tumour markers<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 proteins produced by cancerous cells or healthy cells in contact with cancerous cells \u2014 for early cancer detection has been around for a while.<\/p>\nWhile these might help identify specific blood cancers like leukemia, blood testing alone is insufficient to detect and diagnose breast, pancreatic, lung and most other cancers, says Ignaszak.<\/p>\n
If anything unusual shows up, patients need to undergo further lab or imaging tests such as MRIs or CT scans.<\/p>\n
Ignaszak\u2019s team is focusing on ways to monitor developments in late-stage breast cancer rather than early detection, since the level of cancer biomarkers isn\u2019t high enough early on for biosensor technology to pick up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal here is to assist oncologists in bypassing the delay of CT or MRI scans by catching molecular-level changes weeks or months before a physical tumour grows back,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
To that end, the team developed the prototype of a device that measures the level of a protein called progranulin (GP88), a relatively new biomarker for breast and other cancers. GP88 fuels cancer cells and has been implicated in drug resistance.<\/p>\n
GP88 enters the blood stream after it\u2019s been secreted by the tumour cell, says Ignaszak.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally when therapy works, the tumour shrinks very fast, which means it’s shedding off into the blood less and less,\u201d she says. \u201cIf the oncologist looks at the progression of blood samples and sees the decrease of GP88, it immediately shows the therapy is working.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ignaszak and her team are using blood serum from both male and female patients to test out, and adjust, their prototype, taking a wide range of factors into consideration.<\/p>\n
The next step, anticipated sometime next year, will be to start the process of clinical trials, she says.<\/p>\n
Funding her research are the Government of Canada\u2019s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Mitacs, the Canadian Space Agency and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.<\/p>\n
Ignaszak leads the\u00a0Ignaszak Research Group<\/a>, which specializes in the study of electrochemistry, used in innovations such as the personal glucose sensor.<\/p>\nIn addition to detecting GP88 and other breast cancer markers in blood samples, the team is exploring the same approach for leukemia markers, blood coagulation markers and detection of Lyme disease-causing bacteria in urine.<\/p>\n