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Pioneer in primary care oncology named to Order of Canada

Dr. Eva Grunfeld was honoured for her work translating evidence into practice to improve family medicine services for people with cancer.


Years of dedicated practice and groundbreaking research made OICR Clinician Scientist Dr. Eva Grunfeld a leader in family medicine.

The author of several high-impact studies, Grunfeld is widely recognized for helping improve primary care services for cancer patients, earning a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine and most recently being named an officer of the Order of Canada.

But what first made Grunfeld an advocate for the role of the family doctor began long before the awards, back when she was the young child of immigrant parents living in Montreal.

Her serious injury from a motor vehicle accident thrust Grunfeld and her family into the heart of an unfamiliar health system. The maze of doctors, nurses and specialists they encountered was fragmented and confusing, not to mention the culture and language barriers they faced.

“Nobody was overseeing our care or giving advice to help us navigate the system,” Grunfeld says. “It gave me compassion for people going through that experience and motivated me to want to help them through it.”

Grunfeld took that lesson with her as she grew up to study medicine at McMaster University and earn a D.Phil in epidemiology from the University of Oxford. She then carried it through into her medical practice and her research, which — though diverse — has largely focused on improving continuity of care for cancer patients from prevention to end-of-life care through better linkage with family medicine.

Preventing cancer has been a major focus for Grunfeld, who is a Professor in the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health as well as the Department of Family & Community Medicine. For example, the BETTER Program she co-created trains primary care practitioners to better screen patients for chronic diseases and have important discussions with them around prevention.

“We as health care practitioners can do a better job communicating prevention messages to patients in a more integrated way,” Grunfeld says. “And BETTER is a program to support family doctors’ ability to deliver prevention and screening for cancer and other chronic diseases.”

When it comes to treating cancer, Grunfeld is a pioneer internationally in the area of primary care oncology. She is also a leading voice in cancer health services research, a field that focuses on using evidence to guide best practices in healthcare. Her research has tackled all sorts of questions about how to improve cancer care, from ways to better support chemotherapy patients at home to giving patients better access to genetic services.

Underlying all Grunfeld’s health services research are the complex barriers to translating research into practice. “There’s a well-recognized loss of knowledge between basic science and clinical practice,” says Grunfeld, who was also Director Knowledge Translation Research for the joint OICR-Cancer Care Ontario Health Services Research Program. “We are still working to overcome this challenge, but I think, of all disciplines, oncology is at the forefront of evidence-based practice.”

Cancer care doesn’t end after treatment, and Grunfeld is internationally recognized for her pioneering research on cancer survivorship, which focuses on people’s wellbeing from their diagnosis until the end of their lives. She has led some of the largest ever clinical trials on the topic, including studying survivorship care plans for people with cancer in the hopes of helping patients live better after their initial treatment is over.

Grunfeld says she was surprised and honoured to be among those just named to the Order of Canada. She credits the strong teams of collaborators she has worked with over the years and says she is grateful for the support from organizations like OICR, which has enabled her to balance the demands of her practice and her research.

While still working on several projects, her focus continues to be translating research into practice, including implementation of the BETTER Program.

In the future, she says her research will always be guided by the needs of the system and the needs of families.

“Times of illness are so important and difficult for people and families,” she says. “Helping them through these times is very important and, I believe, a very honourable thing to do.”

The Next Generation: Andy Zeng

MD/PhD candidate studying the diversity of blood cancer cells to find a personalized recipe for treating leukemia

Andy Zeng was always fascinated by cancer research, right back to the early days of his undergraduate studies in biology and biochemistry.

But his interest took a personal turn after he flew from Toronto to Beijing to say goodbye to his grandmother, who died of colon cancer a few years ago.

“That was when it changed from becoming an academic exercise into something that was much more personal and human for me,” Zeng recalls.

Now earning his MD/PhD from the University of Toronto, Zeng is researching the types of cells that are present in blood cancers and how they respond to different cancer drugs.

“Ultimately, the goal is to personalize patient treatment for leukemia,” he says.

Low-cost molecular test targets more efficient brain cancer diagnosis

Dr. Rola Saleeb and colleagues harnessed next-generation sequencing to create a test that can identify brain cancer biomarkers for a fraction of the cost of other platforms.

Knowing the subtle differences between cancers, observable only at a molecular level, is increasingly important to treating them.

That’s especially true for gliomas, the most common type of brain cancer. Glioma tumours that have certain genetic mutations respond very differently to one treatment versus another. In fact, glioma’s genetic makeup is so relevant to how it’s treated that guidance from the World Health Organization says it can’t properly be diagnosed without molecular testing.

But the equipment for molecular testing is expensive, and usually only large cancer centres have the money and infrastructure to run it. Samples from patients in smaller, more remote communities must be sent away for molecular testing. That means people with brain tumours can sometimes wait weeks for results before they can even put a name to their cancer — let alone start treating it.

“That time is critical for a cancer patient,” says Dr. Rola Saleeb, Director of the Immunopathology Laboratory at St. Michael’s Hospital (Unity Health) and OICR Clinician Scientist. “People shouldn’t have to wait weeks for information essential to their diagnosis and treatment.”

Saleeb and her colleague Dr. Ramzi Fattouh are working on a way to make molecular testing for cancer faster and more accessible. Collaborating with a research team that includes OICR’s Dr. Jared Simpson and Dr. Harriet Feilotter, and Unity Health Toronto neurosurgeon Dr. Sunit Das, they developed and validated a test — described in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics — that harnesses new genome sequencing technology to identify genetic variants in less than half the time and for a fraction of the cost of other options.

Their test looks specifically at variants in the IDH gene, one of the most important biomarkers for glioma. The test runs on the nanopore platform, which takes a different approach to sequencing that allows it to decode DNA in real time and can give results in a matter of hours, instead of days.

Scientists have used nanopore throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to sequence to SARS-CoV-2 virus, but this is one of the first times it has been used for cancer. Beyond the speed of sequencing, the biggest advantage of nanopore is that the equipment costs about $1,000 USD and is no bigger than a mobile phone. Standard DNA sequencers can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and are much larger, often requiring a special room to house and operate them.

“This type of work lowers the barrier for labs and clinics to benefit from the very rapid pace of cancer genomic discoveries,” says Dr. Simpson, an OICR-based investigator specializing in computational biology.

Simpson’s lab worked with Saleeb’s team to develop the software to analyze and interpret the sequencing data for their test.

To validate the test, Saleeb and colleagues sequenced 66 patient samples and found that it met every benchmark for clinical use.

“We proved the technology is as accurate as the other platforms,” she says. “This is proof of concept that it can be implemented in a clinical laboratory.”

Saleeb says the test is easy to reproduce, and she encourages labs to read the details of the journal article and contact her if they want advice on implementing it. She is also working with PhD student Mashiat Mimosa to expand the test to look for other genetic variants relevant to glioma. In time, they would like to create an all-in-one glioma biomarker test on the nanopore platform.

But glioma is just the starting point, and Saleeb says similar tests could be developed for other cancers. With oncology entering a “molecular era” where DNA sequencing will likely become part of how all cancer are diagnosed, she says that accessible and affordable molecular testing will become even more important.

“I want to get molecular testing in every laboratory, so that people everywhere can be empowered with the information they need to get the best possible cancer care,” Saleeb says.

Drug Discovery scientist wants to speed up development of new cancer therapeutics

Dr. Masoud Vedadi joined OICR in 2022, bringing a wealth of experience in characterizing targets for new cancer drugs.

OICR bolstered its capacity to develop new cancer therapeutics in 2022 with the addition of Dr. Masoud Vedadi, a world-renowned expert in early-stage drug discovery.

Vedadi is an Associate Professor in the University of Toronto’s Pharmacology and Toxicology Department who spent the last two decades as Principal Investigator for the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC).

With expertise in enzymology, biochemistry and protein science, Vedadi regularly collaborated with OICR in his role with SGC and is one of the key scientists behind the groundbreaking WDR5 project. In July 2022, he officially joined OICR as Senior Scientific Advisor, bringing a wealth of experience to OICR’s expert team of Drug Discovery researchers.

OICR News recently spoke to Vedadi about his accomplished career and his aims for his new role.

Why did you get involved in drug discovery for cancer?

I have always been passionate about science, and my specific interests have largely been motivated by unmet needs in society. Cancer, of course, is such a major challenge all over the world. It causes so many people to suffer, and I want to help reduce that suffering by developing effective treatment options.

My passion to contribute has also led me in other directions based on world events. For example, during the coronavirus pandemic over the past few years, I have been contributing to projects to develop COVID-19 therapeutics and we have had successes on that front.

Tell us about your new role as Senior Scientific Advisor with OICR.

In early-stage drug discovery, we try to identify molecules that can influence the function of disease-causing proteins. In many cases, cancers are driven by a particular protein. If we can reduce the effect of the protein, we may be able to stop cancer from growing. At its core, my job is to find small molecules that modulate the function of disease-causing proteins so that they can be turned into anti-cancer drugs and give physicians a tool they can use against the disease.

What attracted you to OICR?

Working with a great team matters a lot to me, and I have always been impressed with Dr. Rima Al-Awar’s team at OICR. We collaborated extensively for several years while I was working with the SGC, and our teamwork paid off with some major advancements, including our discoveries around the WDR5 protein and other drug discovery projects. Throughout all our collaborations, the chemistry and biology teams at OICR were very knowledgeable and competent, and my positive experiences with them were part of why I chose to join OICR last year.

How will your experience working with industry benefit you in this role?

One of my first positions after completing my PhD in biochemistry was with Affinium Pharmaceuticals. I’ve also run projects in collaboration with major companies like Pfizer, Novartis, Bayer, Merck, Takeda and many others. This experience has given me an in-depth view of how to make drug discovery projects more successful from start to finish. I’ve learned about the challenges faced at each step and ways to overcome them.

What are your goals for Drug Discovery at OICR?

The time between finding a small molecule and the development of an anti-cancer drug can be quite long. But we can shorten that timeline if we can quickly find molecules to start with. The more reliable, potent, and selective molecules we have as starting points, the better chance that one will be effective in a clinical trial and be on the path to helping patients. Therefore, I want to give OICR’s Drug Discovery team access to as many proteins as possible, anytime they need them, so they can identify potential drug targets.

How are you working to achieve these goals so far?

Since starting my role in July 2022, I have been working to create three components to strengthen early-stage drug development at OICR: a platform for protein production, a platform for protein crystallization, and important screening assays. I’m excited to have brought in some highly qualified team members to help lead this work and we are making great strides. These developments will give OICR the ability to produce, screen, characterize and crystallize proteins, allowing the whole Drug Discovery team to work more efficiently and shorten the timeline for bringing successful drugs to the clinic.

The Next Generation: Ido Nofech-Mozes

OICR PhD candidate developed a computational tool to classify cells in the tumour microenvironment.

Ido Nofech-Mozes hopes the tool he created can help answer some important questions about cancer.

Nofech-Mozes is a University of Toronto PhD candidate based in Dr. Sagi Abelson and Dr. Philip Awadalla’s labs at OICR. He recently created scATOMIC, a computational method that uses data from single-cell RNA sequencing to classify the different cells in a tumour microenvironment.

For a given tumour, scATOMIC can identify the types of cancer cells, immune cells and other cells that are present. Nofech-Mozes hopes the tool can enable large-scale studies to better understand cancer at a cellular level, and bring about more personalized treatment for people with cancer.

“I’ve learned that every cancer patient can be thought of as having their own unique disease and having their own unique set of challenges,” he says. “The variation between cancer patients is really putting an emphasis on why we need a more personalized, precision approach to cancer therapy.”

New directors of OICR Diagnostic Development program set sights on bringing discoveries to the clinic

Dr. Jane Bayani and Dr. Melanie Spears are helping bring new diagnostic tools to patients in their roles as Co-Directors of OICR’s Diagnostic Development program.

After more than a decade at OICR driving innovations in cancer diagnostics, Dr. Jane Bayani and Dr. Melanie Spears are leading OICR’s Diagnostic Development program toward even greater clinical impact. The longtime collaborators were named Co-Directors of the program in September 2022 after a period as Interim Co-Directors.

Bayani and Spears are both leaders in the field of cancer diagnostics, having pioneered innovative research into biomarkers for breast cancer and prostate cancer. Spears started with OICR in 2011 after earning her PhD from the University of Edinburgh and doing postdoctoral fellowships at the university and at Cancer Research UK. Bayani joined OICR in 2012 with research experience at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and the Hospital for Sick Children and a PhD from the University of Toronto. Both also serve as Principal Research Scientists at OICR and Assistant Professors in the University of Toronto’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology.

Bayani and Spears were previously Associate Directors of OICR Diagnostic Development, working with former Director Dr. John Bartlett until he stepped down in July 2021. They were named Interim Co-Directors of the program in August 2021.

As they enter their first full year as permanent Co-Directors, OICR News checked in with Bayani and Spears about their new positions and their vision for the future of the program.

What does this new role mean to you professionally?

MS: Becoming Co-Director alongside Jane feels like a natural progression to the next stage of my career. I’m excited to grow within the role both as an independent researcher and together with our program’s local and international collaborators.

JB: This leadership role is the beginning of a new period where I can build on a solid foundation from my academic and professional careers. It will allow me to expand my research interests and continue my longtime partnership with Melanie, knowing we share the same goals and will continue to support each other’s aspirations.

What attracted you to the role?

MS: Being part of OICR offers great opportunities to work with networks of researchers – both within the institute and across the province – who bring diverse perspectives and expertise to Diagnostic Development’s various projects.

JB: We really do have an amazing and diverse multidisciplinary team all working toward a common goal. We are also fortunate to have a lab with state-of-the-art platforms for discovering and validating new biomarkers for cancer.

What inspired your interest in new diagnostic tools for cancer?

JB: We’ve all been impacted by cancer in some way, and I’m proud to be helping advance discoveries that can help people with cancer. I also hope I can be a role model for other women in science, just as I have been inspired by many women scientists over the years.

MS: I’ve always been interested in bringing technologies from the lab into clinical settings, and this is an area where I know we can have a meaningful impact on patients by helping find cancer earlier, when they will have the best chance of surviving it.


What excites you about the future of Diagnostic Development at OICR?

JB: We are now exploring some exciting new avenues to derive biomarkers beyond DNA and RNA. We are even looking at integrating aspects of digital pathology with protein markers. Melanie and I also look forward continuing our work with FACIT to advance the diagnostic assays we developed over the past few years.

MS: I’m excited for some of the new technologies we’re working with, including a project where we are exploring the use of spatial biology to understand how different cells interact within a tumour and how this impacts patient outcome. Our group has also developed some interesting predictive and prognostic diagnostic tests, and I’m keen to see these implemented in the clinical setting.

Can tumours shrink with a placebo alone?

Dr. Bishal Gyawali investigated how often cancer shrinks without treatment by looking at results from the placebo arm of randomized control trials.

When Dr. Bishal Gyawali prescribes treatment to newly diagnosed cancer patients, he is sometimes confronted with a tough question: “Could my cancer go away even if I don’t do treatment?”

He says some of his patients are wary of the side effects of treatments like chemotherapy, and some know a friend or relative whose cancer improved without treatment. So, they wonder if treatment is absolutely necessary.

“These are reasonable questions, and I realized I had no evidence-based way to answer them,” says Gyawali, a Medical Oncologist and Associate Professor at Queen’s University and OICR Clinician Scientist. “So, I decided I should look into it.”

Dr. Bishal Gyawali

Gyawali and colleagues reviewed results from 45 placebo-controlled randomized control trials (RCT) for drugs targeting advanced solid tumours in adults. In these RCTs, participants were randomly split into two groups: a treatment arm that received the treatment being trialed, and a control arm that received a placebo. Though the use of placebos is rare in cancer clinical trials, comparing results from a group that receives a drug versus a group that doesn’t can help understand what effect that drug has.

Since participants in the control arm of the trials Gyawali and colleagues analyzed only received a placebo – without any other active treatments – the progress of their tumours during the trial gives a good indication of how cancer responds without treatment.

Here, Gyawali tells OICR news about the results of their study and what they mean for clinicians and drug regulators.

What did you learn about tumour response among patients in the placebo arm of randomized trials?

We found that about one per cent of patients had some response from placebo alone. So yes, there is a chance a tumour will shrink without treatment. It’s a very small chance against a high-stakes disease like cancer. But it is possible. Beyond that, we also looked at ‘complete response’, meaning that a tumour disappears completely. We found there was almost a zero per cent chance of that happening with just a placebo.

How do you explain that some patients had tumours shrink while on a placebo?

We don’t know for sure. It could be the ‘placebo effect’ or it could be something a patient did outside of the trial that somehow affected their tumour.

In some trials, we saw a surprisingly high response rate in the placebo arm. The rate was about seven per cent in prostate cancer trials, which might be because prostate cancer patients are often given steroids in addition to cancer drugs. Sarcoma trials also had high response rates in the placebo arm, which is intriguing because sarcoma is usually difficult to manage. But it’s important to note that complete response was extremely rare without treatment. A tumour disappearing is a nearly unthinkable result from a placebo.

What does this tell us about how we should evaluate new cancer treatments?

In a few of the trials we examined, we saw response rates as high as 20 per cent in the placebo arm, which is higher than the response rates used by regulators to approve some new therapies. That’s important for regulators because, if a placebo can produce response in a tumour, the response rate from a single-arm trial that tests new cancer drugs can be misleading. I would suggest that approvals for new therapies should be based on RCTs, because we need to know the response rate in the control arm to truly understand the impact of a new cancer drug. If approval is granted from a single-arm trial, then it should be based on complete response rates rather than overall response rates because we know that complete response is almost always due to the drug.

How will these findings change your conversations with patients about whether to do treatment?

This gives me data to respond to patients who may question the value of doing treatment. We can have an unbiased, scientific conversation without discounting their opinions or experiences. I can tell them yes, there is about a one per cent chance your tumour will shrink without treatment, and basically no chance it will completely disappear. Is that a chance you’re willing to take?

Zooming in on mouse brain development reveals origins of human glial cancers

OICR researchers create first-of-its kind atlas of developing mouse brain cells to help find the ‘cell of origin’ for brain and spinal cord tumours

By looking closely at the building blocks of normal brain development, researchers may have pinpointed where glial cancers start, and uncovered clues on how to stop them.

A study led by SickKids’ Dr. Peter Dirks, recently published in Nature Communications, explored the relationship between a primitive type of brain cell called radioglial precursors (RGPs) and the cells of glial tumours, which form in the brain and spinal cord.

Precursor cells are usually present before birth, and RGPs are involved in the early development of the brain. But researchers have observed that RGPs share common traits with certain glial cancer cells and have long suspected that glial cancers may originate from RGPs.

Dirks, PhD candidate Akram Hamed and other collaborators investigated by doing single cell transcriptomics on more than 100,000 brain cells from mice to create a detailed atlas of the developing mouse brain.

“We really zoomed in on precursor cells, which allowed us to see the richness of the diversity within these cells,” says Dirks, who is also Co-Leader of OICR’s Brain Cancer Translational Research Initiative.

From this first-of-its-kind atlas, they classified three types of RGP that had not been identified before: embryonic, juvenile and adult. Then they used an advanced algorithm to compare their mouse brain atlas to single-cell data from more than a hundred human glial cancers.

The comparison showed a significant connection between RGPs at the embryonic stage and certain glial cancer cells, suggesting that glial tumours do in fact arise from these primitive cells.

“Now that we think we’ve discovered the ‘cell of origin’ for glial cancers, we can study what causes that cell to veer off course and become cancer, and potentially develop therapeutics to persuade it to go back down its regular developmental pathway,” says Dr. Lincoln Stein, Head Adaptive Oncology, OICR and a collaborator on the study. Stein’s lab, including PhD candidate Ibrahim El-Hamamy, developed the algorithm that allowed for the mouse-human cell comparison.

Working with Stein and fellow collaborator Professor Benjamin Simons of the University of Cambridge, Dirks and colleagues went on to validate these findings by engineering mutations to embryonic cells in developing mouse brains. Sure enough, the mice went on to develop tumours in adulthood that resembled glioblastoma.

Work on this study continues, with plenty left to learn about the relationship between embryonic precursor cells and brain tumours. There are still competing hypotheses about whether the study’s findings mean that glial cancers originate before we are born, or whether something happens later in life to cause mature cells to ‘walk back’ developmentally to embryonic states.

Dirks and colleagues hope to provide more answers as their research progresses. But what they have learned so far about the types of precursor cells and their relationship with cancer could have major implications for stopping glial cancers in the future.

“When cancers like glioblastoma present, they are so complex that they can often evade our therapies,” Dirks says. “If we understand the mechanisms in normal cells that make them transition to cancer, we might be able to identify patients earlier and stamp out the cancer before it gets too complicated.”

‘Seemingly inconsequential’ inherited DNA mutation triggers sixfold increase in brain tumour risk

Dr. Daniel Schramek never expected to find a major driver for brain tumours in a hidden corner of our DNA.

Then again, he never expected to be studying brain tumours at all.

Schramek’s research focused mainly on the biology of breast, pancreas, and head/neck cancers when he joined Mount Sinai Hospital’s Lunenfeld-Tannenbaum Research Institute (LTRI) in 2015.

But when a close family member was diagnosed with a low-grade glioma — a brain tumour that arises from the brain’s glial cells — that same year, he decided to read up on it. He found that little was known about how these tumours developed because they were notoriously difficult to model in the lab. So, with support from OICR’s Brain Cancer Translational Research Initiative, he co-led a study to develop the world’s first mouse model for low-grade gliomas.

“It was a very hard experiment and a bit crazy, honestly,” says Schramek, now a Senior Investigator at LTRI and Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. “Maybe the diagnosis in my family was motivation to see it through.”

Dr. Daniel Schramek

Seven years later, the world-first mouse model is complete, and the study has led to major developments in our understanding of these tumours. As published recently in the journal Science, Schramek and colleagues at LTRI and the Mayo Clinic fine-mapped and characterized a genetic variant (named ‘rs55705857’) that makes people six times more likely to develop low-grade gliomas and causes tumours to develop much earlier.

Their discoveries about the rs55705857 variant being a driver for low-grade gliomas are significant for a few reasons. First is where they found it.

The rs55705857 ‘single nucleodite polymorphism’ is a naturally occurring germline variant, meaning it is present in the DNA of parents’ egg and sperm cells, as opposed to somatic mutations, which arise in other cells after conception and are more commonly associated with cancer. This means that the variant Schramek and colleagues identified, and its implications for cancers, are inherited.

“This is really the first time the inherited component of these tumours has been unraveled,” Schramek says.

It was also surprising to find such a significant cancer-associated variant in a part of the DNA that does not code for proteins. Together with the team at the Mayo Clinic led by Dr. Robert Jenkins, co-senior author of the study, Schramek showed that the variant is in a DNA regulatory region that provides the instructions to fine-tune the expression of essential proteins. However, these regulatory regions are largely understudied and were long considered unimportant.

“We used to think these variants were just noise, but it turns out these seemingly inconsequential variants can actually have a big influence on the likelihood of developing cancer,” Schramek says.

Establishing causality is another important aspect of their findings. It’s one thing to discover that a DNA mutation is linked with cancer risk. But Schramek and colleagues went one step further by demonstrating that this variant actually contributes to causing glial tumours. Their findings suggest that a back-and-forth interaction between germline mutations like rs55705857 and somatic mutations triggers tumour growth.

“Though some cancer-associated mutations are actually very common, they seem to be held in check unless a person has an unfavourable germline set up,” Schramek says.

Findings about rs55705857 are also notable for the mutation’s surprisingly strong association with cancer — a sixfold increase in risk. Most cancer-associated gene mutations only increase risk by one to two times. The only known germline mutation with a comparably high risk is BRCA1, which dramatically increases a woman’s chance of developing breast and ovarian cancer.

Knowledge about BRCA1 and its link to breast cancer has led to targeted screening programs, and Schramek says findings about rs55705857 could spark similar programs for brain cancer. As soon as Schramek found out about the genetic components of low-grade gliomas, he asked his doctors for a brain MRI. Thankfully, the results were negative.

Schramek’s family member underwent surgery that removed most of their brain tumour. The remaining tumour is now dormant, but Schramek says it’s possible it will start growing again in the future. Though low-grade gliomas are less deadly than some other brain tumours, they are difficult to fully remove with surgery. And if they come back, they can evolve into a higher-grade disease.

Schramek and colleagues are now working to understand what causes that progression from low- to high-grade tumours. They are also applying what they learned about the causes of low-grade gliomas to explore therapeutic targets that could give patients more treatment options in the future.

At the moment, Schramek says the biggest implications of this work are for prevention and early detection. Finding brain tumours early is crucial to successfully treating them, and targeted screening could help treat more people earlier and spare others from unnecessary brain surgeries.

“The best cure is to get tumours out early, or even prevent them,” Schramek says. “And I think this new knowledge could be an important step in the right direction.”

Cancer research community loses a pillar of patient partnership in Jill Hamer-Wilson

Jill Hamer-Wilson, who was a tireless advocate for lung cancer patients and a prominent patient partner in cancer research, passed away in November 2022. She served on OICR’s Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC) and also worked with the Canadian Cancer Trials Group, the International Lung Cancer Foundation, Canadian Cancer Clinical Trials Network, the Canadian Cancer Society and the White Ribbon Project.

“Jill’s contributions to cancer research were amazing and we are so proud to have had her as part of the OICR family,” says Dr. Laszlo Radvanyi, President and Scientific Director, OICR. “She helped demonstrate the immensely positive impact that patient partners can bring to cancer research. She will be missed greatly here at OICR and in the broader cancer research community. We send our deepest condolences to Jill’s family and friends.”

Jill was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in 2013 and eventually participated in a clinical trial, which introduced her to the world of cancer research and was the springboard to becoming involved in patient partnership. Since that time Jill touched many lives and used her tenacity and intelligence to create a lasting impact both on researchers and patients.

Despite her health faltering recently, she remained committed to her work, driven by a belief that “research matters” and that patients must help shape it for the better. Jill will be remembered for her thoughtfulness and compassion, her unrelenting advocacy, her supportive voice and enthusiasm, and her effusive smile.

Upon news of Jill’s passing, many tributes were shared, some of which can be read below. You can also learn about Jill’s journey through her blog Through the Valley.

“As an OICR PFAC colleague of Jill’s, I was saddened to hear of her sudden passing. Despite a long and challenging struggle with a devastating lung cancer diagnosis, she continued to persevere and make significant contributions as a cancer patient advocate. Jill was a bright, brave, driven, and supportive individual whose work will continue to inspire hope in those suffering from devastating cancers. All delivered with an ever-present warm smile. She will be sorely missed!” – Terry Hawrysh, Member, OICR PFAC

“Jill had a quiet presence while simultaneously making a massive impact. Her demeanor was always kind, enthusiastic, and encouraging. I very much admire all of the work she did. She contributed so much to the research community and I know that her legacy will live on for a very long time.” – Emily McIntosh, Member, OICR PFAC

“Jill will always be an inspiration. She made a clear choice to spend her precious time helping others, through supporting research and advocating for patients, even while enduring difficult times herself. It was an honour to work with her, although a too brief one.” – Justin Noble, Lead, Patient Partnership and New Initiatives, OICR

https://twitter.com/rtamarchak/status/1592517828606828545?s=20&t=EG2VPYIwgmc31wncnEuMTg
https://twitter.com/iamcatherinela/status/1591856557460946944?s=20&t=EG2VPYIwgmc31wncnEuMTg
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