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Have you ever experienced a moment in your life

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that was so painful and confusing

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that all you wanted to do

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was learn as much as you could to make sense of it all?

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When I was 13, a close family friend

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who was like an uncle to me

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passed away from pancreatic cancer.

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When the disease hit so close to home,

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I knew I needed to learn more,

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so I went online to find answers.

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Using the internet, I found a variety of statistics

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on pancreatic cancer,

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and what I had found shocked me.

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Over 85 percent of all pancreatic cancers

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are diagnosed late,

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when someone has less than a two percent chance of survival.

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Why are we so bad at detecting pancreatic cancer?

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The reason? Today's current modern medicine

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is a 60-year old technique.

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That's older than my dad.

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(Laughter)

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But also, it's extremely expensive,

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costing 800 dollars per test,

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and it's grossly inaccurate,

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missing 30 percent of all pancreatic cancers.

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Your doctor would have to be ridiculously suspicious

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that you have the cancer in order to give you this test.

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Learning this, I knew there had to be a better way.

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So I set up a scientific criteria

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as to what a sensor would have to look like

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in order to effectively diagnose pancreatic cancer.

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The sensor would have to be inexpensive, rapid,

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simple, sensitive, selective,

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and minimally invasive.

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Now, there's a reason why this test

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hasn't been updated in over six decades,

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and that's because, when we're looking for pancreatic cancer,

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we're looking at your bloodstream,

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which is already abundant all these tons and tons of protein,

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and you're looking for this miniscule difference

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in this tiny amount of protein,

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just this one protein.

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That's next to impossible.

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However, undeterred due to my teenage optimism

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— (Applause) —

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I went online to a teenager's two best friends,

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Google and Wikipedia.

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I got everything from my homework from those two sources.

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And what I had found was an article

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that listed a database of over 8,000 different proteins

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that are found when you have pancreatic cancer.

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So I decided to go and make it my new mission

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to go through all these proteins and see which ones

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could serve as a biomarker for pancreatic cancer.

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And to make it a bit simpler for myself,

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I decided to map out a scientific criteria. And here it is.

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Essentially first, the protein would have to be found

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in all pancreatic cancers at high levels in the bloodstream

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in the earliest stages, but also only in cancer.

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And so I'm just plugging and chugging through this gargantuan task,

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and finally, on the 4,000 try,

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when I'm close to losing my sanity,

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I find the protein.

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And the name of the protein I'd located

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was called mesothelin,

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and it's just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill type protein,

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unless of course you have pancreatic,

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ovarian, and lung cancer,

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in which case it's found at these very high levels in your bloodstream.

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But also the key is

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that it's found in the earliest stages of the disease,

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when someone has close to a hundred percent chance

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of survival.

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So now that I'd found a reliable protein I could detect,

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I then shifted my focus to actually detecting that protein,

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and, thus, pancreatic cancer.

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Now, my breakthrough came in a very unlikely place,

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possibly the most unlikely place for innovation:

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my high school biology class,

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the absolute stifler of innovation.

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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And I had snuck in this article on these things called

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carbon nanotubes, and that's just a long, thin pipe of carbon

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that's an atom thick

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and one 50 thousandth the diameter of your hair.

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And despite their extremely small sizes,

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they have these incredible properties.

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They're kind of like the superheroes of material science.

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And while I was sneakily reading this article

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under my desk in my biology class,

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we were supposed to be paying attention

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to these other kind of cool molecules called antibodies.

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And these are pretty cool because they only react

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with one specific protein,

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but they're not nearly as interesting as carbon nanotubes.

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And so then, I was sitting in class,

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and suddenly it hit me:

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I could combine what I was reading about,

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carbon nanotubes,

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with what I was supposed to be thinking about, antibodies.

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Essentially, I could weave a bunch of these antibodies

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into a network of carbon nanotubes

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such that you have a network

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that only reacts with one protein,

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but also, due to the properties of these nanotubes,

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it would change its electrical properties

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based on the amount of protein present.

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However, there's a catch.

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These networks of carbon nanotubes are extremely flimsy,

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and since they're so delicate, they need to be supported.

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So that's why I chose to use paper.

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Making a cancer sensor out of paper

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is about as simple as making chocolate chip cookies,

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which I love.

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You start with some water, pour in some nanotubes,

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add antibodies, mix it up,

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take some paper, dip it, dry it,

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and you can detect cancer.

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(Applause)

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Then, suddenly, a thought occurred

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that kind of put a blemish on my amazing plan here.

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I can't really do cancer research

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on my kitchen countertop.

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My mom wouldn't really like that.

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So instead, I decided to go for a lab.

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So I typed up a budget, a materials list,

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a timeline, and a procedure,

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and I emailed it to 200 different professors

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at Johns Hopkins University

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and the National Institute of Health,

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essentially anyone that had anything to do with pancreatic cancer.

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And I sat back waiting for these positive emails to be pouring in,

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saying, "You're a genius!

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You're going to save us all!"

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And — (Laughter)

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Then reality took hold,

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and over the course of a month,

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I got 199 rejections out of those 200 emails.

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One professor even went through my entire procedure,

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painstakingly, I'm not really sure where he got all this time,

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and he went through and said why each and every step

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was like the worst mistake I could ever make.

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Clearly, the professors did not have as high

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of an opinion of my work as I did.

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However, there was a silver lining.

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One professor said, "Maybe I might be able to help you, kid."

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So I went in that direction.

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(Laughter)

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As you can never say no to a kid.

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And so then, three months later,

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I finally nailed down a harsh deadline with this guy,

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and I get into his lab,

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I get all excited, and then I sit down,

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I start opening my mouth and talking,

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and five seconds later he calls in another PhD.

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PhDs just like flock into this little room,

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and they're just firing these questions at me,

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and by the end, I kind of felt like I was in a clown car.

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There are 20 PhDs plus me and the professor

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crammed into this tiny office space

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with them firing these rapidfire questions at me,

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trying to sync my procedure.

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How unlikely is that? I mean, pshhh.

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(Laughter)

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However, subjecting myself to that interrogation,

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I answered all of their questions,

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and I guessed on quite a few but I got them right,

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and I finally landed the lab space I needed.

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But it was shortly afterwards that I discovered

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my once brilliant procedure

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had something like a million holes in it,

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and over the course of some months,

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I painstakingly filled each and every one of those holes.

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The result? One small paper sensor

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that costs three cents and takes five minutes to run.

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This makes it 168 times faster,

0:08:03.000,0:08:06.000
over 26,000 times less expensive,

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and over 400 times more sensitive

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than our current standard for pancreatic cancer detection.

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(Applause)

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One of the best parts of the sensor, though,

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is that it has close to a hundred percent accuracy,

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and can detect the cancer in the earliest stages

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when someone has close to a hundred percent chance of survival.

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And so in the next two to five years,

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this sensor could potentially lift for pancreatic cancer survival rates

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from a dismal 5.5 percent

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to close to a hundred percent,

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and it would do similar for ovarian and lung cancer.

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But it wouldn't stop there.

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By switching out that antibody,

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you can look at a different protein,

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thus, a different disease,

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potentially any disease in the entire world.

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So that ranges from heart disease

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to malaria, HIV, AIDS,

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as well as other forms of cancer, anything.

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And so hopefully one day

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we can all have that one extra uncle,

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that one mother, that one brother, sister,

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we can have that one more family member to love,

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and that our hearts will be rid of that one disease burden

0:09:19.000,0:09:23.000
that comes from pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancer,

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and potentially any disease,

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that through the internet anything is possible.

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Theories can be shared

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and you don't have to a professor

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with multiple degrees to have your ideas valued.

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It's a neutral space,

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where what you look like, age, or gender,

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it doesn't matter.

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It's just your ideas that count.

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For me, it's all about looking at the internet

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in an entirely new way

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to realize that there's so much more to it

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than just posting duck-face pictures of yourself online.

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You could be changing the world.

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So if a 15-year old

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who didn't even know what a pancreas was

0:10:00.000,0:10:04.000
could find a new way to detect pancreatic cancer,

0:10:04.000,0:10:07.000
just imagine what you could do.

0:10:07.000,0:10:10.000
Thank you.

0:10:10.000,0:10:14.000
(Applause)