Annual Report - Meeting the cancer challenge
OICR's 2008-2009 Annual Report
Having spent three years building research capacity and recruiting world-leading expertise, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) is now poised to meet the cancer challenge.
That is the message of the Institute’s 2008-2009 Annual Report. Released in August, it summarizes another year of solid growth and shows how OICR’s focus on scientific excellence and translational research is already sparking new discoveries and moving them out of the lab and into the clinic.
OICR is a not-for-profit corporation funded by Ontario’s Ministry of Research and Innovation. Founded in 2005, it combines a broad and ambitious scientific research strategy – which includes in-house cancer genomics, bioinformatics and medicinal chemistry laboratories and partnerships with institutions that have existing strengths in imaging, bio-therapeutics, population research and other areas – with the programs of the former Ontario Cancer Research Network, an organization established in 2001 to speed up the development of new cancer therapies The Institute’s scientific capacity, its expertise in clinical research and its commercialization group are a powerful model for discovering new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer, validate discoveries in clinical trials and work with the private sector to bring the benefits to patients as quickly as possible.
The first section of the report, “Patents to Products,” highlights the progress of the Institute’s Intellectual Property Development and Commercialization Program (IPDCP). IPDCP projects are selected in a peer-reviewed competition, but ultimately the Institute’s involvement in the project looks more like a strategic partnership than a grant. In addition to providing funds, OICR helps reduce risk and improve the project’s chances of receiving further investment by offering strategic advice. The Commercialization group holds regular business meetings with IPDCP recipients and has an executive-in-residence available for in-depth consultation.
The IPDCP is aimed at bridging the gap between academia and industry. Typically, governments and universities invest in basic scientific research, while pharmaceutical companies invest in developing new compounds into drugs and bringing them to market. Between these two stages, there is often a lot of expensive “translational” work, but there is very little funding; this creates what research commercialization experts call a “valley of death” between academia and industry, where many worthwhile projects are abandoned due to lack of funding.
For example, Aaron Schimmer, a scientist at the Ontario Cancer Institute, has developed a series of compounds that laboratory studies have shown to be more effective than typical treatments for some types of leukemia and myeloma. However, most granting agencies do not fund the pharmaco-kinetic and toxicological studies needed to show whether the compounds are good drug candidates, and pharmaceutical companies are not interested in investing until these studies are complete.
Because of an investment by the IPDCP, Schimmer is able to carry out these studies, taking his research closer to the stage where it could benefit patients.
“The grant is very important because it allows us to maintain our momentum with this promising new compound. By following up our Cancer Research Fund grant with an investment in the value-added work that could make our compound attractive to industry, OICR is ensuring we have the resources needed to bring the benefits of our research to patients,” Schimmer says.
The report also highlights OICR’s new Medicinal Chemistry Platform, which was launched in 2008. A state-of-the-art laboratory was opened at the MaRS Centre and Dr. Rima Al-awar, a medicinal chemist with extensive experience in industry and academia, was appointed Director of the Platform, which now includes sixteen full-time chemists and research associates.
Another highlight was the selection of OICR as the site of the secretariat and data co-ordination centre for the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), which was announced in April 2008. The Institute will also be a member institute of the ICGC, contributing research on pancreatic cancer to the worldwide effort to sequence 500 samples of each of the 50 most common types of cancer, along with controls of normal tissue samples. The ICGC is the largest genome-sequencing effort in history and one of the most important projects in the biological sciences since the publication of the Human Genome and International HapMap.
OICR also made significant progress on its goal to recruit and train the next generation of cancer scientists, which will ensure Ontario’s leadership in cancer research is long-lasting. OICR recruited more than a dozen investigators from throughout the world, including five senior principal investigators who were born or educated in Ontario and chose to return here after working in the United States.
