BC Cancer Agency’s Cancer Imaging department turns ideas into world-class detection devices.
“Eighty-five per cent of cancers are connected to or accessible from the outside of the body. That’s the main advantage of cancer imaging – the interaction of light with tissue,” Calum MacAulay, head, BC Cancer Agency’s Cancer Imaging department explains.
“It means that skin, mouth and lung cancers, for example, can be examined by non-invasive means, and areas of concern detected and treated earlier, without obtaining surgical biopsies and waiting for results.”
Calum and his team use applied physics, engineering and computer technology to enhance views far beyond what’s visible to the naked eye and then design and develop imaging technologies and devices that can detect and examine cancerous and precancerous cells, which interact with light differently than healthy tissue.
“The bottom line is, if we can detect cancer faster and earlier, when the cancer is most treatable and outcomes are the best, we can do a better job for the patient.”
The department works with what he calls the smaller end of the cancer imaging spectrum. “If we build something, it’s relatively inexpensive – well below the million-dollar level of the MRI and the CT scan – so lots of people will be able to use it. The desire is to translate research into something useful to catch cancer patients early where they are most treatable.”
Calum speaks the language of both physics and medical research. His team includes engineers, physicists and a mix of researchers with backgrounds in biology, genetics, oncology, and pathology. “We also collaborate with external partners from various scientific and medical fields and backgrounds, locally, nationally and internationally,” he says.
He says his department has one of the best track records for turning ideas into devices for clinical use. Some of their ideas that have been developed into world-class advances in early cancer detection include:
- the light-induced fluorescence endoscope (LIFE) – it has improved early detection of lung cancer by over 200 per cent and is now used by over 150 medical centres world-wide.
- a fully automated slide-scanning microscope used as a cervical screening device, in use throughout China.
- the same microscope, modified to examine sputum for early lung cancer detection, which has just received Health Canada approval for clinical use.
- several successful biotech companies, one of which produced the now-famous VELscope device (visually-enhanced lesion scope) – a hand-held oral cancer screening tool with Health Canada and FDA approval.
Calum says his thrill and reward is trying a new idea and seeing it work and become useful in a clinical niche. “We can always build devices, but we need to build ones that fill a need. It’s not ‘here’s my hammer, so now everything must be a nail,’ but rather, ‘they need a certain kind of screwdriver, so let’s build it.’”
His team has at least six current projects on the go, for lung, oral, cervical and skin cancers, and another involving light-activated drug therapy. Calum predicts that the use of optical technology for cancer screening will increase in the next three to five years.
“We can make big changes in the mortality of cancers like ovarian, lung, cervical, skin, oral and colon cancer with population-based screening,” Calum says.
“We just need to increase the pace of what we’re doing.”
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