An oncologist at the Windsor Regional Cancer Centre believes a newly launched biomed company can improve cancer outcomes.
ITOS Oncology is based in a space at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare and uses specialized equipment to sequence DNA at a level of detail only found in research labs in Canada.
Dr. Caroline Hamm is Clinical Director of the Windsor Cancer Research Group.
She says the highly detailed and targeted genetic sequencing being done at ITOS Oncology will offer new treatment options. "We have cancers where we don't give any chemotherapy, we give them a targeted therapy and we can cure them, we can virtually cure them. We have people living on treatment who have, with cancer, the same life span as their age match controls."
"Having the genetic sampling system in Windsor make a huge difference," says Dr. Hamm. "There are people who forego therapies because of the travel problems that they have. Their family can't take them, they can't travel, they aren't healthy enough to travel. We are really a very distant community. We are further from Toronto than most other centres in Ontario, we are actually quite distant."
Dr. Hamm also believes the new targeted genetic sequencing will enhance the understanding of cancer outcomes. "We have 2,500 breast cancer patients, 2,500 prostate cancer patients, we have all of their data. Now if we can just add their genetic profiling, we can see this why a certain group of people didn't do as well as the other group. Now we can move it forward and maybe if we did this a little differently, maybe we could have more people live. That's what it's about."
The procedure is not covered by OHIP and will cost each patient about $1,000.