A CLOSER LOOK AT CANCER
Caesars donates cutting edge research equipment to university lab
Trying to find individualized treatment is super important. Every patient is different and responds differently.
Rosa-Maria Ferraiuolo spends her days in a biology lab at the University of Windsor injecting microscopic zebrafish with the cells of cancer patients.
Her research into how the cells react to different chemotherapy treatments has been given a huge boost thanks to a recent $20,000 donation from Caesars Windsor for a state-of-the-art injector and microscope system available in only a few labs across Canada.
“This piece of equipment is really going to move our research forward and move Windsor into more of a spotlight for our cancer research,” said Ferraiuolo, a research associate at the university.
The announcement of the Caesars Windsor donation Tuesday was tied to the kickoff of an initiative by the Windsor Cancer Research Group to connect this area’s various pockets of researchers and equipment.
The goal of the initiative — Nucleus: Core Labs Enabling Solutions — is to conduct a virtual inventory of available equipment and research and link the area’s seven identified cores under one umbrella.
“We have over 200 cancer researchers in our area,” said Lisa Porter, a biology professor and the translational research director for the WCRG.
“We want to make the most of the equipment we have and identify where the holes are. What equipment do we still need? Filling in those holes is important for the patients in our community.”
Before the new injector system was installed six months ago, Ferraiuolo worked with an older, less efficient system for injecting an embryonic fish so small it has to be viewed through a microscope.
“This is a lot better,” Ferraiuolo said. “Everything was more manual with the older system. This has better accuracy to make sure each time we inject in the same spot.”
Kevin Laforet, the regional president of Caesars, donned a lab coat and gloves and tried his hand at injecting a fish.
Zebrafish have become quite valuable as a research tool because of how they mimic the human body. By injecting a patient’s cancer cells into the yolk sac of a fish embryo, Ferraiuolo can use different chemotherapy treatments on the fish’s tumour to discover which works best.
“We can individualize a patient’s therapy based on this system,” she said. “Trying to find individualized treatment is super important. Every patient is different and every patient responds differently.”
Using this platform to personalize care is a long-term goal.
“There are things going on in Windsor that no one else is doing,” Porter said of local research.
“There are only a handful of labs using this platform for drug screening patients. This is special. It’s truly what we need to do to move cancer care to the next step.”
Porter expects it to take a year to get a good handle on this area’s inventory of research and equipment, which will be available at windsorcancerresearch.com/ campaigns/nucleus/.