This week’s Women’s Highlight meets our Tech Highlight!

This is our product. Slap it on here. In this University of Waterloo lab, work is underway on a technology that could replace the need for invasive pap smears. Basically making it so that the people who can't get pap smears or who won't get pap smears are still able to get life-saving screening. Select Laboratories is working on embedding nanomaterials that could collect diagnostic biomarkers from menstrual blood, hoping it can change the way women are screened for HPV, cervical cancer and other DNA-based diseases. We use a patent-pending nanomaterial that passively collects and stabilizes the genomic DNA within menstrual blood while allowing the blood cells, which are considered contamination for a lot of these tests due to the hemoglobin, to go through basically collecting the larger cells of interest and the genomic DNA. Murphy says for many people with the cervix, the fear of getting a pap smear can keep them away from ever getting screened, which could save their life. Honestly, I hated it. It was really, really bad for me for various reasons and because of that I decided to put my nanotechnology engineering degree to use and came up with the idea and found it select. I mean the speculum is a horrible archaic device that is not made for comfort. It's painful and scary and if there's any sort of trauma or diseases hanging around that might make it more painful. I know a lot of people do worry about getting it. I am almost 22 and I've never had a pap smear. Hopefully with this technology if it gets far enough along by then I'll never have to get one and I think that would be amazing. So far they focused on placing the technology on menstrual pads or using menstrual cups, hoping to eventually have a way that works with tampons. But with the right funding and approvals, they believe it could hit the market soon. I'll say anyway from a year and a half to two years from now would be the earliest. I mean as a medical device this is something that's regulated and so we want to make sure that you know it's safe and you know effective. In theory it absolutely is because of the material we're using. It has been you know used in food safe stuff but you know obviously we need a lot more like clinical studies and feasibility studies to make sure. The University of Waterloo startup recently won a national student entrepreneurship competition and will compete globally for a one million dollar prize. To any woman who is watching, we're doing this for you. I also want to highlight that if you have an innovation in your mind, don't hesitate. Women's health needs the attention that it deserves and that we're just happy to be on this journey. Colton Wiens, CTV News, Kitchener.