Université de Montréal doctoral student Madline Sauvage is developing a new sensor for personalized breast-cancer monitoring. She hopes this tool will be able to detect markers of recurrence and of advanced stages of the disease, enabling therapies to be adapted to how aggressive the cancer is.
This innovative project has also opened the door to entrepreneurship for Sauvage, a student in molecular biology at UdeM's Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) supervised by professors Delphine Bouilly and Sylvie Mader. Through a new start-up, she hopes to market the technology from her lab and directly impact people's lives.
To get there, Sauvage first completed the UdeM Faculty of Pharmacy's one-year Life Sciences Entrepreneurship Development Program, offered jointly with Montréal Invivo and Concordia University. She then enriched her experience by participating in other specialized programs, consolidating her expertise in entrepreneurship and innovation.
'Many skills to apply'
"I realized that many of the skills developed in the laboratory can be applied to entrepreneurship," Sauvage explained. "Whether it's time management, the ability to run several projects at once, or the ability to present results to a variety of audiences, I can translate much of what I learned in my research training into entrepreneurship."
As a start, Sauvage joined the first 'Recherche ton Impact' cohort of UdeM's Millénium Québecor program, which aims to develop entrepreneurial skills and support the realization of business projects stemming from academic research. After seven intense months, she fine-tuned a plan to form her company, SensÈn.
In the program's final round, Sauvage presented her innovative idea to a panel of judges - and was awarded $6,000 to found her start-up. Supported by Bouilly and Mader, she plans to devote all her time to SensÈn once her studies are completed, and to continue co-developing the technology with them and other partners as the company grows.
