"Family’s grief sparks a quest for better bladder cancer cures"
'Invasive and uncomfortable' procedures for detecting if someone has bladder cancer could be replaced by urine tests that not only screen for the presence of the disease but also help doctors choose the right course of treatment for a particular patient.
‘Our lives literally came to a stop when my mother was diagnosed with cancer,’ said Dr Gitte Pedersen. ‘The first treatment didn’t work, neither did the next one. Eventually we just ran out of time.’ The heartbreak of losing her mother inspired Dr Pedersen and her brother, Morten, to take action and start a Danish biotech company, Genomic Expression, in 2009. ‘It’s very much a passion project – we want to help solve this problem.’