Integrated Human Practices

Throughout our project, we have implemented the Human-Centred Design Framework into our Wet Lab and Human Practices. This allows us to put the focus on B-cell lymphoma and cancer patients, ensuring that our solutions and community outreach campaigns not only address their medical conditions but also holistically improve their life qualities. In turn, we are also inspired by their life experiences which motivates and drives our team to tackle this difficult disease. In addition, we also consulted leading experts in the field to make sure our project is informed by the most recent understanding of the disease. Overall, our Integrated Human Practices campaigns have greatly shaped the direction of our project and maximized its potential influence.

Cancer as portrayed by the media is not accurate and gives the public a wrong image of cancer and the experiences faced by cancer survivors. So we wanted to show people the real and unfiltered view of the realities of cancer. To do so, we interviewed 5 cancer survivors from various different backgrounds. During these interviews, we discussed topics such as the aspects of cancer diagnoses that are not often thought about, medical racism, survivorship, the importance of self-advocacy especially for diagnostic screenings and routine checkups, why education on cancer is required in today’s society and how to cope with the self-image issue that follows cancer diagnosis. We found that many interviewees had experiences wherein they felt an abnormality that was overlooked by medical professionals but eventually attained a diagnosis through continued self-advocacy and how teaching children about cancer at a young age will help them have more empathy and hence will make cancer patients feel less alienated. To maximize reach for our audience, we posted a 15-min version of these interviews to our Instagram account. To increase accessibility, we also created transcripts for people who prefer reading over watching the videos. By doing so, we were able to inform our audiences on what cancer can look like, how cancer experiences can vary between individuals and why it’s important to seek help early.

While traditional scientific research and media focus on the advancement of cancer treatments and technologies, our group wanted to paint a holistic picture of the experiences of cancer patients, especially highlighting the contributions of those who patiently support cancer patients: the caregivers. We published an article in the Hamilton Spectator, a well-known local publisher with over 20,000 twitter followers and thousands of daily readers, re-enforcing the significance of cancer caregivers to the public. Caregivers, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and family, play an important role in assisting cancer patients through their daily lives, social interactions, and financial cost of treatments.

In our article, we used evidence from journal articles and highlighted:

• Many responsibilities often fall under the responsibility of caregivers, ranging from daily tasks such as running errands, cooking, to more demanding labour, such as bringing patients to their appointments
• Caregivers face physical and financial challenges that are often overlooked by the general public
• Studies have shown that more than half of the caregiver participants experienced physical issues, such as exhaustion, back and neck problems as a result of caregiving

While we highlight the struggles of cancer patients, we also recognize and appreciate those who work behind the scenes and on the frontline to improve the lives of cancer patients. In our article, we provided several online resources and hotlines which caregivers can reach out to according to their needs. Only when advanced treatment works in conjunction with dedicated and satisfied caregivers can we make the most positive impact in patients’ lives.

We also published another article with the Hamilton Spectator that focused on the economic aspect of a cancer diagnosis. Our team is based in Canada where there is access to universal healthcare, so we compared that with the more privatized system found in the United States of America. In this article, we highlighted:

• The discrepancy between medical costs of American and Canadian patients: American patients spend 72% more on health care costs
• The difference in wait times between American and Canadian patients: Canadians report a median wait time of 11 weeks to see a specialist which can cause increased stress and discomfort
• The inaccesability of the American healthcare system and how that can lead to worsened clinical outcomes

As a result of our published articles, several local non-profit organizations reached out to collaborate with us on our cancer awareness project, highlighting the far-reaching impact of our written work.

Collaboration with Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

We collaborated with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada (LLSC) to distribute a one-page graphic on their social media introducing people to our new approach to targeting cancerous B cells. Through this we were able to reach an audience of around 20,000-30,000 people, the majority of whom are cancer patients. This allows us to both educate people on the use of phages to target B cell lymphoma while also being able to better understand the patient experience with B cell lymphoma and current therapies from patients who contact us. This is important to ensure that there is no knowledge barrier and that patients are receiving accurate scientific information regarding this potential therapeutic option. Patients’ perspectives are crucial for our project as they will help us better understand the need for a novel therapy as well as what hardships patients currently go through. Through our therapy, we aim to minimize hardships as much as possible with this novel approach to not only effectively treat the cancer but also maximize patients’ quality of life. In addition to these initiatives, we will be joining the LLSC on their podcast to provide more detailed information about our team, research endeavors, and our concept for a phage-based B-cell lymphoma therapy, allowing us to further communicate our research and raise awareness on this new therapeutic approach.

Talk with Dr. Gelareh Zadeh

We held a webinar with Dr. Zadeh where we learned more about her research, the issue of the blood brain barrier when targeting brain tumors, and the issue of targeting only one pathway in cancer therapies. We discussed the need to address multiple pathways when targeting cancer cells because when only one pathway is targeted, the cell can upregulate alternative pathways to compensate for this, reducing the efficacy of the treatment. This information helped us decide which transgenes we wanted to incorporate in our cassette to target cancerous B cells. Following the advice from Dr. Zadeh, we decided to include both TNF-α and GrB in our cassette, instead of TNF-α alone. This allows us to induce cell death in cancer cells through two different mechanisms, hopefully reducing the cell’s ability to compensate for this and upregulate other pathways for survival.

Webinar with Dr. Alexander Hynes

We collaborated with Dr. Alexander Hynes, a phage expert at McMaster University, where we learned more about his research. Dr. Hynes emphasized the effect of bacteriophages on shaping the gut microbiome. Through this webinar we were able to stay up to date with the exciting phage research happening at our university.