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WaveCheck raises over $41,000 for breast cancer treatment monitoring in three weeks

waveOver 340 people worldwide have joined WaveCheck‘s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to fund a breakthrough clinical technique for breast cancer that promises to revolutionize the way chemotherapy is monitored.

“Breast Cancer Awareness Month’s positivity makes it easy to overlook the fact that 60 to 70 per cent of chemotherapy treatments fail,” says Dr. Gregory Czarnota, chief of Radiation Oncology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and co-inventor of WaveCheck with Professor Michael C. Kolios of Ryerson University. “WaveCheck’s technology can tell people with breast cancer and their doctors if a particular chemotherapy is working in as little as four weeks.”

WaveCheck’s campaign made the Top 10 list for the most financially successful Canadian crowdfunding campaigns on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo in Globe and Mail’s Report on Small Business. CTV News Channel, CBC Toronto News (see the above clip), CBC Radio Canada and Canadian Healthcare Technology have also covered the project, along with Oshawa Today (radio), The Ryersonian and The Eyeopener.

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DLVR: Using personalized medicine and nature’s cellular toolkit to target cancer tumours

Every six weeks, MaRS Innovation’s marketing and communications manager writes a guest post for the MaRS Discovery District blog profiling MI’s activities or one of our start-up companies. This post coincided with World Cancer Day.

DLVR TherapeuticsWhat if you could use a cancer tumour’s proteomic profile to make it easier to target and destroy?

Targeting specific proteins on the surface of individual tumours—or, more precisely, targeting a cell receptor that naturally allows substances to pass into a cell—would allow clinicians to more effectively deliver drugs designed to deactivate cancer-promoting genes within the tumour, while minimizing the addition of toxins to the patient’s body.

Personalized medicine research in Toronto also benefited from a recent  $50 million donation to support Princess Margaret Hospital (part of the University Health Network). Read and watch the news announcement on BioTechnology Focus.

This is personalized medicine’s promise for cancer treatment: targeted therapies that stand a better chance of success, with reduced side effects, based on the unique profile of a patient’s tumour, either administered on their own or in combination with traditional chemotherapy.

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OICR and MaRS Innovation announce funding to develop Cellax™, a nanotechnology-based cancer drug

CellaxTORONTO, ON (November 13, 2012) — The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) and MaRS Innovation (MI) today announced $1.5 million in funding from OICR over three years to further develop Cellax, a nanoparticle drug that could offer an alternative to chemotherapy with fewer side effects.

“Cellax is promising because it provides a more targeted strategy for treating tumours, killing tumour cells while minimizing the effect on healthy tissue,” said Dr. Rima Al-awar, director, OICR’s Medicinal Chemistry Platform. “OICR is proud to invest in a technology that has such potential to one day improve quality of life for cancer patients.”

Cellax, invented by Dr. Shyh-Dar Li and his research team in OICR’s Medicinal Chemistry Platform group, is a drug-polymer conjugate based on Dr. Li’s proprietary NanoCMC™ technology. These polymers self-assemble into defined nanoparticles and, when injected, selectively accumulate in tumours. Because of this property, the drug is released where it is most needed, increasing therapeutic benefits and reducing the side effects associated with conventional chemotherapy.

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