ultrasound technology

MaRS Innovation sponsoring Angels’ Den competition

September 22, 2015
Susanne Staer
Awards

Prima IP co-sponsoring the Ryerson University and St. Michael’s Hospital event

When your business demands staying current with the newest inventions springing up across 15 academic members, keeping pace with what’s happening is half the challenge.

That’s part of the reason why MaRS Innovation and Prima IP are sponsoring winners of an Angels’ Den competition involving the Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Science and Technology (iBEST).

iBEST is a partnership between Ryerson University and St. Michael’s Hospital that brings together Ryerson’s engineering and science strengths with St. Michael’s biomedical research and clinical expertise. The contest, which took place on June 26, 2015, riffs on the popular Dragon’s Den format.

“As a guest judge for the iBEST trainee competition this year, I reviewed a lot of thought-provoking ideas and MaRS Innovation congratulates all of the 2015 award winners,” says Dr. Fazila Seker, director of physical sciences. “Many of our portfolio technologies have their origins in this type of collaboration between researchers and medical staff, which is why we’re so excited to sponsor this competition. Fostering these types of relationships is vital to Toronto’s commercialization ecosystem.”

For the 2015 award period, MaRS Innovation will provide the competition’s winners with upfront commercialization consultation services to help shorten the time it may take for their ideas to reach the market. These services will be offered in collaboration with the technology transfer offices within St. Michael’s Hospital and the Vice-President of Research and Innovation office at Ryerson University as appropriate. In partnership with Prima IP, MaRS Innovation will also cover the initial patent application preparation and filing for the top two awardees of the iBEST event. Future award winners will receive similar support.

“Canada’s future economy depends on programs that encourage and facilitate innovation allowing Canada to remain competitive in the global marketplace and attract foreign investment,” said Marcelo König Sarkis, principal, founder and senior patent agent at Prima IP. “We are passionate in our support for Canadian inventions from the initial research phase to start-up and beyond.”

Sunnybrook forms new industry partnership to advance WaveCheck technology

Co-development agreement, brokered by MaRS Innovation, to advance ultrasound chemotherapy monitoring technology as clinical tool

TORONTO (March 12, 2015) — Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and MaRS Innovation today announced a co-development agreement for WaveCheck, an ultrasound technology that transforms conventional equipment so that physicians can monitor a breast cancer tumour’s response to chemotherapy.

This announcement was covered in Biotechnology Focus, Aunt Minnie.com (radiology blog), dotmed.com, Bio-Medicine.org, Bloomberg Business and Research Views.

The partnership with GE Healthcare, brokered by MaRS Innovation, seeks to develop WaveCheck as a clinical tool that gives clinicians rapid, improved transparency to determine if breast cancer tumors are responding to chemotherapy.

WaveCheck is a clinical technique invented, refined and tested by Dr. Gregory Czarnota, chief of Radiation Oncology at Sunnybrook’s Odette Cancer Centre, and Michael C. Kolios, professor of Physics and associate dean, Research and Graduate Studies, in Ryerson University’s Faculty of Science. Their technology uses ultrasound to visually demonstrate whether chemotherapy is destroying a breast cancer tumour at the beginning of chemotherapy treatment in as little as one week. If applied to the clinic, this knowledge has the power to transform patient experience, since existing breast cancer patients typically wait until the end of treatment, anywhere from four to six months, to know if their tumor has responded.

In early clinical testing, WaveCheck’s inexpensive, non-invasive, image-guided technology (shown here) shows promise as an accurate, efficient way to monitor tumour response. Sunnybrook has partnered with GE Healthcare to co-develop WaveCheck as a clinical tool.

In early clinical testing, WaveCheck’s inexpensive, non-invasive, image-guided technology shows promise as an accurate, efficient way to monitor tumour response, opening the door to tailored treatment.

The agreement leverages GE Healthcare’s extensive ultrasound technology and market expertise in bringing new ultrasound innovations to global hospitals and clinics with Sunnybrook’s leadership in oncology research and cancer care through the Odette Cancer Centre.

WaveCheck’s Crowdfunding Campaign Featured on CTV National News and Canada AM

December 18, 2013
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

Indiegogo campaign raised $53,390 from over 500 worldwide donors

Screen Shot 2013-12-18 at 9.40.42 AM — WaveCheck co-inventor, Dr. Gregory Czarnota, appeared on CTV National News on December 15.

CTV National News featured WaveCheck’s crowdfunding campaign on December 15 in a report by Avis Favaro. The report included an interview with MaRS Innovation’s President and CEO, Dr. Raphael Hofstein (at the 1:37 mark).

William Tran, a researcher associated with the project at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, was also interviewed on Canada AM on December 16.

WaveCheck, which closed its campaign December 4, was invented by Dr. Gregory Czarnota of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Prof. Michael C. Kolios of Ryerson University. WaveCheck uses ultrasound technology to show people with breast cancer if their chemotherapy is working within weeks.

While the Indiegogo campaign has concluded, Sunnybrook Foundation is now accepting donations flagged “WaveCheck” on behalf of the researchers through its website.

At campaign close, WaveCheck ranked in the top 0.005 per cent of health-related campaigns on Indiegogo, and was covered by CBC television and Metro Morning, the Toronto Star, Sing-Tao and MedCity News.

WaveCheck to Transform Chemotherapy Monitoring for Women with Breast Cancer

Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for North American clinical study during Breast Cancer Awareness Month; 12 artists donate 13 original works worth over $15,000 to support campaign

Toronto, Canada (October 9, 2013) — WaveCheck — a painless, non-surgical clinical technique developed by a Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre oncologist and a Ryerson University physicist and supported by MaRS Innovation — is poised to transform chemotherapy response monitoring for women with breast cancer.

Dr. Gregory Czarnota of Sunnybrook Health Sciences (left) and Professor Michael Kolios of Ryerson University, WaveCheck's inventors. — Dr. Gregory Czarnota of Sunnybrook Health Sciences (left) and Professor Michael Kolios of Ryerson University, WaveCheck’s inventors.

WaveCheck combines traditional ultrasound with new software to detect responses to chemotherapy in breast cancer tissues. By making better, more accurate information available about a woman’s response to her chemotherapy treatment in weeks rather than months, WaveCheck creates greater transparency through dialogue between a women and her doctors, empowering her to participate in discussions about whether a given chemotherapy treatment is effective.

Contribute to WaveCheck‘s Indiegogo campaign and help make this technology available to all women with breast cancer faster.

Media coverage: CTV News Channel, the Globe and Mail and Canadian Healthcare Technology have covered WaveCheck’s campaign.

Developed by Dr. Gregory Czarnota, chief of Radiation Oncology at Sunnybrook’s Odette Cancer Centre, and Michael C. Kolios, professor of Physics and Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Applications of Ultrasound at Ryerson, WaveCheck has been used in clinical studies with nearly 100 women receiving upfront, neoadjuvant chemotherapy to treat locally-advanced breast cancer. These results are published in two leading journals, Clinical Cancer Research and Translational Oncology.

In the Indiegogo campaign video, Czarnota, Kolios and three of the 100 women who participated in the first Sunnybrook study explain WaveCheck’s impact.

“The hard truth for women with breast cancer is that 60 to 70 per cent of chemotherapy treatments fail,” said Czarnota, who is also a senior scientist and director of cancer research at Sunnybrook Research Institute and assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s Departments of Radiation Oncology and Medical Biophysics within the Faculty of Medicine. “The 1.5 million women worldwide who will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year need to know that their chemotherapy is working as soon as possible. But this kind of treatment monitoring doesn’t currently exist in standard clinical practice. Instead, a woman’s tumour response is evaluated after she completes her chemotherapy treatment, which is typically a four- to six-month process.

Los Angeles Times covers Dr. Gregory Czarnota’s cancer therapy technology

The Los Angeles Times featured Dr. Gregory Czarnota’s research in their Science Now section on July 10, 2012, which reports on discoveries from the world of science and medicine (update: the article is no longer available online).

Czarnota, a researcher at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, is working with MaRS Innovation to license his patented technology: radiosensitization of tumour cells using a combination of microbubbles and targeted, high-intensity, focused ultrasound.