Krtin Nithiyanandam is a 19-year-old British student, scientist, and inventor credited for developing a test which may be able to diagnose Alzheimer's disease 10 years before the first symptoms appear.

His invention led to him being given the Scientific American Innovator Award at the 2015 Google Science Fair. He was just 15 years old at the time.

“The main benefits of my test are that it could be used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms start to show by focusing on pathophysiological changes, some of which can occur a decade before symptoms are prevalent,” Krtin told The Daily Telegraph.

“This early diagnosis could help families prepare for the future and ensure that existing drugs are used to better effect.

“Another benefit is that due to the conjugated fluorescent nanoparticles, my diagnostic-probe can be used to image Alzheimer’s disease non-invasively.”

He says he first became interested in the medical sciences after he had ear surgery as a young child. 

A year later, Krtin Nithiyanandam followed up his first discovery with a second: a potential way of making one of the most dangerous forms of breast cancer, that affects thousands of women every year, more treatable.

The 19-year-old studied the triple-negative form of breast cancer, which is untreatable. While most cancers have receptors that bind to drugs, this particular type does not, making drugs ineffective. 

The treatment is supposed to silence the genes that produce a particular protein that leads this type of cancer to be so aggressive, thus turning it into a slower-moving and more easily treatable form, giving chemotherapy a fighting chance in the battle against the disease.