Thanks to Surrey donors Sanjeev Garg and Seema Garg and the Drive for the Cure Foundation, Royal Columbian Hospital has new technology that will drastically improve breast cancer treatment.
A new $150,000 diagnostic analyzer will allow pathologists to quickly determine if a tissue sample is HER2 positive, Fraser Health says. This means patients will soon be able to receive their full results from breast cancer screenings within one to two weeks.
HER2 is one of the three markers that pathologists look for, Dr Carolyn Shiau, Regional Medical Director for laboratory and pathology at Fraser Health, said, adding the HER2 marker can be difficult to interpret.
Currently, if a patient in Fraser Health requires a special HER2 test, it can take about three to four weeks from the date of their biopsy to get the full results, as their biopsy has to be sent to a lab outside of the health authority.
Patients can receive an answer within the week if that second test for HER2 is not needed, Shiau said.
“What’s awesome about this new platform is it will give us the ability to give you the right answer much faster,” Shiau said.
When a patient in Fraser Health finds a lump in their breast, the first step is getting either a mammogram or ultrasound, Shiau said. If a lump is found, a biopsy is then performed. The biopsy is sent to the pathology lab where Shiau works. It is her team’s job to figure out if it is breast cancer or not.
“Once we decide that it is breast cancer and we make that diagnosis, the next step for our diagnosis is to figure out the tumor biomarkers for kind of flags that the tumor wears, that are potential targets for treatment,” Shiau said.
The team looks for HER2, estrogen and progesterone tumour markers.
“We can get a result about half the time and then half the time we have to do a second step,” she said.
Before now, that second step had to be sent to a lab outside of Fraser Health.
“This analyzer will allow us to do that second step within Fraser Health, which is fantastic,” Shiau added.
This is important because if the tumour is positive for HER2 the patient can receive a targeted treatment.
“It’s as if your cell wears a special flag for HER2, and that means I can send in a chemotherapy drug or a targeted treatment drugs that only goes after the cell that is wearing that flag,” Shiau said. “So instead of it going after all the cells that replicate quickly, which is what our standard chemotherapy does, we can actually do a targeted treatment that is just targeted to just your tumor cells.”
The analyzer is at Royal Columbian Hospital and is going through the validation process. Shiau said it is not as simple as turning on a computer.
“There are lots of regulations and rules, you have to follow in order to ensure that the result we’re getting is accurate and comparable to any other existing tests,” she said.
Shiau is hopeful the validation process will be complete in the next month or so.
While Surrey’s Garg family did not want any media attention from their donation, their generosity will help many people, said Jeff Norris, President and CEO of Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation.
“We are humbled by the continued support we see from donors who share our mission to provide the best in care for people in our province, and who step forward to fund important equipment such as this.”