Breast Cancer Awareness Newsletter

Every 2 minutes a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer.

And although the survival rate has increased the last few years, it is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women.  This year alone over 42,000 women will die from breast cancer – that’s 4 women every hour.  October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and the Terasaki Institute is committed to the fight against breast cancer to save lives through our personalized patient solution approaches.

Despite continued efforts to develop effective cancer diagnoses and therapeutics, predicting patient tumor response to anti-cancer treatments is a goal that is still being pursued.  Being able to predict patients’ responses is critical for identifying the right treatment for them and can prevent a tumor relapse, negative side effects or an increase in medical costs.

We are developing technologies that will detect breast cancer biomarkers, identify anti-cancer drugs, and enhance personalized treatments for cancer patients. Terasaki Fellow Wujin Sun spearheads a project exploring how different drugs work on individuals by using a personalized breast-cancer-ecosystem platform for screening of cancer therapies with patient-derived tumors.  This project integrates a machine-learning algorithm to provide precise and unbiased prediction of the patient’s response.

Postdoctoral Researcher Ana Lopez Hernandez leads a collaborative project between the Terasaki Institute and the European Commission’s Marie Curie program.  The aim is to develop breast cancer models in the laboratory that can accurately reproduce tissue models found in living beings. The ultimate goal will be to use these models to investigate the evolution of the patient’s specific type of cancer and to predict the response to new anticancer drugs in a personalized way.

We strive to develop technologies that represent true innovation in the screening treatments of all types of cancers and to enhance care for patients. We are doing this by creating ways to monitor cancer-associated biomarkers, observe anti-cancer drug response through our cancer-on-a-chip models, and develop more effective chemotherapy treatments. We envision a world where cancer patients will no longer have to worry about their tumor coming back or will receive treatment that they know will eradicate the cancer in their body.

(SOURCE: American Cancer Society)

Learn more about our other technology platforms: 

Microneedles For Therapeutic Gene Delivery

Oxygen-Releasing Bioink for 3D Bioprinting

Cardiac Scar Tissue: A Factor Which Regulates Its Size

Directly Printing 3D Tissues Within the Body

Extraction of Skin Interstitial Fluid Using Microneedle Patches