How an Energetic Open-Minded Spirit Developed a Revolutionary Approach to Cancer Care?

Cancer is a prevalent disease in the world, and radiation therapy is a common and effective form of cancer treatment. In radiation therapy, medical accelerators aim beams of high energy particles at tumors to destroy or damage cancer cells while avoiding damage to important healthy normal tissue. Radiation treatments for many patients can take several times a week for many weeks.

Janelle Molloy, Ph.D., DABR, professor of radiation medicine and director of medical physics at the University of Kentucky Radiation Oncology department, is the founder of Wild Dog Physics, LLC. Being a physicist and working in radiation medicine provides a unique opportunity to utilize one’s problem-solving skills to innovate and commercialize because they really know what the problems are and have to technical skills to solve those problems. According to Molloy, “the point of research is to change someone else’s behavior, and there is no better way to change behavior than to commercialize a product.”

Wild Dog Physics, LLC is in the very early stages of changing the approach to cancer care through a Quality Assurance (QA) Integrator. The QA Integrator is being developed to provide more precise and efficient cancer care by overcoming some of the challenges in providing high-level cancer care. One of the major challenges it looks to solve is reducing the work time from eight hours to 30 minutes and providing more complete and better data that is automatically analyzed and regulatory compliant. It also can reduce costs by providing only one device, instead of many. This device was a response to seeing her team struggle for many hours doing QA on a medical accelerator after regular working hours.

The QA Integrator combines several pieces of equipment to make it more efficient and effective to use by taking all the data automatically. Janelle finds joy in building new things and helping those who need it most. This device has the potential to help underserved communities with very little resources and provide better access to technology in the United States and internationally. She worked with Drs. Quan Chen and Dennis Cheek from her team to create this technology.

Janelle has taken full advantage of the resources at the University of Kentucky and the community. She recently graduated from the UKAccel program, a partnership between the Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) and the Von Allmen Center for Entrepreneurship (VACE). She also won the top prize of $1,000 at the 5Acroos pitch event and is currently participating in VACE’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp.

She has been very impressed with how supportive the University of Kentucky and Lexington community have been and feels optimistic and energized when participating in these programs. When asked what advice she would give to someone interested in commercializing and starting their own company, Janelle said “Do what you want to do. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks.” She has had opportunities to mentor young physicists and has seen how her influence in her department has provided opportunities that wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been there.

Wild Dog Physics LLC was named as a nod to her very energetic dog Holly, and a nod to the energetic, open-minded spirit she wants in her startup company. “Being here in the land of the Wildcats, I thought it was time to have a wild dog,” said Janelle.