Grant: Fellowship - PA: Regional Partnership Program - Newfoundland & Labrador

Besides the liver, kidneys are the second most important organs for eliminating chemotherapy agents. However, not every cancer center considers the kidney function as part of the chemotherapy dosage calculation. One reason for this is that the conventional methods of estimating kidney functions are not accurate enough, especially for patients with very low, near-normal kidney function, children and people with obesity or malnourished. My PhD research has identified a new model for estimating kidney function. This new model has been proved to increase the accuracy of detecting kidney function significantly in our recent publication. Moreover, this new model does not need any further corrections from metabolic scaling such as weight or age; therefore it is applicable for the whole population group. In addition, we developed a new metabolic scaling for chemotherapy dosing. This proposed study aims to introduce a study protocol to cancer centers in order to optimize the drug delivery during chemotherapy. The combination of the improved kidney function test and the new metabolic scaling has the potential of significantly enhancing the early detection of chemo-induced kidney disease thereby delivering a better care to cancer patients. In this work we will test the kidney function for certain chemotherapeutic agents (e.g., methtrexate, carboplatin) which are required for chemo-dosimetry. Future studies might include recruiting other hospitals in a Trans-Canada study to establish a uniform protocol for these measurements. One benefit of this proposed study will be to establish the same quality of service here as elsewhere, and ultimately to introduce verifiable quality assurance for chemotherapy of all participating sites. The improvement of cancer treatment evaluation will improve the accurate dose calculations and benefit all patients, regardless of where they are, by reducing adverse effects and improving cure rates.