Teen Invents Cancer Detector Worth $15; Now He's Going for a $10 Million XPrize Award

Now, people can already diagnose cancer at the comfort of their home as teen invents cancer detector device that is easy to use and as cheap as $15.

In 2012, Jack Andraka, a teen who invented cancer detector, had already won a $75,000 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair Award with his revolutionary sensor strip that acts as a pancreatic cancer detecting device, and this year, he is back once again to grab the $10 Million XPrize Grant.

The super curious teen inventor who successfully created a pioneering cancer detector device described himself as a medical entrepreneur, an education activits and global change maker. And for the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE competition, the teen inventor, Jack Andraka is working with a team which is made up of two other finalists from Intel to create a device that is a size of a smart phone which can effectively make reliable health diagnoses and be available anytime and anywhere for consumers.

The Intel ISEF awardee and teen inventor, Jack Andraka who made cool and awesome invention has designed a device can detect cancer, environmental contaminants and even explosives. The $15 cancer-detector also makes use of an iPhone and an off-the-shelf laser pointer, which has the capacity to tell the composition of a certain sample based on its interaction with the light. According to the teen inventor, the device is 168,000 times faster; only needs 5 minutes to run; 26,000 times less expensive; and yes, it is close to a hundred percent accuracy.

The self-taught teen inventor of the cancer detector, Jack Andraka, says, "You could do cancer diagnostics from the comfort of your own home, you could have citizen scientists go down to their streams and measure the pollution, as well as in war zones, for example, where you could measure for explosive devices." 

The teen inventor's mom, Jane Andraka said that Jack started to make and test his hypotheses even when he is small. "He's testing them, even though he didn't know what he was doing. He was always testing his environment and see what will happen... She also said, "Jack is super curious. He's always reading. He's reading journals and he's always online looking up things. He's seeing what's going on.