TORONTO – Cori Woolley has spent a lot of time wondering when it would happen.
Her mother, sister, some aunts and cousins have been diagnosed with breast cancer. When she discovered a lump, her doctor recommended she go through the Rapid Diagnostic Unit (RDU) at Sunnybrook Hospital. The RDU provides fast testing and aims to have results and a diagnosis within 24 hours.
“It was quite amazing that the turnaround was that quick,” said Woolley. “From the moment they found a lump to the moment it was diagnosed was probably 72 hours.”
For Woolley it was a good news story. She didn’t have cancer.
Unfortunately, one in nine women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre treats many of them.
Now it’s opening the largest breast cancer centre in Canada, called the Louise Temerty Breast Cancer Centre. The new 28,000-square-foot facility will offer tailored care and more space for specialized breast cancer clinics. It will also bring researchers and clinicians together to best make use of new technologies and imaging.
The centre is named after Louise Temerty, a long-time advocate for women’s health who, a quarter century ago, helped form the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.
The new centre will encompass the country’s only multidisciplinary clinic for immediate breast cancer reconstruction.
“If you look at the statistics in Ontario … overall breast reconstruction, only seven to 10 per cent end up having breast reconstruction after mastectomy but since we have started our program here, over 40 per cent of women diagnosed and treated for breast cancer here have had reconstruction, “ said Dr. Laura Snell, a plastic surgeon specializing in breast reconstruction at Sunnybrook.
“I think if the resources are put towards reconstruction and helping women feel they have access to get information about it, I think more and more women will choose to have reconstruction as part of their care.”
”PYNK,” the country’s only comprehensive program for those with breast cancer under 40, will also be housed at the new centre.
As part of ongoing research, Sunnybrook scientists are leading the way on trying to determine early on – that is one to four weeks into chemotherapy treatment – whether the treatment is actually working.
“This will spare … patients unnecessary drugs and toxications and it will save a lot of money for the health care system putting patients on the proper medication early on,” said Ahmad El-Falou, a research assistant at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
Sunnybrook is also testing microbubbles for radiation therapy.
“So when we vibrate these microbubbles inside the blood vessels of tumours, we find that we damage the blood vessels within the tumours as well. So this gives us two effects. The first effect is that it damages the vital blood supply that supplies the tumour with the nutrients that it needs to survive and on the second level it actually releases a bunch of different biochemicals that cause cell death,” says William Tran, a radiation therapist and researcher at Sunnybrook.
“So tumour cells start reacting to these signals and start going through a phase called apoptosis or cell death. Ee’re finding that when we combine these microbubbles with radiation doses, that we get a heightened or more effective radiation response in these tumours.”
The microbubble research has been done in mice and researchers plan to move forward with human trials shortly.
The Louise Temerty Breast Cancer Centre at Sunnybrook Hospital officially opens on Monday, April 8. It was made possible through at $10 million donation.
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