Pancreatic Cancer, Open Source, 15 year old's perseverance and brilliance

Steve Jobs, Patrick Swayze (Dirty dancing), Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture), Luciano Pavarotti (Italian Opera Singer) have all had a battle with Pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the toughest cancer to diagnose and treat. The survival rates are dismal, 5% at 5 years and there are no easy ways to diagnose or screen early. There can be variations  in survival based on the histology like neuroendocrine tumors doing well. CA 19.9 is a biomarker available for pancreatic cancer but with not that great sensitivity or specificity. It can raised in benign conditions like biliary tract obstruction, cholangitis, inflammatory bowel disease, acute and chronic pancreatitis, liver cirrhosis, cystic fibrosis, thyroid disease!!

There is light at the end of the tunnel. A 15 year old took up this challenege, went through open source articles and has created a cheaper and more effective way to diagnose pancreatic cancer early!

Watch this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq4x8C6Dcf8

This finding is yet to be peer reviewed. It is not indexed in pubmed but he does get a mention...http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3392557/

We have a long way to go but progress is being made.......