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Update: You can now fund WaveCheck's research via the Sunnybrook Foundation website
(enter "WaveCheck" in the comments field)
Fact: It takes 4-6 months to know if chemo is working now...
WaveCheck can cut that time to 1-4 weeks
Imagine getting to the end of your chemo treatment, which is typically 4 to 6 months, and finding out it didn’t work?
That’s reality for women and men with breast cancer.
Wouldn't you want to know sooner?
The WaveCheck Innovation
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WaveCheck’s treatment monitoring technique can tell people with breast cancer and their doctors if a chemotherapy treatment is working in as little as 4 weeks.
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WaveCheck's ultimate goals are to give people a say in their treatment plan, avoid unnecessary side effects from ineffective chemo and find the treatment that's right for each person.
Scientific, peer-reviewed results from WaveCheck's observational studies of women with breast cancer, published in Clinical
Cancer Research and Translational Oncology, prove its underlying technology works.
But getting it into clinics to help all people everywhere requires more testing and refinement.
That’s where you come in.
How Can You Help?
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To bring WaveCheck to more people faster, we need to run a wider clinical study at three more sites to show it works as well for others in
Canada and the United States as it has for us.
We've partnered with these world-leading cancer centres:
· MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, Texas, U.S.A.)
· London Health Sciences Centre (London, Ontario, Canada)
· Princess Margaret Hospital (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
To launch the first study site in January 2014, we need to raise $96,987.
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Why Crowdfund WaveCheck?
Crowdfunding WaveCheck will accelerate the time it will take to get this technique into clinics everywhere. It also helps us to get the word out about why we think WaveCheck’s so important.
If you want to know more, see our WaveCheck FAQ.
A Game Changer in Cancer Monitoring
How would WaveCheck be different from what people with cancer experience now?
Currently, doctors monitor changes in tumour size by hand, but these changes are typically not detectible that way for months. This means that women and men are waiting until the end of chemo to know if it's working.
And remember, 60% to 70% of chemotherapy treatments fail.
Here's what that process currently looks like:
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Instead of waiting blindly, WaveCheck can allow women and men to see exactly what’s happening inside their breast tumour in real time.
That way, they would know if their tumour’s being destroyed from the inside out at the beginning of treatment instead of waiting and wondering what’s happening.
Together, we can make that powerful knowledge available to all people with breast cancer.
Meet the WaveCheck team
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Dr.
Gregory Czarnota, PhD, MD, FRCPC
Chief, Department of Radiation Oncology
Head, Radiation Treatment Program
Director, Cancer Research Program
Senior Scientist, Sunnybrook Research Institute
Odette Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
Besides being an imaging research scientist, Greg is a practicing radiation oncologist and conducts applied research with breast cancer patients. He is also an assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s Departments of Radiation Oncology and Medical Biophysics within the Faculty of Medicine.
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Michael C. Kolios, PhD
Professor, Department of Physics, Ryerson
University
Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies, Faculty of Science
Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Applications of Ultrasound
Michael researches ultrasound and optics in the biomedical sciences, and he directs the Advanced Biomedical Ultrasound Imaging and Spectroscopy laboratory. He is on the editorial board of the journals Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology and Ultrasound Imaging and is a member of many national and international research committees.
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Fazila Seker, PhD
WaveCheck Business Development Manager, MaRS Innovation.
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William Tran
Radiation Therapist and Clinical Researcher
Will oversees clinical study operations in collaboration with the oncology healthcare team.
WaveCheck's Clinical Partners:
Our Amazing Donated Perks!
We've received over $15,000 in donated original art work from 13 Canadian and international artists who want to see WaveCheck and this campaign succeed, including nine artists from the Women's Art Association of Canada in Toronto.
More recently, we've partnered with:
For more information on the WaveCheck campaign perks, please visit our Artists' Profiles. For more on our partners, see the Partners page.
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We'd like to thank our partners for their generous support.
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WaveCheck has been featured on these TV and radio programs:
And in these newspapers, magazines, news sites and blogs:
Thank You!
If you’ve been touched by breast cancer or other types of cancer, please share this campaign with your family, friends and colleagues.
Check out our perks and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Youtube.
You can
also check out our WaveCheck FAQ and Artists' Profiles.
Thanks for your support!
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MaRS Innovation (MI) works to take the most promising research breakthroughs from 16 of Toronto’s and Canada’s top universities, institutions and research institutes from the lab bench to the clinic or market.
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From our beginnings as a hospital for Canadian veterans, Sunnybrook has flourished into a fully affiliated teaching hospital of the University of Toronto, evolving to meet the needs of our growing community. Today, with 1.2 million patient visits each year, Sunnybrook has established itself as the largest single-site hospital in Canada, with four strategic areas of focus: heart and stroke, cancer, trauma, emergency and critical care, and women and babies.
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Ryerson University is Canada's leader in innovative, career-oriented education and a university clearly on the move. With a mission to serve societal need, and a long-standing commitment to engaging its community, Ryerson offers more than 100 undergraduate and graduate programs.
[1] 1.5 million people were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010: http://www.worldwidebreastcancer.com/learn/breast-cancer-statistics-worldwide/
