Monitoring Breast Tumors with a Small Wearable Probe
Darren Roblyer and his lab has developed a small, painless wearable probe that a patient can wear over her tumor. It\u2019s flexible and conforms to the shape of the patient\u2019s breast, and it uses light to monitor the tumor\u2019s response to chemotherapy. \n\nWhy is this important? It offers a new way to assess treatment response in real time to see if a patient is responding to pre-surgical chemotherapy, providing a pathway to personalize the treatment plan for each patient.\n\nDr. Roblyer is a two-time American Cancer Society grantee and Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University\n\n2:27 \u2013 On why neoadjuvant (or pre-surgical) chemotherapy is important\n\n3:45 \u2013 The challenges of pre-surgical chemotherapy\n\n5:34 \u2013 An opportunity to adapt treatments for specific patients\n\n7:54 \u2013 How his lab uses a wearable probe to monitor breast tumors \n\n10:48 \u2013 How the technology can help identify who\u2019s responding to chemotherapy and who\u2019s not in the first week of therapy\n\n12:21 \u2013 On why it\u2019s safe and painless, and how the wearable probe will help them study larger patient populations\n\n15:28 \u2013 On how, since the probe can be worn by the patient outside the hospital, it allows physicians to monitor treatment responsiveness at useful timepoints\n\n20:03 \u2013 On the two aspects of this work he\u2019s most excited about\n\n24:51 \u2013 The impact of ACS funding on his work\n\n25:55 \u2013 His message for cancer patients