Lauded for her work on early cancer detection, a Romanian chemist enjoys sudden popularity in a country where budget cuts are pushing science to the wall.
BUCHAREST | The building housing the Romanian National Institute of Physical Chemistry defies any expectation of what a place of advanced scientific research might look like. Renovations are taking place: everything is covered in white dust and the corridors are filled with old wooden furniture taken out of the rooms.
Away from the noise and dust, though, behind the closed doors of the labs, researchers create protected havens where they conduct valuable work, leading in some cases to major discoveries.
The institute hosts four rooms of the Electrochemistry and Condensed Matter Laboratory, the workplace of chemist Raluca van Staden, who achieved national fame in 2010 for the discovery of a microsensor that could detect several types of cancer from regular blood samples, in only six minutes.
Classical music flows out of van Staden’s lab, a discreet indication that the 41-year-old researcher is also a conservatory-trained pianist. After completing a first university degree in chemistry – inspired by her father, a chemistry teacher – van Staden went on to get a degree from the Bucharest conservatory and still performs occasionally. She says “music and chemistry complement each other” and that “in chemistry, finding a simple solution to a complex problem is an art.”
SMALLER THAN A JEWELRY BOX
Van Staden worked on the microsensor together with her fellow chemist and husband, South African Jacobus Frederick van Staden, and two research assistants.
As the two assistants diligently look into microscopes and monitors, van Staden shows the tiny sensor that can analyze and count the biomarkers produced by organs or tumors that can indicate tumor activity when present in high levels in the blood. Needle-sized, the device can fit into a small jewelry box. The chemist explains that, so far, testing has been done for ovarian, breast, prostate, and gastro-intestinal cancers, but she says she is confident that its use could be expanded to more types of the disease. The sensor has even been tested successfully on saliva samples, she says.
Raluca van Staden with her tiny electrochemical sensor. Photo by Claudia Ciobanu.
The potential of the discovery is huge. If it went into large-scale production, the small, easy-to-use device could be used in mass screenings for early cancer detection.
Van Staden says that other methods for early cancer detection under development around the world are either more damaging to the environment because they rely on highly reactive substances, or more expensive and complicated, relying on spectrometry and other methods that require processing of blood samples.
“Even though the price of the materials used for our sensor is not cheap, its final cost should not be too high because the quantity of materials used is small and devices will be reusable; furthermore, it is a green innovation,” the scientist says.
“Cancer detection tests everywhere are not accessible to low-income people, because they take place in private clinics and they’re expensive,” van Staden says. “We aim to make this a widely available test, and we hope Romania can be at the forefront of a drive for early detection of cancer for everyone.”
Van Staden envisages a near future when mass screenings become commonplace and cancers can be addressed at the earliest stages – before tumors develop – when treatments have 80 to 100 percent success rates. Cancer detection tests could be done together with regular blood tests.
“It is not easy for people to accept that they can suddenly be diagnosed with cancer,” the chemist says, conceding a possible impediment to widespread use of her device. “But we must get used to the idea that medication actually works if used at a stage when symptoms have not yet developed. In a few years, we will be more knowledgeable about the disease and we will do such tests without fear, knowing we can be cured.”
KUDOS AND CAUTIONS
In Europe, where 3 million new cases and 1.7 million cancer-related deaths occur each year, cancer is the second leading cause of death. The European Union has set a goal of reducing cancer rates by 15 percent by 2020, but given that the number of diagnoses is increasing, many experts insist this objective cannot be obtained without major breakthroughs in early detection.
In April, van Staden won the prize for the best woman inventor from the World Intellectual Property at the Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions. She also won a gold medal from the Moldova State Agency for Intellectual Property. With her awards, van Staden received a special congratulations from a jury made up of oncologists.
Following the exhibition, MBTelecom in Romania started work on the creation of an electronic device that can capture the electrochemical signals emitted by van Staden’s sensor.
This year van Staden in cooperation with the Oncology Institute in Chisinau, Moldova, will begin research into the use of the sensor for breast cancer and leukemia detection. The Romanian and Moldovan researchers are to use the sensor for in vitro tests to see the reaction of various kinds of affected cells to different cancer drugs.
But application is likely a long way off. Clinical trials can begin only once the electronic sensor is completed, and this is still in progress at the moment.
No clinical trials also means the discovery cannot be officially recognized by the international scientific community. “To compete with methods currently used by clinical labs and doctors, such as mass spectrometry, would require a method with superior selectivity and economy,” explains chemist Bo Karlberg, a professor emeritus of analytical chemistry at Stockholm University. “Electrochemical sensors are often inexpensive and the measurement is easily performed.” Sensors like van Staden’s, he said, “could perhaps be used for screening purposes of patients but would require major clinical test programs approved by authorities before they can enter the market.”
DECLINING SUPPORT FOR RESEARCH
Whatever the ultimate fate of her invention, van Staden’s work has already made an impact on the Romanian scientific community.
The promise held out by her device has helped restore interest in scientific research. Since 1989, the field has been chronically underfunded in Romania, and researchers have often gone abroad in search of better work conditions.
Some progress in funding had been registered in 2007-2008, but the economic crisis reversed the trend. According to the National Authority for Scientific Research, the body in charge of distributing funding, money allocated from the national budget for research decreased by 27 percent in 2009 compared with 2008 levels. This meant no new competitions for funding were held that year and funding for ongoing projects was reduced.
The cuts worsened a situation where research funds were already well below the levels recommended in the national strategy for scientific research: between 2007 and 2009, just 11 percent of the 15 billion lei (3.4 billion euros) envisaged to be spent in 2007-2013 was given out to scientists. The shortages continued in 2010.
Van Staden’s own project was fully funded in 2007 and 2008, but in 2009 it received only 26 percent of the money needed and the state support dropped further in 2010, to 22.4 percent.
“Cutting funding for national and international projects leads to the loss of the best human resources, the decay of recently purchased modern technology because it cannot be used, and decreased visibility for Romanian scientific research,” said physicist Alexandru Aldea, one of several Romanian scientists interviewed on the funding cuts in April by Dilema Veche magazine. “Our European partners will lose their trust in Romanian research because they are unsure whether the Romanians can fulfill their promises.”
Even in such a context, van Staden has insisted the device should stay a fully Romanian product. “Everything is for sale,” she comments, “but this little secret of the sensor must be kept inside Romania – it is ours.”
IMPACT AT HOME
Van Staden herself conducted post-doctoral research and worked at Pretoria University in South Africa between 1998 and 2006, and she says her experiences there contributed to her professional focus on creating cheap diagnostic devices that can be used to monitor the health of all people, including the very poor.
In spite of having excellent working conditions in South Africa, van Staden chose to return to Romania in 2007, accompanied by her husband and research partner. “I returned because the University of Bucharest stayed in my heart, because I missed my home, my parents and relatives.” The couple has two children, a 7-year old boy (Freddy, born in South Africa) and a 3-year-old girl (Maria, born in Romania).
Raluca van Staden’s enthusiasm for Romanian research has rubbed off on society at large. She has received considerable media attention and several private foundations have rewarded her with prizes.
In 2009, the Dinu Patriciu Foundation awarded van Staden second prize in a national competition of researchers. “Mrs. van Staden is one of those very special people who, no matter how much success they achieve, continues to inspire through her modesty and determination to pursue a mission that the system is either unwilling or incapable of taking on,” says Tincuta Baltag, director of the foundation. Baltag further praised van Staden for her openness to including young students in her research projects.
In December, van Staden was named the best scientist in the “Ten for Romania Gala” organized by private all-news channel Realitatea TV. It was the first time in the competition’s six-year history that a special prize for scientific research was given out.
National authorities have reacted as well, with the Romanian National Health Insurance Agency announcing in November that once the device is completed, it would invest to make it available cheaply through the national health system.
Her invention is having a European impact as well. In June, Petru Luhan, a member of the European parliament from Romania, organized a debate in the parliament on early cancer detection, centered on van Staden’s discovery and vision. The event was the first in a series of talks hosted by the EU assembly on the topic and it was followed that month by the creation of a new European initiative, Forum Against Cancer Europe, aimed at harnessing European health policy to the end of fighting cancer, with detection a main priority.
These initiatives are geared at making more money from the EU budget available for early detection research, which could be key as many EU countries cut national research funds during the economic crisis.
“In June, we were able to bring together, at the same table, the European Commission – which has the power to devise programs aimed at combating cancer – the [European Parliament], members of national parliaments, NGOs, researchers, and patients groups,” Luhan said. “We asked the commission to come up with funding programs aimed specifically at research in early cancer detection.” Luhan sees the 53.2 billion euros allocated to research in the 2007-2013 EU budget as an important financial resource more researchers should be able to take advantage of.
Van Staden herself is confident this European push will bring results, as policy makers come to see that only by putting money into early detection can cancer be defeated. In any case, she says, from the perspective of national health budgets, mass screening has the potential to save money as well as lives on a large scale. “Investing in detection devices will probably turn out to be cheaper than paying for treatments for two or three patients, so it will make full economic sense, too.”
Claudia Ciobanu is a Romanian freelance journalist.
