A researcher from U of T has helped create a new technique for chemotherapy response monitoring that could show whether cancer treatment is working sooner than has been possible to this point. WaveCheck can help patients and doctors understand whether other forms of treatment should be used within one to four weeks. This normally takes four to six months.
U of T’s Dr. Gregory Czarnota and Ryerson University’s Michael Kolios originally conceived a changing in the response to chemotherapy as a bet over a round of beer almost 20 years ago, while they were graduate students at U of T. Their invention has the potential to save lives. “Sometimes you make discoveries in very unique ways that actually have really important ramifications,” says Czarnota.
Czarnota used an analogy to explain why he focuses on chemotherapy response. “If someone has pneumonia and a physician gives them an antibiotic that doesn’t work, and that person ends up dying, that is potentially called malpractice. However, if an oncologist gives you a therapy drug and the tumor is resistant and you die, it is just called unfortunate.”
Initially, the idea of WaveCheck was met with disbelief and resistance. For the first few years, Czarnota and Kolios generated studies and received grants for the first stages of development. Czarnota tested WaveCheck, a completely painless technique, on nearly 100 women at Sunnybrook Hospital. “We’ve done all this work with testing on animals and patients, now we want to get the technology out in the hands of other people, and to show that the technology is robust, we need to expand the research,” he said.
WaveCheck is versatile, meaning that, with a few changes, it can detect whether or not chemotherapy is working for patients with cancerous tumors in their prostate, neck, and head.
MaRS Innovation, which supports WaveCheck, calls it a significant achievement. “Seeing as breast cancer is the second cause of death for women, this is really a no brainer. It is a rare project to come across of that will benefit people on so many levels,” says Elizabeth Monier-Williams, co-director of the international fundraising campaign.
WaveCheck was partly financed through crowd-funding. “Crowding funding is the opportunity where people can actually get to vote on which development of technology they want to see first impact their society and their own health,” says Dr. Fazila Seker, co-director of the international fundraising campaign.
Through Indiegogo, MaRS Innovation hopes to raise $96, 987 for external development of WaveCheck. When asked why the government wasn’t funding such an important initiative, Monier-Williams, says: “Government, foundations and funding agencies have funded the project at earlier points in its development. At the point it is now, the availability of funding suitable for this stage shrinks and becomes fiercely competitive.
“Crowd funding means saving 18 months to two years off the development time line if the external initiative is ready to launch in January.”
