Unlike the many drugs to treat cancer, heart disease, and stroke, there are only two approved drugs to treat scarring. These drugs are unfortunately not that effective. We are interested in understanding how scarring develops, and using this information to rationally develop new anti-scarring drugs. This has led to a start-up company Fibrocor Therapeutics, that has recently developed a new line of anti-scarring drugs being developed for clinical trial. 

Currently, the only way to measure scarring in most organs is by a needle biopsy, which is painful, can cause bleeding, and requires time off work. We can also only sample a very small piece of tissue, and so we can often underestimate or overestimate scarring. We have been working on ways to take pictures of organs using either MRI or ultrasound , so that needles are not required. Moreover, we can also take pictures of the entire organ, rather than just a small piece. Our MRI studies have already lead to a change in how kidney scarring is measured at St. Michael’s Hospital. Recently, we have also developed new ultrasound and photo acoustic imaging techniques that we took from rodent to first-in-human trials in less than 5 years!

Our most recent research has lead to the development of ScarScan software, which can work with any ultrasound machine to produce accurate measurements of kidney scarring. This is a huge advance, since there currently is NO way of measuring kidney fibrosis non-invasively with conventional imaging techniques like ultrasound. The only way that doctors measure kidney fibrosis now is by a painful and invasive biopsy.

These discoveries have led to the filing of new patents, and we are currently in the process of setting up a start-up company to bring them to market.