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pancreatic cancer

Heroes

Alex Trebek just gave an inspiring one-year update on his pancreatic cancer journey

Jeopardy/Twitter

Alex Trebek, the beloved long-time host of Jeopardy!, has shared an update on his cancer journey to Twitter.

Speaking directly to viewers, Trebek explained that the one-year survival rate for stage 4 pancreatic cancer is 18%. For sure, seeing him so full of life and health at this one-year mark is something to celebrate.

However, he explained that the journey so far has not always been easy. He's had days when he thought that if the cancer didn't kill him, the chemo would. He has also had times when he felt very depressed and wondered if it was really worth continuing to fight.

"But I brushed that aside quickly," he said, explaining that his losing hope would have been "a betrayal" to his wife, to other cancer survivors who look to him for inspiration, to his faith, and to the millions who have prayed for him over the past year.

And of course, he left us with some classic Alex Trebek positivity and encouragement, while promising to keep us posted.

So happy that you are still with us, Alex. You are a wonderful inspiration for us all.

A one-year update from Alex: https://t.co/W9101suZeZ
— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy!) 1583337606.0

From Your Site Articles

Before her sudden death, his coworker sent him 14 inspiring notes across the world.

10 years ago, JP Caudill couldn't run a mile. Recently, he ran seven marathons in seven days across all seven continents.

By the time we hit 30, many of us are wrapping up whatever athletic accomplishments we'll ever set out to achieve. Caudill was just getting started.

"I knew running was something I was bad at and didn’t enjoy," Caudill said. "So, I just a set a goal of one mile on the treadmill at the gym."

A few weeks later, he hit his goal and had the itch for running. A few years later, he ran his first marathon. And now, just after his 40th birthday, he pulled off a dramatic feat of running 183 miles in less a week from Cape Town to Miami. Along the way he raised over $10,000 for pancreatic cancer research.

As he began his epic journey, he found a huge surprise that ended up serving as a powerful source of inspiration: his co-worker Koren Pandelakis-Dunn had quietly reached out to his friends and family to create personalized notes at the beginning and end of each marathon race. She even wrote one herself.

"The remarkable part, aside from her doing this in the first place, is that she took the time to find friends and family she didn’t know whatsoever — even my parents!" Caudill said.

All photos courtesy of JP Caudill.

Caudill has learned to use loss as a motivation for good deeds and personal growth.

After Caudill's grandmother passed away from pancreatic cancer 10 years ago, his family went to visit her sister in Germany. "I felt horribly out of shape," he said about walking around with his family during the visit. "I came back and wanted to do something about it."

After signing up for the World Marathon Challenge, he decided to use the event to launch a fundraiser on behalf of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

First, Caudill reached out to friends, family, and coworkers. Then, he handcrafted purple candles, set up prize auctions, and even coordinated with a local brewery to create his own special fundraising brew, which he says was "by far" the biggest draw. By the time the marathon challenge began, he'd hit his goal of $10,000, and the donations are still coming in.

"I know it's just a drop in the bucket of what is needed for this research," he says, adding that he hopes his story will help raise awareness.

Pandelakis-Dunn knew that Caudill was taking on an incredible challenge and like so many people around him she wanted to help.

That's when she began collecting the letters to send to him on his journey.

However, just two days after he returned home from his continent-hopping challenge, he was hit with tragic news: His co-worker Pandelakis-Dunn had died suddenly and unexpectedly of an illness. The notes were literally the last time he would communicate with her.

"I never got a chance to see her and tell her how awesome that was," Caudill says.

The notes JP received.

‌We're all capable of making a difference when we're motivated.

Despite his incredible accomplishment, Caudill is quick to emphasize that all it takes to make a difference is staying focused on a goal larger than yourself.

During times of doubt, he leaned on the promise he'd made to raise money for cancer research and often thought of those notes Pandelakis-Dunn had arranged for him, knowing he'd only get to see the next message if he completed his current race and made it to the next stage.

"I am and will always be so grateful for what for Koren did for me and for all the incredible encouragement I received from my family & friends through the notes," Caudill says. "It made each Marathon and the Challenge so much more special than it already was."

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Heroes

199 labs turned him down. This teen made a groundbreaking discovery at the 200th.

True

This is Jack Andraka. And trust me, you're going to want to remember that name.

Photo by XPRIZE Foundation/Flickr (altered).

Check out this short video on Jack's unbelievable scientific breakthrough, and then scroll down to see how this teenage whiz kid made it happen.

Jack's beef with pancreatic cancer is a personal one.

At 14, he lost a close family friend to the ruthless and aggressive disease. The pancreas sits deep inside the body and is difficult to scan. There's no hallmark symptom or lump to alert people to the growing danger.

The pancreas (enlarged in red) is nestled right in your abdomen near your liver, stomach, and gallbladder. Image by iStock.

So by the time someone with pancreatic cancer goes to the doctor, it's usually because the disease has spread to other organs. That's why an estimated 72% of patients with pancreatic cancer will die within one year of their diagnosis. And more than 40,000 people die from the disease each year.

But Jack turned his grief into action and set about developing a reliable test for pancreatic cancer.

Passionate about science, Jack ravenously read everything he could about the disease and its biomarkers, characteristics about the disease that are easily measured.

Jack's test for pancreatic cancer is based on a few important but seemingly unrelated ideas. Hold on tight, because it's about to get real science-y in here.

1. Carbon nanotubes are smaller than small — about 1/50,000th the diameter of a human hair. But you can use these microscopic tubes to make tiny networks that conduct electricity.

All GIFs via Upworthy/YouTube.

2. Antibodies like to attach to different proteins in the blood.

3. Mesothelin is one of the biomarkers of pancreatic cancer. It's a protein that the body produces when the cancer is in its early stage.

While Jack was sitting in class one day, it all came together.

As he surreptitiously read an article about carbon nanotubes during class, his biology teacher was giving a lecture on antibodies.

That's when it hit him.

Jack had the brilliant idea to coat a carbon nanotube network with mesothelin. The antibodies would bind to it and get bigger.

As the molecules enlarged, the nanotubes would expand too, changing the network's electrical properties. That change in electricity is quick, easy, and affordable to measure. Eureka!

While Jack had a great working theory, he needed a way to test his hypothesis.

He went home and wrote up his budget, procedure, materials, and timeline, then sent it to 200 cancer research labs, asking for their help. 199 said no.

But one, Dr. Anirban Maitra, then a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University and now the chief pancreatic cancer researcher at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said yes.

With Dr. Maitra's good news, Jack likely did something like this. Photo by iStock.

"It was a very unusual e-mail,” Maitra told Smithsonian Magazine. “I often don’t get e-mails like this from postdoctoral fellows, let alone high-school freshmen.”

Dr. Maitra let him come into the lab at Johns Hopkins to work on his project.

Maitra's yes didn't just come with lab access; it came with the assistance of Maitra's team of Ph.D. researchers, just the kind of team Jack needed to get the job done.

Jack went in after school and on weekends to work on his research. After seven months of preliminary tests and refinements, it started to work.

For his research, Jack has received international recognition and numerous accolades.

Since taking home the 2012 Gordon E. Moore Award, the top prize at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, Jack has earned awards and honors from organizations around the globe.

Notably, he received the 2012 Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, named a Champion of Change by the White House, and received a fellowship as a National Geographic Explorer. And Jack (who came out as gay while still in high school), even earned a spot on Advocate's "40 Under 40" list.

Though Jack's test is promising, it's far from a silver bullet.

His work is extremely preliminary and has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal — the industry standard for measuring the merit and veracity of scientific research. Additionally, scientists who have read Andraka's work suggest a need for further research about the speed and price of his test.

Success is within reach but not guaranteed just yet. Photo by iStock.

However, Jack holds a patent on his test and is licensing it to pharmaceutical companies so they can run the often-monotonous clinical trials, a necessary step to ensure patient safety and accurate diagnoses.

"I don't wanna ... end up as a lab rat," Jack said in an interview with "60 Minutes." "I kind of want to be able to come up with a new idea and then really just move on to the next idea, and have other people do the repetitive trials."

In the meantime, Jack, who just turned 19, is keeping busy.

He's a first-year student at Stanford University, gives talks and lectures all over the world, and even co-wrote a memoir, "Breakthrough", about his experience.

And when he's not in the lab, studying for finals, advocating for LGBT youth in STEM careers, or championing pancreatic cancer research, you might find him in his whitewater kayak or catching up with friends and colleagues on social media. You know, typical teenage whiz-kid author/scientist stuff.