It’s a big innovation from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, contained in a very small package: using bubbles to find cancer. These are tiny microbubbles of gas, smaller than a red blood cell, that are injected in minute amounts into a patient’s veins. And when an ultrasound is used to track the bubbles, they ring like a bell, showing where they are! So how does this help find cancer? Well, the bubbles essentially form a roadmap of the body’s small blood vessels. And the way those blood vessels form, will help indicate if cancer is present or not. In a healthy organ, blood vessels resemble a tree-like structure. But when cancer is present, those blood vessels look like a disorganized tangle of lines.

Imaging these microbubbles using ultrasound was the brainchild of Dr. Peter Burns and his team at Sunnybrook Research Institute. It’s a technique that’s now being used to find cancer around the world. And the hope in a bubble doesn’t end there. In the future, the goal is to load these bubbles up with treatment and shatter them with high intensity sound when they reach diseased tissue, just like an opera singer would shatter a glass with his or her thundering voice!

It’s another way of seeing that hope floats, albeit in a very small package. It’s a story better seen, so take a look at my video on this latest Sunnybrook innovation.

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