A Romanian researcher who invented a device which could detect cancer in early stages works on testing the device and eventually producing it in Romania, with the launch expected early next year. Researcher Raluca-Ioana van Staden has become famous for the invention which has been awarded internationally. After working several years abroad, teaming up with her husband, she chose to come back to Romania to help create a strong Romanian research team. She has talked to romania-insider.com about this invention, which could be expanded to detecting other diseases in the future.

By Corina Saceanu

Raluca van Staden, the Romanian researcher and chemist who invented a sensor which can detect cancer in its early stages, is one of the Romanians who have made a choice between living and working abroad and staying in Romania. She chose home. Van Staden had studied and worked for ten years in Pretoria, South Africa. But three years ago, she returned to her home country.

Together with her husband, scientist Jacobus Frederick van Staden, she invented a device which can detect cancer is less than six minutes. It took them ten years of team work to get to this point. The invention was awarded at the Geneve Inventions Fair earlier this year and Raluca van Staden received the Gold Trophy of the Worldwide Organization for Intellectual Property, becoming the best woman inventor of the year. While most of the initial work for the project happened in South Africa, the final solution was fully developed in Romania.

“Together with the team from MBTelecom we are working to get it ready for clinical tests before the end of this year and we hope that we will be able to launch it early next year. The device will be produced in Romania by MBTelecom,” Raluca van Staden said in an interview to romania-insider.com

“At the moment we are working for extending the utilization of the system build with MBTelecom to other types of cancer, we will also look for other diseases for which early detection is critical,” she goes on. BMTelecom, the company the researchers have chosen to built the device, won the big prize at the Geneva Inventions Fair in 2009.

The device they will build will look similarly to a glycemia measurement device. It will be based on a new method of analyzing specific bio-markers for four types of cancer: breast cancer, ovarian, prostate and gastrointestinal cancer. The novelty will come from the possibility to identify these markers in the blood and in the saliva immediately after they are produced.

There are many attempts throughout the world to do something similar, but none of the devices has so far passed beyond the clinical tests.

Raluca van Staden's decision to return to Romania and continue to pursue this project was mostly based on her desire to create a strong research team in the country, but also on the nostalgia for her home country and her family. She has learned to set up and lead a research team while working in Pretoria and says she has never felt she has been judged by her nationality, but always by her achievements.

The cancer detection project firstly obtained funds from two Capacity projects, from the National Authority of Scientific Research in Romania, allowing them to build the laboratory which now is called Laboratory of Electrochemistry and the Process Analytical Technology Laboratory Bucharest.

“The laboratory started to attracted young researchers – students that just graduated from different universities in Romania and are busy with their MSc or PhD, some of them we could have employed, and most of them are coming to do the practical work for their thesis,” van Staden tells romania-insider.com.

The number of papers published in high rated international journals – over 15 papers this year only- the two patents that already got the approval to be awarded, and the number of gold medals and special prizes obtained since 2007 placed the laboratory and the team on the European map of research laboratories.

“Together with MBTelecom we will be able to go with the sensor build for early cancer diagnosis from the research lab to clinics, and patients,” van Staden goes on.

Her wish to help creating a better environment for researchers in Romania is on its way to fulfillement. “The number of special prizes and medals obtained in international competitions as well as the papers published by researchers in high level international journals proved the quality of the research and that it is a really good environment for research in Romania,” she says.

Raluca van Staden (ne Stefan) was born in Campulung on July 16, 1969. She holds a PhD with the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Bucharest, and has also studied piano, musical pedagogy and composition at the National University of Music. She currently works at PATLAB (the acronym for the Process Analytical Technology Laboratory, the Bucharest branch of the Institute of Electrochemistry and Condensed Matter of Timisoara).

Music was her first passion. She started playing since she was five, inspired by her mother. sShe has also learned to love chemistry during her high school, being inspired by her father. She says she has learned perseverance while studying the piano and soon found out that chemistry research cannot be done without perseverance. She has had piano recitals in the past, even in Pretoria.

Raluca van Staden will hold a speech at the TEDx Bucharest event in Bucharest on Friday, October 15.

corina@romania-insider.com