Meet Audrey Zheng, the 17-year-old Pennsylvania student who developed a...

Audrey Zheng (North Allegheny Senior High School, Pittsburgh, PA) A 17-year-old student from Pennsylvania has developed an innovative bioengineering method to detect early-stage pancreatic cancer from blood samples, tackling one of the biggest challenges in cancer diagnosis. Audrey Zheng, a senior at North Allegheny Senior High School in Wexford, developed a technique that uses tiny magnetic beads to capture tumor-derived particles moving through the bloodstream. In clinical testing, her method correctly identified 87 per cent of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and correctly ruled out the disease in 87.5 per cent of people who did not have it. Her research earned her a place as a national finalist in the 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search, one of the leading science and mathematics competitions for high school seniors, run by the Society for Science.Targeting microscopic messages in bloodPancreatic cancer is difficult to detect because it often causes no clear symptoms in its early stages. By the time symptoms such as abdominal pain or jaundice appear, the cancer may have already spread to nearby organs, making surgery much harder or impossible. Current screening m...