SMART THINKER
Teenager Macinley Butson’s revolutionary invention – an armour to shield breast cancer patients undergoing treatment – has won attention from around the world.
A teenager’s revolutionary invention is helping to shield breast cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment.
Some of the world’s best inventions seem so obvious that you wonder why no- one ever thought of them before. Yet they still need a brilliant mind to bring them into being: a bright spark to see the need for the invention, to convince others of their value and to have the perseverance to see them through to reality.
Australian student Macinley Butson was only in Year 10 – “15 going on 16 that year” – when she saw a need for her SMART Armour. The ‘SMART’ standing for Scale Maille Armour for Radiation Therapy, the armour is designed for use by breast cancer patients undergoing treatment. The armour shields the breast not being treated from excess radiation during therapy.
With one in eight Australian women expected to develop breast cancer in their lifetime, the need for such armour is self- evident. It also doubles as a kind of psychological “armour” for those undergoing the health battle: its design is inspired by the mail armour worn and used on ancient battlefields.
Butson says the inspiration for the armour sprang from a conversation at the dinner table with her father, a medical physicist who works in radiotherapy for cancer patients.
“Dad mentioned there was a problem with electron contamination [in cancer treatment]. So I asked him, ‘Well, why hasn’t someone done something about it?’ And he kind of said – which was completely fair – ‘We’re treating patients from 7am to 7pm so there isn’t unfortunately a lot of time to do this research’. I decided something should have been done about it already.”
Butson built the first prototype – comprising scales and rings – herself, using a pair of pliers over a period of 20 hours.
The world was quick to take notice of the teenager’s invention and her talent. In 2017 she won first place in the Translational Medicine category at the INTEL International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles. She was the first Australian to place first in a category at the event, described as the “Olympics” of preuniversity science. “That was very, very unexpected, very amazing,” she says.
A year later, she was chosen as the 2018 NSW Young Australian of the Year, awarded not only for the SMART Armour but her history of scientific projects as well as for “empowering young people to embrace science”. She also talked about her SMART Armour in person last year with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during their visit Down Under.
Butson’s precocious talent has been a long time in the nurturing, encouraged by supportive teachers and her parents. She says she has been taking on a different science project each year “since kindergarten” in fields ranging from chemistry and physics to environmental science.
“The SMART Armour was one of them. Another was a device to purify water for medical applications in the developing communities. One was [a spoon] that could measure medicine for children and deliver it more accurately. Another, which was my first, was a pair of sunglasses where you can change the level of darkness depending on the sun exposure.”
Butson says she has always been very curious ever since she was a child. It was only when she went to school that she realised that this natural curiosity, which was already so much a part of her, “was basically science as I knew it”.
“Putting a name to it would have been STEM.”
She recognises the need to increase the proportion of women in the male- dominated STEM fields, and does think it’s slowly changing.
“A lot of people are trying to figure out how to solve that problem. For me, personally, I was never the type of kid who was ever intimidated to be the only female in a room. However, I do understand there are a lot of girls out there who do miss out on opportunities, and particularly in STEM. They may feel intimidated. I would encourage anyone to do it regardless.”
She says the next stage of her SMART Armour project is to run a pilot study. “We have been able to get approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration of Australia and we have a patent. But, being a teenager, I can’t put it on a patient myself. We’re looking for a hospital that will be willing to run that study, to use it on a patient for the first time. And from there, we’ll able to look a bit more at steps for mass production.”
As for the future, Macinley began studying a double bachelor of science and arts at the University of Wollongong this year. “What I’m looking at doing is potentially less of a research side and potentially more of a science communication role. It’s something I’m definitely very passionate about.”
“I was never a kid who was intimidated to be the only female in the room.” MACINLEY BUTSON