Cell-RCH30

Cell-RCH30 is a biotechnological innovation, that, with the implementation of reusable technology and cell modification will eliminate any type of cancer early without damaging healthy cells or tissue.

     One of the leading causes of death worldwide is cancer. In 2018 there were 18.1 million new cases and 9.5 million deaths, in 2020 almost 10 million deaths and by 2040 active cancer cases are predicted to increase to an estimated 29.5 million. Globally, just 6 types of cancer alone account for 10.1 million active cases. According to the World Health Organization, these are breast cancer (2.26), lung cancer (2.21), colon cancer (1.93), skin cancer (1.2), prostate cancer (1.41), and gastric cancer (1.09). Cancer triggers are factors found in the daily environment, such as carcinogenic substances (smoke, combustion, burnt food), X-rays, UV rays, and viruses, which develop mutations in somatic cells (cells that form tissues and organs).

     According to the National Cancer Institute in the United States, in this disease, there is something called "Cancer Health Inequality". This is due to two central reasons. First, low-income people have low cancer literacy, have to make long trips to screening centers, and have access to unreliable healthcare sources, resulting in late detection of the disease in most cases. Second, since cancer treatment is expensive, low-income people in many cases do not have access to it, causing more deaths in this sector of society. A cancer treatment costs between 700-1000 dollars (monthly) depending on the country, however, millions of people live on less than 1.9 dollars a day, making access to treatment impossible. 

Poverty statistics:

      To add, according to the World Health Organization, countries such as India, China, Yemen, and Uganda are among the countries with the highest number of cancer cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

     The World Health Organization issued a statement explaining that by 2040 cancer cases will increase by 81% in the poorest countries. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, attributed this data to the fact that in poor countries there is a shortage of resources for the prevention of the disease and the resources that are used to fight cancer are overspent due to the increase in the number of people who develop the disease, leaving these countries without resources to fight cancer. And countries whose poverty index is greater than 0.08 will be the most affected.

     Furthermore, today's chemotherapy not only affects cancer cells but also affects healthy tissue, causing the patient to develop secondary diseases and hinder their recovery, thus increasing the price of their treatments even more.  With the cost of chemotherapy so high and with more than 500 million people living on less than $1.9 a day, it seems that life has a price, and not everyone can afford it.

     My solution will address the issue in the way that I will create a treatment that solves the problem of developing secondary diseases (which increases the price of treatment), detects cancer early (which has been shown to be almost non-existent in low-income patients), and finally, the treatment will be affordable for everyone.

     My solution is to biotechnologically modify a cell (taken from the patient) so that it can detect cancer early and eliminate it without damaging healthy tissue. These changes will be made with reusable technology, making the manufacturing process almost inexpensive and the treatment affordable for everyone.

     The DNA will be modified to contain all the patient's genetic information inside and will be surrounded by a metal nucleus (using reusable technology) and will only open for cell division when the Cell-RCH30 is close to cancer. At the outer edge of the cell 2 elements will be added: Receptor proteins (modified to be sensitive only to signals from cancer cells to detect exactly where they are in the body) and sensors that measure the Hayflick index (limit of how many times a cell can divide) and the mitotic index (number of times and how often a cell divides), this will identify if any cell passes those numbers, in which case cancer will start to form (it detects cancer early). A vesicle will be created with reusable technology to place the toxins used in chemotherapy inside it. The vesicle will be attached to a tube (which penetrates the surface of the cell) made of metal and rice (as it contains silicon and helps to keep the tube stable). 

      When the Cell-RCH30 detects developing cancer, using the proteins and sensors, it will travel through the bloodstream to where the cancer is developing and the Cell-RCH30 will begin to make cell division around cancer, creating a barrier around cancer. When the barrier is made, the toxins stored in the vacuole will be released through the tube. Thanks to the barrier, the toxins will only affect cancer and not healthy tissue. When finished, the cell absorbs the debris with the tube and re-establishes its function.

     My solution is mainly aimed at low-income people, whose purchasing power, in most cases, does not allow them to pay for chemotherapy treatment or to obtain an early diagnosis of the disease. My solution, because it implements the use of reusable technology and the cell will be extracted from the same patient, will have a low manufacturing cost and will achieve that this sector of society obtains a dignified cancer treatment and diagnosis. 

     My solution will help to reduce cancer cases and deaths. Taking into account that the poorest countries in the economy are the ones that have developed more new cancer cases (as you will see in the following image obtained by the World Health Organization), my solution will support these countries and patients thanks to the low price of my treatment (Cell-RCH30).

     The National Cancer Institute in the USA conducted a study of 15 million cancer patients. The results show that low-income people are the least likely to receive treatment for this disease due to its high cost. 

    Only 24% of low-income people receive treatment and millions go without. My solution will help bring that 24 percent to 100 percent for this part of the population. All of the technological changes implemented to form the Cell-RCH30 will be done using reusable technology devices, lowering the price of manufacturing and making the treatment affordable for the entire population regardless of money. 

     A large part of the population, which constitutes the lower class, urgently needs a change in the health system in order to be able to receive treatment for cancer at a lower cost or to be able to detect cancer early before it has developed too far. Thanks to my idea, this part of the population will have access to free treatment without having to travel to a hospital, which in most cases is several kilometers away from where this part of the population lives. With the implementation of reusable technology, cancer treatment will go from costing between 700 and 1000 dollars, depending on the country, to costing a maximum of 5 dollars. This is because all the technology used will be obtained from the recycling areas and there will be enough to create as many Cell-RCH30 as needed because the technological waste is predicted to increase every year, as we will see below. 

     My solution will make health care a right for this part of the population and not something for which you need to make a monthly budget by reducing the cost of treatment by 97% (from 700-1000 dollars to 5 dollars) and avoiding long waiting times or failures of the public system to give them a diagnosis (since the cell detects cancer early). This will reduce cancer mortality in low-income populations by 80% (due to the access they will have to the Cell-RCH30), giving this population exactly what they need, a dignified cancer treatment. 

     At the moment my team only consists of myself. However,  I plan to include more people to join my solution and together make it a reality. 

     The intellectual experiences that position me in the opportunity to make the RCH30-Cell prototype a reality and carry out my project are the following. During high school, I gained an abundant passion for human biology, especially in the field of diseases such as cancer, and since then I have been informed on the subject to learn more about what I am facing. Thanks to my knowledge of English and German, I have been able to read research on cancer in the United States and Germany. For my part, I conducted individual research on cancer and its causal factors in 2021, in order to be able to get involved myself in what research on this disease entails. This took into account data from the hospitals: Fundacion Valle de Lili and Imbanaco. Also, I have taken advantage of virtual learning opportunities offered by edX and took online courses from Harvard University on biochemistry and molecular biology, in which I managed to learn more about this topic. Besides, nowadays I am learning more about current technology and how to use it in a biological way, in order to perfect my prototype. Also, I have been accepted to do a pre-medical year at the Philipps University Marburg in Germany and I am starting to communicate with doctors and professors there to bring my research to the scientific laboratories of the university and in the future to create the first prototypes of the RCH30-Cell and with the help of volunteers from the university hospitals of the Philipps University Marburg and the Justus Liebig University Giessen to get this solution to take its first step to help people in need. 

     Now, as for the social/personal experiences that position me in the opportunity to make the prototype of the RCH30-Cell a reality, they are the following. I had the terrible experience of seeing how the Colombian health system failed my aunt throughout her illness. When my aunt Alba got cancer, it was detected when it was already very advanced and my family did not have enough money to pay for chemotherapy. The healthcare system did not offer any help to my aunt and little by little her body gave in to the disease. This experience left me with a concrete thought, which I still have to this day, the health care system must change. From there I realized that I wanted to study medicine to make a significant change and do my part to improve the health system. Aside from this, he volunteered for an organization that works with children with cancer. The organization is called Soñar Despierto and is the program of "Cuéntame Tu Sueño". We would visit underprivileged children with cancer who were not receiving treatment and we would fulfill their biggest dream, but we also got to share with them in a meaningful way and they got to explain to us their situation about how cancer affects their lives. These two experiences have shown me that on many occasions health has a price, but I am willing to fight to eradicate that monetary figure that has been imposed on it, starting by making cancer treatment free of charge.

     To understand the needs of the population I plan to serve with my solution I implemented two things, one was to obtain qualitative information and the second was to experience and understand the situation from a closer perspective. 

      In order to have at my disposal qualitative information I implemented an investigation of social inequality in my city of Cali in the country of Colombia. In this research I used data collection methods such as interviews and surveys to broaden my perspective on how the health system in a country as unequal as Colombia, whose Gini index (the Gini index measures the socioeconomic inequality of a country's population/ the closer it is to 1.0, the more unequal the country is) is currently 0.53, directly affects the poor community. My research showed that the healthcare system is not only largely influenced by money, but also that the time a patient must wait to get an appointment with a specialized doctor (in public hospitals) is a period of approximately 16 days or more, causing the detection of diseases in low-income patients to be delayed. By carrying out this research, I expanded my knowledge of what the needs of the population really are, and that is how I came up with my solution to create a cancer treatment that detects the disease in time (instead of waiting weeks to be seen by a doctor) and at the same time is affordable for this part of the population. 

     As for how I got a closer perspective on the problem I want to solve, it was through volunteering. Through an organization called Soñar Despierto, I had the opportunity to attend hospitals where there were low-income children with cancer (who did not receive treatment due to the cost) and I was able to hear the causes of how cancer developed in them; some of them were: heredity and due to UV and X-rays, they also added that in many cases they were detected when cancer had already developed extensively. Being able to live with these children, in the circumstances in which they found themselves, opened my eyes to understanding the reality of my country which I had ignored before. On the other hand, I also volunteered for a private hospital, and although these people had to pay for their chemotherapy treatment, their cancer in most cases caused them secondary diseases, increasing more and more the price of treatment and duration. 
So far I have not involved any patients in my research, because I am just working on the prototype of the RCH30-Cell. 

     However, my research on social inequality and my 2 volunteering placements have given me the necessary information for my solution to positively influence the population I want to help.

     My solution is an innovative proposal for two specific reasons that I will describe below. 

     First, medicine and healthcare today are based on a single task, fighting disease. My solution not only helps fight the disease of cancer but also helps prevent it from developing. My solution is innovative because it crosses the boundaries of what is currently known as medicine and begins to act as preventive medicine for cancer. It will take the healthcare field to a new approach where medicine will prevent terminal diseases (such as cancer) instead of just fighting them, which in some cases is not enough as with chemotherapy. At the same time, it is novel because of the way in which the toxins used to fight cancer will be applied to the body. Over time it has always been seen that chemotherapy not only affects the cancer cells but also the healthy cells, causing the patient to develop new diseases. My solution will eradicate this problem because before applying the toxins, the cell will create a barrier that will enclose the cancer cells and the toxins will not be able to get out of that barrier. My proposal is innovative both in the field of creating preventive medicine for terminal diseases, as well as in the less invasive way of applying the treatments to the patient. 

     Second, the way in which reusable electronic device technology will be used is a new idea to implement in the field of biotechnology and genetic modification. Always in the scientific and health area, the creation of new and extremely expensive electronic devices is needed to achieve scientific breakthroughs in research or to create new cures for diseases. My idea of implementing reusable technology will avoid this and will give use to technological devices that often end up being simply factors of pollution and waste, helping to decontaminate the environment and helping my idea to be bio-sustainable. 

     I have divided my objectives for the next year into 4, in order to have more clarity on what I must do in each area. The objectives are in the following areas: social, technological, biological, and equipment.

     Social: I want to get involved as a volunteer in Low-income hospitals where there are cancer patients. I want to learn more about the needs of people with the disease and how it affects their lives. I plan to make public surveys to know people's opinions about my solution and if they would find it useful to modify something else in the cell or add extra data or factors to my research. At the same time, I would like to start conversations with patients at the Justus Liebig University Hospital in Giessen and the Philipps University in Marburg (where I will be doing my pre-medical year) to see who would be willing to volunteer when the first prototype of the RCH30-Cell is available and thus, little by little, involve people (who are the population that my solution will serve) in my research. 

     Technological: Further investigate which parts of the reusable technological devices that I will use are the ones that will be compatible with the biotechnological changes that I will implement in the cell. For this, I will implement a collection of technological waste and also technological devices that people no longer use and want to donate. Everything will be completely disinfected before starting with the research and little by little I will incorporate this technology into tissues and see how compatible they are, and how the living tissue reacts, and with this, I will discard the technological parts that are not useful and I will keep only the most viable ones. This technology will be obtained from recycling sites, places where it is contaminated, or donations, to be modified later. 

     Biological: Expand my research on how cancer develops and the factors that cause it. Because I will be pre-med at the universities I mentioned, I will use their labs to take my cancer research to the next level. Also, data from cancer patients would help a lot in moving forward, data such as at what stage of cancer they were discovered, how the chemotherapy has affected them from the beginning until now, and how specific cancer develops in each part of the body. In the laboratories I plan to observe the development of the 6 most common types of cancer (breast, lung, colon, skin, prostate, and gastric cancer) and to observe their evolution from specialized microscopes, this will help to refine the prototype of the RCH30-Cell so that it can attack cancer from the best possible angle. 

     Team: Last but not least, of course, I would like to implement more participants to my solution to help me make it a reality. Taking advantage of the fact that I will be with pre-medical students, I will encourage them to participate in my solution and each one will be able to bring a different vision of the prototype (and how to reach different countries around the world) and how to modify the cell in the best possible way to achieve its goal. Also, involve professionals in the area, as mentors, to help us give more clarity to the project and guide us on the right path in the biomodification of cells. 

     The core technology on which my entire solution is based is reusable technology from electronic devices such as cell phones, smart TVs, computers, etc. I will modify this reusable technology biologically to create the sensors (which will control and measure both the Hayflick limit and the mitotic index of the cells; which helps to inform if any cell is turning into cancer) and the modified sensory proteins (which will serve to detect where specifically the cancer is developing in the body), and then add them to the cell that we will extract from the patient to create the RCH30-Cell.

   Using cell phones and computer sensors, sensors such as gyroscopes, and proximity sensors, it will be possible to modify the cell's receptor protein so that it can detect the exact location of cancer. With the use of these technological sensors, this function will be achieved. 

     These same sensors will be used to make the sensors that will be used to measure the mitotic index and the Hayflick limit. The difference is that both technologies will be blended to make a single sensor between the two. This will be discussed below. 

     For the nucleus or bladder, some of the metal inside the electronic devices will be used. This is in order to surround the core and the vesicle and prevent what is inside from coming out prematurely. 

     For the tube through which the toxins will come out, metal and rice will be used. The tube will be composed of 100% metal and 100% rice because each material will make a layer and the tube consists of two layers. The external part of the tube will be made of rice and the internal part will be made of metal. 

All these biotechnological changes will allow the creation of the Cell-RCH30 and with it, a less invasive and affordable cancer treatment for the whole of society. 

     Currently, the number of people my solution serves is 0, as my solution has only been in development for 2.5 months. However, it is expected to make progress on the prototype by the end of this year and to be able to involve the first volunteers by the end of December 2023. It is expected to use 15 volunteers (for each type of cancer) for the 6 most common types of cancer (breast, skin, lung, colon, prostate, and gastric cancer) whose cancer is already advanced and 15 more volunteers, for each type of cancer, whose disease is not as advanced. In total, we expect to work initially with a total of 180 volunteers by the end of 2023.

     There are currently 2 central barriers to the development of the RCH30 cell. The first is financial, since, although the cell is modified with reusable technology (whose monetary value is low or null) and the cell to be modified is extracted from the same patient, money is needed to build a laboratory to gradually create the first prototype. The second is the lack of experts on the subject since I alone would not be able to create this cell, but I need a team that is informed on the subject, whose studies involve biotechnology/medicine, and who is willing to help me with this project. As I continue to develop my idea I will gradually eradicate these barriers to make my solution a reality in the future.

I do not have a partner organization yet. 

     My main product is the RCH30-Cell, a cell extracted from the same patient biotechnologically modified to detect and eradicate cancer early without damaging non-cancerous cells or tissues. The service also includes the introduction of the modified cell back into the patient's body. Our main clients are low-income people who cannot afford chemotherapy, however, as the RCH30-Cell is an invention to discover cancer and eliminate it safely, our range of clients is broadened so that anyone regardless of their socioeconomic status can obtain it if they wish to do so. The global population is being affected by cancer, and statistics say that the data is only going to increase, people today are looking for a safe way to get a cancer treatment that will not develop more diseases and is affordable in terms of money.

      The RCH30 cell solves both of these problems by using reusable technology to make the cell inexpensive to manufacture, and this technology will make the treatment 0 invasive. Furthermore, by using reusable technology, we will be able to eradicate the damage to the environment that technological devices cause and give them a new use to revolutionize medicine. So customers can rest assured that the Cell-RCH30 meets all the requirements they are looking for, 0% invasive, safe, and affordable for everyone. 

     To understand the financial sustainability that my product will have, it must be taken into account that the manufacturing cost will be quite low, for two main reasons. The first is that the reusable technology we use will often be found as a contaminating factor or for donations, and so it will be obtained and disinfected and then used to modify the cell, which brings me to reason 2. The cell used that will be biotechnologically modified to create the RCH30-Cell will be extracted from the patient himself, avoiding the expense of creating a cell from scratch. However, the technological and biological material necessary to create these modifications does come at a price, and this money will be raised in the form of donations from both governmental and non-governmental organizations working in and supporting cancer research. At the same time, if any private laboratory wants to be part of this research, they will not be charged a commission, but they must provide some useful materials for the development of the RCH30-Cell. This is so that the RCH30-Cell can be distributed in the market at the lowest possible price and be affordable for everyone.