For Dr Carika Weldon, the fight against cancer is personal.
Dr Weldon was a young cancer researcher based in Britain when her grandmother was taken seriously ill back home, with very aggressive pancreatic cancer, in 2017.
“I had been in Bermuda for Christmas, and she was fine,” Dr Weldon recalled. “I came to host my first international science conference in February and she was doing worse, but holding on.
“Then a day after I got back to England, I got the call saying I’ve got to go back to Bermuda. It was really in a matter of weeks that it got bad.
“I remember standing in the hospital room with my cousins, with my grandmother really sick, and my cousin looked at me and said, ‘Shouldn’t you know what to do? You’re a cancer researcher.’”
Her grandmother sadly passed, but the cousin’s words had a transformative effect.
“She didn’t mean it in a rude way, but it did resonate because I’m like, I’m Dr Weldon, I do cancer research, yet I can’t help her right now,” she explained.
“I took that to heart. I shifted my thinking and questioned what I want to be doing with my life.
“Doing really abstract cool science is nice, but I want to actually make an impact. That’s where it changed for me.”
Through her groundbreaking research company CariGenetics, Dr Weldon is already on the road to making that impact.
The company’s recent breast cancer study of 102 Bermudian women – the first of its kind to focus only on the Afro-Caribbean population – has unearthed new genetic information that can help shine a light on why this region suffers from higher rates of breast cancer.
Ultimately, it could lead to more effective screening and treatment in a part of the world where cancer research has lagged behind Europe and North America for decades.
A second study is underway focusing on prostate cancer in Bermuda and the Caribbean, where disproportionately high rates have been recorded.
“We are doing the research. We are bringing together the clinicians and bringing together the scientists and getting it done,” Dr Weldon said.
“There are a lot of things that get talked about, but we are focused on the execution.
“I had a conversation earlier this week with a colleague at a company who said there is no other dataset that has 100 per cent African descent women for breast cancer. We knew we were doing a good thing but to hear that from another company is like, Woah!
“We’re doing breast cancer, we’re doing prostate cancer, and we’re taking it on the road – we’re not just doing it in Bermuda, we’re expanding to five countries for prostate cancer.”
So far, results have shown that two genes commonly linked to breast cancer – BRCA1 and BRCA2 – are much less prominent in Bermuda breast cancer than the rest of the world, including the Caribbean.
“Each country is very different,” Dr Weldon said. “When we are talking about diagnosing and the risk of cancer, knowing ahead of time that we shouldn’t be just looking at BRCA1 and BRCA2, we should be looking at other genes, is a tangible, real outcome of what we’ve done.”
The research also found mutations that cause breast cancer are much more likely to be genetic-based in Bermuda (nearly 20 per cent) compared with the US or Britain (5 to 10 per cent). This information can be used to make screening more effective so that treatment can start earlier.
The prostate cancer study, which is currently in its early stages, will include Jamaica, St Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago and Antigua & Barbuda as well as Bermuda; 100 men have signed up to take part.
This study will pave the way for scientists to develop a liquid biopsy for men in the Caribbean and Bermuda, so that cancer can be detected in blood samples, instead of an invasive biopsy.
“Nobody has tested it in the field in the Caribbean context and we will be doing that once we get ethics approval,” Dr Weldon said.
“That will be a game changer. If you can imagine you just need a blood sample and we can actually tell you whether you have cancer or not, as opposed to digging in, getting surgery, and all that.
“That’s the impact.”
Until now, funding for cancer research has been very limited in the Caribbean, compared with Europe and the US, although awareness is starting to improve.
“It’s exciting because we’re now having these conversations with those funding organisations and they’re seeing the potential,” Dr Weldon said.
“We are showing them what we can do, and they are saying let’s get going.”
Bermuda’s status as an isolated island means that its gene pool differs from the Caribbean, so genetic research has great scope for game-changing findings.
CariGenetics has recently launched CariGenetics Precision Diagnostics, a clinical lab registered with the Bermuda Health Council, which will perform clinical genetics cancer tests and report back to doctors while improving accessibility and turnaround times.
With more studies in the pipeline, CariGenetics could end up making the difference Dr Weldon has craved since her grandmother’s battle with pancreatic cancer.
“To me, I’m just a scientist who wants to get this done and bring everyone I can with me: Bermudians, young people, girls in science,” she said.
“This is our time. Caribbean scientists. This is our time. We show out when it comes to athletics; Olympics we dominate. We can do science in a way that’s the same level as anywhere else and excel. That’s really my goal.”
Dr Weldon is keen to help young people along a similar pathway and aims to create shadowing opportunities.
“I’m really passionate about training the next generation,” she said. “When I was coming up, I didn’t have a black role model. I consciously decided I wanted to be that person for the next generation.
“If anyone is interested should email me and we will do what we can to let you get ahead.”
Contact Dr Weldon on [email protected] or visit www.carigenetics.com for more information.
