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ANNOUNCER: From our community to yours...
WOMAN: I'm Shirley Harasym for Accessible Media.
It's being hailed as a breakthrough
in cancer treatment.
A Sudbury research team,
led by Dr. Amadeo Parissenti,
has developed a method called the RDA test,
which could play a key role in the treatment of breast cancer.
It involves a tumour biopsy
to gauge the effectiveness of chemotherapy.
A score is then assigned,
with a high score meaning the tumour is likely to die,
and a low score indicating
the tumour will probably continue to grow.
Parissenti is a Sudbury physician
associated with Laurentian University,
and Health Sciences North.
From his research lab, he tells us that this test is exciting
because it allows doctors to see, early on,
if the chemo is working, thereby saving precious time.
It give me great pleasure to be associated with a study
that may improve the quality of life for cancer patients,
particularly with respect to chemotherapy.
Because any patient who's been through chemotherapy treatment
recognizes that it's clearly no picnic.
And it's something, if we can minimize that suffering,
and only permit it to occur for patients
that are getting a survival benefit from the treatment,
that would give me tremendous pride and pleasure.
It is very satisfying to see a team
working effectively together to create something that has
the potential to strongly benefit breast cancer patients.
HARASYM: In addition to helping breast cancer patients
cope with the physical and emotional demands of treatment,
the new RDA test has a lot of future potential
for possibly treating other cancers as well.
When we first discovered this,
I was surprised that there was nothing about this
in the scientific literature.
So we're trying to understand a little more about
the mechanisms by which this is happening.
And a lot of people have asked, are we are we pursuing this,
and we certainly are.
There's also the potential that our test could be used
quite broadly in drug discovery as well.
So, if this test works for a whole variety
of chemotherapy agents, potentially in clinical trials,
this tool could be used to monitor
whether patients are responding to new agents,
not just well established ones.
HARASYM: Parissenti's team feels the city of Sudbury provides
the perfect work environment
to foster their ongoing scientific research.
Sudbury is not that small of a town.
It has It often is seen as, sort of, a small town,
but there's tremendous expertise at the university,
at the medical school,
certainly here within Health Sciences North
and within AMRIC.
So, I'm not surprised
that we were able to do this in Sudbury.
HARASYM: With more than 180,000 new cancer cases
diagnosed in Canada last year alone,
it's important to us all
that vital research like this continues.
I'm Shirley Harasym for Accessible Media.