VANCOUVER, BC – Six outstanding Canadian research teams will use $27.3 million in new funding to engineer precision medicines for patients whose cancer has relapsed or for whom current treatments are ineffective or non-existent.
The majority of the funding ($26.1 million) is being provided by the Terry Fox Foundation through funds raised annually from the Terry Fox Run. National funding partner, The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, is contributing $1.2 million to co-invest in the project with the goal of finding more effective treatment for a hard-to-treat breast cancer called triple negative breast cancer.
The Terry Fox Research Institute teams are conducting research into brain, colorectal, prostate, breast and ovarian cancers and lymphoma at research centres and hospitals across the country. Some studies will include undertaking trials for immunotherapy — using the body’s immune system to kill cancer cells.
“Our shared goal is to provide cancer patients with the right remedy for the right cancer at the right time – so precision medicine will help us to find more cures for cancer,” says Dr. Victor Ling, TFRI president and scientific director. “The projects being funded are judged by international experts as being excellent, leading-edge and having the best potential for us to achieve this goal.”
The Terry Fox New Frontiers Program Project Grants (PPGs) and Translational Research Programs are highly competitive. Following international peer review, funds are awarded annually to teams of investigators to support breakthrough and transformative biomedical research which may form the basis for innovative cancer prevention, diagnosis and/or treatment.
See the investment breakdown by project and province below:
PAN CANADIAN (Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta)
-Dr. Pamela Ohashi, director, immune therapy program, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network (UHN), and colleagues will develop immunotherapies and undertake clinical trials through The Immunotherapy Network to improve survival for women diagnosed with high-grade serous ovarian cancer, the deadliest of the ovarian cancers. (Award: $5.41M over 5 years)
ONTARIO : Awards of $2.25 M each over 3 years:
–Dr. Mathieu Lupien, senior scientist and oncologist and colleagues at UHN (Toronto), will focus on effective therapies, including immunotherapy, to improve treatments available to women with triple negative breast cancer. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research is funding 50 per cent of this award.
-Dr. Sheila Singh, pediatric neurosurgeon at McMaster University (Hamilton), and colleagues at the University of Toronto, will study glioblastoma multiforme (brain cancer) in its recurrent and relapsed form, rather than the original tumour (s), to develop new and effective treatments to improve survival
-Dr. Jeff Wrana, senior investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System and co-investigators there and at the U of T (Toronto), will study how an important body mechanism, the Hippo Pathway, is inactivated, thus enabling abnormal tissue growth, and ways to reactivate it. Their work will focus on colorectal cancer using unique “mini-gut” models
BRITISH COLUMBIA : Awards of $7.5 M each over 5 years:
–Dr. Joseph Connors, clinical director at the Centre for Lymphoid Cancer, BC Cancer Agency (Vancouver), and colleagues (University of British Columbia, BC Cancer Agency, and Simon Fraser University ) will continue novel and innovative research in lymphoma and related cancers to provide new tests and treatments that will benefit those patients
-Dr. Martin Gleave, executive director, Vancouver Prostate Centre (VPC), and team members (VPC, UBC, and SFU), to continue world-class research to provide new treatments for men whose prostate cancer has become resistant to current therapies.
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