The following excerpt is from TRIUMF’s website highlighting the work being done by co-op student Carlee Poleschuk.
TRIUMF is Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics and is based at UBC.
Imaging Triple Negative Breast Cancer
By Kelsey Litwin, Communications Assistant
Preliminary interview by Jacqueline Wightman
How does a physician image a cancer that does not respond to common techniques?
This is the question that Thompson Rivers University co-op student Carlee Poleschuk hopes to answer during her 8-month work term at TRIUMF. In collaborating with the Nuclear Medicine team at TRIUMF and the British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA), Poleschuk uses isotopes to test alternative imaging agents that can help diagnose Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC).
“There’s this strain of breast cancer: hard to diagnose, poor prognosis, hard to image,” said Poleschuk of the disease. She explained that this is due to the cancer cells’ lack of known receptors. Receptors help clinicians recognize, diagnose and treat certain types of diseased tissue by binding to and then bringing molecules into the cell.
