Ready for Some Good News?

By ACCC Communications

Prepare to be inspired.

Richard Rossi, the keynote speaker at ACCC’s 31^st National Oncology Conference in San Diego, Calif., October 8-10, 2014, will introduce meeting attendees to some of the country’s most gifted teenage researchers who are already changing the future of cancer care.

“With all negative news in healthcare, with all the stress and challenges as a cancer care professional, this will be a wonderful opportunity to hear how young people have fundamentally changed the future of medical care by their interventions,” said Rossi. He co-founded the National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists, an educational enrichment organization that honors, inspires, and motivates the nation’s most promising future physicians.

“Jack Andracka. He’s 17, but when he was 14 and sitting in his science class, he imagined a way to diagnose pancreatic cancer in stage I,” said Rossi.

According to Jack’s Wikipedia entry, the idea for his pancreatic cancer test came to him while he was in high-school biology class, drawing on the class lesson about antibodies and an article on analytical methods using carbon nanotubes he was surreptitiously reading in class at the time. Afterward, he followed up with more research using Google Search on nanotubes and cancer biochemistry, aided by free online scientific journals.

“At age 15 he contacted 200 professors asking for lab space to test his thesis. One hundred and ninety-nine turned him down,” said Rossi. Finally, he received a positive reply from Anirban Maitra, Professor of Pathology, Oncology, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

The result of his project was a new dipstick-type diagnostic test for pancreatic cancer using a novel paper sensor, similar to that of the test strip for diabetes. This strip tests for the level of mesothelin, a soluble cancer biomarker, to determine whether a patient has early-stage pancreatic cancer. The test is over 90 percent accurate in detecting the presence of mesothelin.

“Jack is not an anomaly,” said Rossi. “The good news is that there are a whole bunch of young people making a huge difference in cancer research.”

And  cancer research is not the only area of oncology that’s engaging tomorrow’s leaders.

Some ACCC-member cancer programs are finding innovative ways to connect with the next generation of oncology professionals–from mentoring future oncology nurses to offering internship opportunities to tapping into the energy and enthusiasm of young volunteers in the community.

Stay tuned to ACCCBuzz for highlight’s from Rossi’s keynote talk, “The Good News About the Future of Medicine,” next Friday, October 10, 2014.

Rossi currently serves as president and executive director of the National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists. Its mission is to identify, encourage, and mentor students who wish to devote their lives to the service of humanity as physicians, medical scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians.

It’s not too late to attend the ACCC National Oncology Conference, learn more here.