Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Fribourg
Dr. Ivana Domljanovic is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where she is leading innovative research in breast cancer detection technology.
This Transcript is AI-Generated
Ivana Domljanovic: There are small molecules that are regulating genes and they are dysregulated in a cancer, so we can, by detecting them, monitor patients. Every year over 2.3 million people worldwide are diagnosed with breast cancer mammograms scans, and biopsies are effective screening methods, but they have their downsides.
What I would really love to do is to develop this technology in point of care device that will be affordable and accessible to everyone.
Micah: In this episode, we explore a potentially groundbreaking breast cancer screening method, how it works, its future role in routine care, and its potential to transform cancer detection. I'm Dana Cleon. And I'm Micah Schweitzer. This is balancing the Future from Metler Toledo. On this show, we delve into the world of science and technology and explore its transformative impact on our lives.
Let's jump in.
Dana: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, and it's one of the deadliest in 95% of countries, it ranks as either the first or second leading cause of cancer deaths. But the fight against breast cancer isn't new. It's ancient. The Edwin Smith surgical papyrus was written in Egypt in the 17th century BCE.
Micah: It describes eight cases of breast tumours treated by Cauterization and in ancient Greece. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, was among the first to notice the difference between cancerous and non-cancerous breast tumours. For a long time, detecting breast cancer depended on self-check or physical exams, and if doctors found something concerning, the next step might have been painful and invasive surgery.
Dana: Then in 1895, the invention of the x-ray changed everything. This new technology paved the way for mammograms and drastically increased rates of detection. Today, researchers are working on ways to make screening easier and even less invasive. We're going to explore one of these promising methods today, but before we do, there are a few terms we need to know.
The first is nanostructures. These are tiny materials, so small, they're measured in nanometers. For perspective, a human hair is about 80 to a hundred thousand Nanometers wide, nanostructures are already being used in cutting edge applications like delivering drugs directly to cancer cells. Another important term is DNA.
Micah: Origami. This fascinating technique uses DNA strands as building blocks to create precise nanoscale structures. Now that we've set the stage, let's dive in and find out how today's guests first became interested in the field of breast cancer screening and monitoring. I was very interested into using DNA programmable uh, nano device for the screening purposes.
Ivana Domljanovic: And my professor, he is expert in breast cancer, so he teach me a lot about that. That's the voice of Ivana Domljanovic , a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland. So naturally my path took me to the breast cancer cleaning field where I'm using dano structures that I am constructing a lab for potentially screening in the future of the breast cancer while earning her chemistry degree in the us.
Dana: She also played basketball, balancing science and sports. We'll hear about that experience at the end of the episode. So I think we'll come back to the specifics of the screening method, but if we can pull out for a little bit, why do we need to screen in the first place? Let's go very basic. Well, we need the screen in order to detect early.
Ivana Domljanovic: We know that early detection saves 25% of the life. So I think, uh, screening early and checking your body if you are female or even men, men can also get, uh, breast cancer. You should do it because that could save your life. I think first what a female should do, it's uh, risk assessment. So to check on their own and later on after four years or fifties, they are uh, screening processes, which every health system has it and is screening by mammography.
This is done every two years, or if there is person with a family history or gene mutation, then they do it every year. So depends on the risk. And also another method that is used is ultrasound and M-R-I-M-R-I. It's more sensitive method and it's used in combination with the MAM graph in case there are people with a high risk and also with females that have a dense tissues of the breasts.
So the MAM graph is not very useful in that case. Are false positives an issue with current screening methods? Yeah, there are some. Definitely. That's why we need to develop technology that can, with mammography, prevent the dose as well. Are there any other issues with this current screening? Yes, so mammography definitely first.
It's very uncomfortable. I think I'm talking from the female perspective, right? I don't think it's easy. Even my mom, when I talk to her, I need to make her to go to mammography because she is not very comfortable taking off her shirt and screening, but she knows it's for her own good. Then there definitely there is, uh, expensive.
There is a problem with sensitivity and specificity, but also what is really important, there is a problem of radiation. Exposure to radiation can further damage your DNA and can cure some other cancer or other disease. So overall, of course, it's a good screening method, but has some drawbacks and limitation that we should in future improve it.
Micah: How effective are current screening methods? Well, the data shows that mammograms have an accuracy rate of about 87%. Biopsies on the other hand, are more effective, but typically a mammogram needs to be conducted before a biopsy is performed. And what about false positives? According to the American Cancer Society, about half of women who get an annual mammogram over a 10 year period will experience a false positive result.
False positives are also more common in younger women and those with dense breast tissue. False negatives can be an issue too. Overall, mammograms miss about one in eight cases of breast cancer, which means a significant number of cancers go undetected. So how does IVANA DOMLJANOVIC'S screening method work and how might it compare to what's currently out there?
Dana: Next we're going to explore the role of microRNAs in all of this. microRNAs are small molecules that regulate gene expression and they've been found to play a key role in the development of cancer. Detecting dysregulation in microRNAs could be a game changer in terms of accuracy and reliability.
Micah: Here's Ivana Domljanovic again. So by using this cut edge, DNA ano technology or technology overall, because this is not yet test because we are still doing a lot of research to reach this call the test, we want to develop a simple, safe, and affordable nanosensor for detection of microRNAs that already mentioned.
Ivana Domljanovic: There are small molecules that are regulating, uh, genes and they are dysregulated in a cancer. So we can, by detecting them, monitor patients what that means. Monitor. Monitor patient means that after the patient received the therapy, we can look how this patient is responding to the therapy. Meaning if it's responding to good, we keep this patient on the therapy.
If not, we can start changing the therapy earlier, meaning that we can say potentially more lives. Okay. Because at this moment there is no follow up test for this. That's also another problem that we are facing in a clinicals. So this technology or platform or nanosensor, what I'm working on, it's definitely a promising tool to reduce the cost, deliver quick results, and make it with this technology, we can make it accessible to everyone because we can make this technology in the point of care device, meaning that labs or offices or doctor offices with, uh, they're not expensive labs can have this technology and use it.
Okay. So how that would work, we would use this nanotechnology that would, in identified microRNAs that we would already select. We would mix it with a human sample, and then a nanosensor would generate a fluorescent signal that would be measured with, um, a laboratory instrument such as optical readout.
And, um, this readout would, uh, give us result if a biomarker is present in a human sample or not. And now we are testing this possibility of using this technique to develop breast cancer for monitoring a patient and later on for early detection. Okay. So that's our principle. What we are doing right now, if we want to take this technology and apply in clinics in the future.
So when we are talking about screening of breast cancer, right? We have this imaging screenings that we already mentioned earlier, but we also have, um, liquid biopsies that we didn't mention. And these liquid biopsies are also used to confirm cancer diagnosis or to check or monitor patient's responses on the therapies, right?
That's basically taking the blood and checking different biomarkers in the blood of the patient. And this methods that are used in clinics are NGS, uh, QPCR and Micro ra. However, there are multi-step procedure that take long time and they require expensive, uh, labs and educated personnel to do them. So with our technology that we are developing and that we hope that in future will be applied in clinical, we would save time because it's single step reaction.
It'll be much cheaper and it'll be accessible for everyone because you can use it in very, uh, simple lab settings. Yeah, absolutely. What type of sample are you working with? I'm right now using with the human plasma and serums. So in a clinical setting, how would those be collected? The doctor would or nurse would take a blood from the patient and then we will just centrifuge the blood and take plasma out.
Micah: So essentially what you're developing here is breast cancer screening would become part of a blood panel. Exactly. And can this technology also detect other forms of cancer? So, as I said, this technology, what we are doing is a platform to detect microRNAs. This microRNAs are dysregulated in different types of cancer.
Ivana Domljanovic: Right now I'm working with the breast cancer, but potentially if this works out in the future, we will apply to different, um, types of the cancer. Of course, that's the goal. But in coming year at University of Freiburg, we will, uh, build technology to detect multiple microRNAs in a patient blood or plasma.
And this test will firstly be used for research purposes. So we collect a lot of data. If this is very successful, we will then start building, um, a clinical test for monitoring and after initial treatment. So you would essentially have different micro RNA profiles or signatures that you're looking for for each type of cancer?
Exactly. Yeah. You are completely correct. And how sensitive are these? I'm just, you know, imagining this in my head based on how you explained it, that, you know, a patient goes into their doctor and has a a blood panel screening. Do they have to have a certain level of cancer within their body before this test would pick it up?
That's what we are researching right now. We want to create a panel of microRNAs that are DYS in cancer patients that are highly expresso. It's easier to detect. The detection of biomarkers in microRNAs has become an exciting and rapidly growing area of research beyond its role in cancer detection. A 2024 study found that microRNAs could also help detect Alzheimer's disease.
Micah: Exciting breakthroughs in cardiovascular disease detection are also on the horizon promising faster, more accurate diagnoses. Looking ahead though, what does Ivana Domljanovic envision for the future of her technology? What I would really love to do is to develop this technology and point of care device that will be affordable and accessible to everyone.
Ivana Domljanovic: And especially in parts of the world where there is not really expensive screening methods. So we can use it there as well, but also to use it on every day in any other country, which has effective screening methods as a normal blood test routine for monitoring of the patients, for sure, for the first step, and to see if the patient is responding to therapy as best possible.
So that will be the first step. What I really would like to do. If you're willing to become a bit of a futurist and think, you know, quite far out, do you see any potential that something like this could be even put into a home testing scenario? Oh, I would love to. There is like, actually I read some paper that is showing a difference of micro RNA expressed in saliva, but you know, that's like, I think in 20 years ahead of us, uh, many more research has to be done.
If in a case we could do that, that will be amazing. But at this moment right now with the current situation, we cannot do that. Of course. And this technology would go hand in hand with improved treatment technologies as well, right? I mean exactly. Being a futurist, like Micah just suggested, I would think that maybe we would eventually monitor our own health at home and then see that the levels aren't right, and then maybe it's just as easy as at home immune therapy or gene therapy or something like this, you know?
Dana: So how I see it, like in a case in the future, we can do it. Like for example, right now, the uh, patient will go to doctor office, do blood tests, something is wrong on blood test. General doctor would uh, forward this patient to, for the screening mammography or ultrasound or MRI, right? But if you are thinking in the future, if we can do it at home, but that's like really hard at this moment to imagine.
Ivana Domljanovic: But if we can imagine then, uh, you check from saliva, maybe send back to, to the test, to the lab, they check and they send you that something is dysregulated and then this person who goes to the doctor, that's how I imagine, you know, I'm a big, uh, dreamer and maybe I'm always positive, you know, so I'm always thinking, oh, how it would be if, uh, if this would work and so on.
So that would be beautiful to see it, you know, but a lot of work ahead of us. Then in the meantime, you've talked about bringing down the cost of screening for breast cancer or other types of cancer. Do you have a sense of what kind of healthcare costs will be associated with the test you're developing?
Definitely cheaper than, uh, what is right now, if you are comparing to liquid biopsies, as I already said, NGS, uh, MICRORAY or QPCR, definitely our test would be a lower costed dose. I can talk right now from this perspective, but once this technology is actually produced and go to the market, that's another topic, how it'll be priced right.
But material cost overall and production for this test definitely is much, much cheaper than, uh, Q-P-C-R-N-G-S and microarray. Let's pause quickly to unpack these terms. QPCR or quantitative polymerase chain reaction lets us measure how much of a specific gene or virus is in a sample. NGS or next generation sequencing quickly decodes the DNA of an organism or specific genes, a microarray checks which genes are active or looks for genetic differences in a sample.
Micah: I mean, we talked about, you said sort of maybe 20 years from now at home, saliva tests. What do you see between now and, and 20? What do you see in five or 10 years? What does this look like in five years? Definitely five to 10 years, probably it'll be first, uh, doctor blood test for monitoring. That's what I would hope for.
Ivana Domljanovic: Of course, there is a lot of work, other things that we cannot predict and it's hard to put the date on anything, but, um, that would be beneficial. But for sure, for next year, definitely, uh, would be technology that is detecting, uh, microRNAs and better test for detection of the microRNAs overall that I can comment on and say it.
Dana: You're just in this, this research phase and you're looking to develop a commercial product. We interviewed in a previous episode, the CEO of now a Swiss biotech company that's raising millions of dollars in Sparrow for their organ on chip technology. Do you foresee that in your future, you know, having employees, having a marketing department, having, you know, a whole business behind this?
Ivana Domljanovic: Definitely. I see. Bringing this technology to the company because once the project is too big, you need to move it because you need more money to make it work and so on. So it's a natural pathway. So if I would tell you I didn't think of it, I, I, I would definitely lie because when you're doing this kinda work, definitely you need to be futurist and think ahead, right?
And, um, generally my personality is that I am planning a, b, c plans in this case doesn't work. That's, I need to do this and so on. So definitely yes, and I think, uh, like I'm working on it that I educate myself good enough. So I'm ready for that challenge as you ask already so I can, um, take it and make it work.
Yeah. So yes, I thought about it and, uh, I think it'll be natural, uh, lead after this development phase of the technology. If you haven't heard it yet, we recommend checking out our conversation with Jan Lichtenberg from INS Inspiro. His journey from scientists to CEO could offer a glimpse into what Ivana Domljanovic's future might hold, and we've included a link in this episode's show notes.
Dana: At the start of this conversation, we mentioned Ivana Domljanovic was a college basketball player while earning her chemistry degree. What lessons did she learn from balancing both? Basketball teach me so many things, and I think whatever I learned there, I'm applying in my professional life because I know without hard work effort and teamwork, you cannot achieve anything.
Ivana Domljanovic: I mean, that's just a sport. And if you put just a little bit more today into something tomorrow, you will be more enrich in any way. So this is what I'm definitely applying from basketball into the science for sure. So it's hard work, teamwork and like trying to every day do a little bit better so you have better results for tomorrow.
Micah: And in, in some sense, isn't a game just an ongoing series of solutions you have to find? I mean, yeah, the ball's here and now the ball's there and you have to figure out how to get it exactly somewhere else. Definitely. It's a, a rhythm dynamics. It's like, you know, it's a fast life, you know, especially in basketball, it's also in science.
Ivana Domljanovic: You need to always adjust and take the best you can and figure out, uh, how to, to solve, uh, whatever is a front of you At the moment you had, when you began your science career, you were of course balancing it with a basketball career as well. Yes. Do you have lessons from that that you would share with other people who are in the sciences and trying to balance, you know, two passions or two parts of a life, uh, discipline?
I think where a lot of discipline has to be within yourself in order to balance two careers at one time. I don't think it's for everyone. Definitely you have to be very goal oriented and you need to love what you do because definitely in some way it's a lot of sacrifices if you look from outside. But for me at the moment, it was not because I really enjoy doing whatever I did before, but it takes a lot of time, energy, and a lot of this discipline.
I remember the days at, uh, college because I did my, I did science. So with the science you have in morning theory classes, but in afternoon you have labs and then plus two practises per day. So you can imagine my day started five 30 and finished like 10:00 PM so no break every day. And during the season we would have two games per week.
So often I would miss school on Wednesday, go to play basketball and Saturday as well. It was fun. I cannot say it, of course, it at the moment was a lot of work and struggling and thinking that you will not make it to the test. But, um, it was also fun because it challenged you to be better and to study more or harder and run faster and, and competing for your position within team.
That's also something that it's a heavy for the young adult. That's something that you need to learn, balance it as well. Okay. And I guess the final question is something we ask all of our guests is what advice would you have for early career scientists? Mm. Find something that makes you happy and you're passionate about it.
And try to make the best of it.
Micah: We've been speaking with Ivana Domljanovic Dovi, a researcher at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland. Dana, what were some of your key takeaways from this conversation? Yeah, Micah, this was a fascinating conversation. This technology feels so incredibly cutting edge with so many promising advancements in detecting cancers earlier, and even diseases like Alzheimer's.
The breadth of application that we could potentially see in the coming years really stood out to me. Yeah, I was really inspired by the whole conversation. You know, we have these current detection methods that are quite effective, but it's really great to see how science is always driven by the pursuit of further innovation and improvement.
Yeah, and those innovations and improvements becoming part of personalised medicine, which we've discussed in other episodes in the show. The idea of home testing as a place where diagnostics might take place, or even the idea that you could get a regular blood screening and have cancer detection as part of that.
Dana: Yeah. Just the potential that would have on saving more lives and making cancer more of a thing of the past and not something that we're confronted with so often nowadays.
This has been balancing the future from Mettler Toledo. What questions about science and technology do you want answered in a future episode? Let us know by leaving a review or if you're a Spotify user, leave us a message in the comment section and be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
We'll be back in two weeks with our next episode. See you then.
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