Taking it cell by cell

It’s the little things that matter most to Michael Kolios. And by little, we mean microscopic. A professor of physics and a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Applications of Ultrasound, Kolios is using high-tech ultrasound technology to analyze tumours at the cellular level.

Specifically, Kolios is using high-frequency ultrasound imaging to study cell structure. And he’s making his mark by using this sophisticated tool to monitor the effects and progress of cancer treatment.

Today, cancer patients must endure many cycles of chemotherapy or multiple sessions of radiation therapy – and the side effects associated with them – before learning if their tumours have responded to treatment. In the future, ultrasound imaging may reduce that wait time to days by detecting the more immediate signs of cell death. The result: improved quality of life for patients and cost savings for the health-care system. Kolios is working with his long-time radiation-oncologist collaborator, Gregory Czarnota of the Odette Cancer Centre at Sunnybrook Hospital, on using this technique to monitor the effectiveness of breast cancer therapies.

Kolios is also investigating the role that ultrasound can play in cancer therapy. For example, when ultrasound energy is focused on one spot in the body, the tumour below heats up considerably. And doctors can watch the damage as it happens with the aid of new imaging technologies. More recently, Kolios received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to also look at how small bubbles and droplets can be used with ultrasound to destroy tumours.

Finally, Kolios is exploring another tool: photoacoustic imaging. In the same way that we hear thunder after a lightning strike, photoacoustic imaging picks up the sounds that are produced by tissues when they are subjected to light pulses. One of only a few groups in the world working with the specialized equipment that allows photoacoustic imaging to look at single, microscopic particles, Kolios’s research team hopes the technology could eventually be used to first image and then treat cancer.