A new piece of cancer research equipment at the University of Windsor being funded through a Caesars Windsor grant is part of a wider cancer research network being developed in the region.
Caesars donated $20,000 to the purchase of a device that can inject human cancer cells into a Zebra fish.
Zebra Fish assay injection tool, UWindsor cancer research lab (by AM800's Peter Langille)
The technique allows the researcher to watch the immune reaction as well as how the cancer reacts to drug and other treatments.
It's one element in the Windsor Cancer Research Group's virtual inventory of equipment which is called Nucleus.
Dr. Lisa Porter is the Scientific Director of the WCRG and sees this as a significant advancement.
She says having an inventory of the equipment allows better sharing of equipment resources.
Dr. Porter says the Nucleus website helps get to an answer faster because it's organized according to cancer themes: "a researcher can go to that website and say I know my patient has this problem, who would I go to to see if it's something in the environment causing it, how do I determine what's going on with their tumor cell at a cellular level. so the website is set up in a way that researchers can access it and find out who's researching that and how can I tap into it"
She says the network is across the border and involves several research institutions like Henry Ford and Karmanos.