm, is the rare situation when a tumor is found is one of the lobes (which one escapes me now).
The pancreas forms from the fusion of ventral and dorsal anlagen. Pancreatic head cancers tend to present earlier due to the proximity of exquisite anatomy (common bile duct, blood vessels, etc). Those in the body and tail tend to be larger at presentation. Either way, it's a lousy diagnosis.
Thanks Mark! Been away from it too long
Ironically, I detested anatomy and emryology my first year of medical school and I end up spending all day doing applied anatomy and embryology.
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