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Patient partner driven to make cancer care more inclusive

Michelle Audoin joined OICR’s Patient and Family Advisory Council in May 2023.

In the days after Michelle Audoin was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2017, she wrestled with some of the biggest questions of her life.

But she didn’t see herself, or other women of colour, in the answers.

Audoin had to decide whether to have a double mastectomy as part of her cancer treatment and wanted to know more about breast reconstruction outcomes for Black women like herself. She knew that her scars didn’t heal the same as people with other skin colours. But the resources she was provided featured only images of white women.

“I wasn’t seeing people who looked like me, and I wasn’t getting the information I needed,” she says. “That made it really hard to come to terms with the decision and led to depression after I went forward with surgery.”

Audoin knew she couldn’t be the only woman to feel excluded, so she decided to do something about it. In 2020, she worked with a charity called Rethink Breast Cancer to create a resource specifically for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC).

Uncovered: A Breast Cancer Recognition Project features portraits and stories of BIPOC women after breast reconstruction, including Audoin, and a list of actions healthcare organizations can take to make breast cancer care more inclusive.

After presenting Uncovered at World Cancer Congress in 2022, Audoin has taken on other projects to advocate for cancer patients, including working with the University of Toronto and Women’s College Hospital. She joined OICR’s Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC) in May 2023, and recently spoke to OICR News about her goals and motivations as a patient partner.

How has being a Black woman shaped your experience with cancer?

I’ve seen racism and implicit bias along my healthcare journey, even before my cancer diagnosis. I had my first breast cyst removed at 14 or 15 and there was no follow up from the healthcare system about my cancer risk factors or how to manage my breast health.

Since getting cancer, I have often felt there were barriers to accessing the resources I needed. My questions and concerns have sometimes been dismissed, and I haven’t felt like an equal partner in my care.

How did these experiences motivate you to become an advocate for patients?

I had a difficult journey with my mastectomy and did a lot of journaling afterward about my feelings. Eventually, I stopped writing about being angry and started writing about how I would want the experience to be different for someone else – my sister, my neighbour or my child. I started writing down ideas and reaching out to organizations. That’s how the Uncovered project came about, and that led me to other advocacy and patient partnership opportunities.

Why did you put your name forward to join OICR’s PFAC?

For me, it’s about giving back. I’ve had a lot of experience throughout my diagnosis, both good and bad. I feel compelled to use those experiences to make change and improve outcomes for people like me. OICR provides a great opportunity to make that kind of difference.

In cancer research, people talk a lot about personalized medicine. But personalizing cancer treatment isn’t just about targeting a specific type of cancer. Personalized medicine needs to acknowledge that patients are individuals and we come with complex backgrounds. As a mother in my 40s, my priority for cancer treatment is to have good quality of life with my kids. Someone else may want to do everything they possibly can to get rid of cancer. We all have different values that influence how we want to be treated.

What sort of impact do you hope you can have as a patient partner?

I want to bring the patient voice to the forefront of people’s work, whether they’re in health research or healthcare. Hopefully that brings about a more inclusive, humanist health system that treats patients as individuals, not as their diagnosis.

I’m very grateful that I live in Canada and that our country offers world-class cancer care. But the system still does harm sometimes, even when people are trained to do good. We can do better, and the patient voice is at the centre of the improvements we need.

How Falcons’ Fortunes winner plans to stop colorectal cancer from coming back

DTPx Therapeutics won $100,000 from FACIT to develop a new treatment by targeting hibernating cancer cells.

For many people with colorectal cancer, treatment can be a vicious cycle.

Even when it looks like chemotherapy killed their tumour, as many as 40 per cent of colorectal cancer patients will see it grow back within a few years. If they undergo another round of treatment, the tumour will go away again, only to come back after treatment is done.

This cycle of treatment and recurrence is very tough on patients, and many will ultimately die from the disease.

But scientists at DTPx Therapeutics think they’ve found the key to stopping the cycle and treating colorectal cancer once and for all. They pitched their innovative approach at this year’s Falcons’ Fortunes, a competition for Ontario-based cancer entrepreneurs run by OICR’s commercialization partner FACIT, and took home the $100,000 top prize as well as the audience choice award.

The research behind DTPx came out of Dr. Catherine O’Brien’s lab at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. O’Brien and colleagues found that some colorectal cancer cells went into a hibernation state that allowed them to survive treatment and then grow again once the treatment was done. They called these cells ‘drug tolerant persisters’ (DTP) and launched DTPx Therapeutics to turn their new findings into new treatments.

Dr. Sumaiyah Rehman is CEO and co-founder of DTPx alongside O’Brien. She recently spoke to OICR News about her research and how winning FACIT’s Falcons’ Fortunes will help the company achieve its goals.

Tell us about DTP cells and their role in colorectal cancer relapse.

When you treat a tumour with chemotherapy, you expect most tumour cells to die. But DTPs can survive the toxic environment created by chemotherapy by entering what we call a ‘hibernation state’. Their functions slow down and they stay alive just enough until treatment stops, and then they’re able to regrow. That’s why many patients with colorectal cancer see their tumours respond to treatment, and it looks like it is gone, but then it comes right back.


How did Dr. O’Brien’s lab come upon this discovery about DTPs?

We started out studying drug resistance, because we thought the relapse cycle in colorectal cancer was driven by resistance to chemotherapy. We did several experiments where we injected patient-derived samples of colorectal cancer into mice, treated them with chemotherapy and then tracked the tumour cells to see what happened.

We expected to find one type of cell that resisted treatment. Instead, we found that all different types of tumour cells came back after treatment. The tumour that recurred looked just like the original tumour. That was surprising, and it took us down a different path to understand how all these cells had survived chemotherapy. That led us to our discovery about DTPs, which we published in Cell in 2021 and became the foundation of DTPx Therapeutics.

How is DTPx using this knowledge about DTPs to create new treatments?

It all starts with the patient-derived models we developed over several years of studying tumour relapse in colorectal cancer. The models allow us to grow tumours, put tumours cells into a hibernation state and then harvest them. We can then do all sorts of analyses to understand how these cells go into hibernation and look for parts of that process we can disrupt by targeting them with new therapeutics.

We’ve found some exciting leads so far. There’s still a lot of work ahead, but with the network we have in place, and support we received from FACIT, we’re looking forward to finding a druggable target as soon as possible.

Speaking of FACIT, what was it like pitching at the Falcons’ Fortunes competition?

Honestly, it was nerve-wracking. I have done pitches before, but this was on a larger scale than I’m used to. There were a lot of fantastic ideas pitched that night, and I did not expect to win. It’s very exciting and humbling to win, and every step of the process has been a great learning experience.

As you and DTPx move forward, what do you hope you can accomplish in the future?

Once we finalize our target and develop the drug, my goal is to stop patients from having to go through the cycle of treatment and relapse, and to take the survival rate for colorectal cancer up to 100 per cent.

I remember my first day of grad school. A clinician scientist came up to a group of us grad students, pointed over toward the hospital side of the institution, and told us: “Your job isn’t done until you’ve made a difference over there.” That stuck with me. There’s no point in doing fancy science if it’s not going to make it out of the lab. And that’s what drives us at DTPx.

Now in its tenth year, FACIT’s Falcons’ Fortunes is an annual pitch competition featuring six finalist Ontario-based entrepreneurs in the oncology sector who pitch their innovations to a panel of industry-experienced investors for the $100,000 Ernsting Entrepreneurship Award. The Award is part of FACIT’s Prospects Oncology Fund, one of FACIT’s investment programs that seeks to create value for Ontario’s cancer intellectual property by addressing the seed funding gap for early-stage, proof-of-concept projects with commercial potential.

The Next Generation: Alister D’Costa

Alister D’Costa has seen how devastating cancer can be, and also how diverse it can be.

Several of D’Costa’s friends and family members have been diagnosed with cancer, and each person experienced a different form of the disease.

“That really [speaks to] how we need personalized approaches to cancer treatment,” he says.

D’Costa is taking steps toward developing those personalized approaches as a PhD student in Dr. Jared Simpson’s lab at OICR. He is studying the changes that happen in tumour cells that drive cancer progression and looking for more accurate ways to detect and understand these changes.

Find out more in OICR’s latest The Next Generation video.

Ask a Cancer Researcher: What happens after a new discovery?

OICR’s Executive Vice President and Head of Implementation Science Dr. Christine Williams answers an important question.


The next video in OICR’s Ask a Cancer Researcher series addresses one of the most important questions in research: what happens after a cancer researcher makes a new discovery?

OICR’s Executive Vice President and Head of Implementation Science Dr. Christine Williams answers a question from Diana Lemaire, going through the steps it takes to bring an innovation in the lab to the cancer patients who need it.

Watch the video below and submit your own question for a chance to be featured in an upcoming video.

CanPath transforming data access to unlock its full potential to improve health

New funding from Genome Canada will help CanPath build a cloud-based platform to equip researchers to understand the drivers of health and disease in Canada.

Inside an unprecedented collection of health data from more than 330,000 Canadians are clues to understanding why people develop disease and how to prevent it.

And a new project to improve how researchers access that data could lead to a future where Canadians get better, more personalized treatments for diseases like cancer.

CanPath (The Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health) is the country’s largest population health study. Bringing together data from seven regional cohorts across 10 provinces, CanPath is a tremendous scientific resource of health, genomic and other data from about one in 100 Canadians.

Now, CanPath is set to transform how it shares this data with researchers. Thanks to a $6.2 million grant from Genome Canada, CanPath is building a ‘trusted research environment,’ a secure cloud-based platform where researchers can access and analyze data all in one place.

Dr. John McLaughlin

“This has the potential to be a game changer, both for CanPath’s long-term sustainability and the future of health research and healthcare in Canada,” says Dr. John McLaughlin, CanPath’s Executive Director and Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Toronto.

Currently, researchers access CanPath data by submitting an application and, if approved by an independent Access Committee, CanPath sends them the data they requested through secure channels. This process meets the highest standards of data security – CanPath has never had a data breach – and has helped with all sorts of innovative research, from looking for new ways to detect cancer earlier to studying immune response to COVID-19 vaccines.

But Canada’s data needs are evolving. New data is always coming in from CanPath’s cohort, and many more Canadians are expected to have their genome sequenced in the coming years. So, CanPath is working to ensure its tools for hosting, sharing and analyzing data evolve along with them.

In shifting to cloud-based access, CanPath is following the lead of similar international data resources. These include UK Biobank, which made the switch years ago, and the All of Us program in the U.S., which implemented this model at its outset.

The biggest advantage is that national data can be accessed at a secure central location. This platform adds an extra element of data security and avoids the challenges of moving large amounts of data around. It means CanPath can scale up its dataset, and even integrate other datasets to provide a fuller picture of its cohort, without worrying about how it will get that data to researchers.

The trusted research environment will also remove barriers to accessing CanPath data. Researchers at small institutes won’t need huge servers or massive computing power to store and analyze data – they will be able to do that right in the platform. They will even be able to upload their own analytical tools to use in the platform as well as develop new approaches to draw insight from health data.

Dr. Philip Awadalla

“This new platform will help drive innovations and allow CanPath to partner with stakeholders that we wouldn’t have been able to before, including partners in industry and healthcare,” says Dr. Philip Awadalla, National Scientific Director for CanPath, Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto, and Director of Computational Biology for OICR.

Awadalla says building a CanPath trusted research environment will help keep Canada on the cutting edge of innovation in healthcare. The country has many great health data assets but has traditionally struggled with sharing and integrating data across provincial jurisdictions. By harmonizing data from 10 Canadian provinces, CanPath has made huge strides to overcome these barriers. This new centralized platform will go even further toward that goal because data won’t have to move across jurisdictional borders.  

CanPath National Scientific Coordinator Kimberly Skead says this will help Canada’s health system harness CanPath data to better detect and treat disease.

“CanPath has enabled researchers across the country to understand the causes of health and disease in Canada,” Skead says. “Building a central cloud-based environment will help enrich CanPath with novel data types, and drive further innovations aimed at making people healthier.”

The trusted research environment project is still in its early stages, with changes not likely for several months. What won’t be changing, according to McLaughlin, are CanPath’s stringent processes for reviewing applications and its commitment to protecting participant data.

“Over the last 20 years, we have built a rock-solid foundation of data governance, protection and security,” McLaughlin says. “At the same time, we’re excited to keep moving with the times to stay a step ahead of current challenges.”

CanPath is a partnership between the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

Precision magnetics could be game-changer for therapy-resistant brain cancers

Scientists at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the University of Toronto (U of T) have combined forces to develop a new approach to potentially treat tumour cells, called mechanical nanosurgery, even for aggressive, chemoresistant cancers.

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and aggressive primary brain cancer. Despite various treatment options that exist, including surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, the median survival time for patients is only around 15 months.

The current global standard-of-care treatment for GBM patients includes chemotherapy using a drug called temozolomide (TMZ), which extends a person’s life expectancy by approximately two months compared to patients receiving radiotherapy alone. However, GBM cells can develop resistance to TMZ over time, reducing its efficacy and increasing the likelihood of tumour relapse.

In a study published in Science Advances, Dr. Xi Huang, a Senior Scientist in the Developmental & Stem Cell Biology program at SickKids, and Dr. Yu Sun, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Robotics Institute at U of T, present a new approach to treat chemoresistant GBM using precision magnetic control in a process they call mechanical nanosurgery. This research was funded in part by OICR.

“Through the use of nanotechnology deep inside cancer cells, mechanical nanosurgery is a ‘Trojan Horse’ approach that could allow us to destroy tumour cells from within,” says Huang, whose previous research demonstrating that brain tumour cells are mechanosensitive helped to inform the approach. “By combining our expertise in biochemistry at SickKids and engineering at U of T, we’ve developed a potential new way to treat aggressive brain cancer.”

Dr. Xi Huang

Developed with first author Dr. Xian Wang, current Assistant Professor at Queen’s University, former post-doctoral fellow in the Huang Lab and winner of a Lap-Chee Tsui Fellowship through the SickKids Research Training Centre, the mouse model used in the study showed that the mechanical nanosurgery process reduced GBM tumour size universally, including in TMZ-resistant GBM.

Mechanical nanosurgery explained
Magnetic carbon nanotubes (mCNTs) are a form of nanomaterial – microscopic cylindrically-shaped tubes made of carbon and, in this case, filled with iron that becomes magnetized when activated by an external magnetic field. In the study, the research team coated mCNTs with an antibody that recognizes a specific protein associated with GBM tumour cells. Once injected into the tumour, the antibodies on the mCNTs cause them to seek out tumour cells and are absorbed by them.

“Once the nanotubes are inside the tumour cell, we use a rotating magnetic field to mechanically mobilize the nanotubes to provide mechanical stimulation,” says Sun. “The force exerted by the nanotubes damages cellular structures and cause tumour cell death.”

Exploring applications beyond brain cancer
Huang’s partnership with Sun at the U of T Department of Mechanical Engineering is continuing to build on the study findings. As their research continues, they note that mechanical nanosurgery may have further applications in other cancer types.

“Theoretically, by changing the antibody coating and redirecting nanotubes to the desired tumour site, we could potentially have a means to precisely destroy tumour cells in other cancers,” says Huang.

This research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Ontario Research Fund, Canadian Cancer Society, Concern Foundation, b.r.a.i.n.child, Sontag Foundation, Meagan’s HUG, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada, Hopper-Belmont Foundation, Arthur and Sonia Labatt Brain Tumour Research Centre, Garron Family Cancer Centre, and SickKids Foundation.

This story was originally published by the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and has been reposted with permission. The original post can be viewed at: https://www.sickkids.ca/mecnano

Investment in Ontario drug discovery research will help develop new cancer medicines for patients

OICR announces support for five projects through its Cancer Therapeutics Innovation Pipeline (CTIP)

May 4, 2023, TORONTO – Ontario research teams investigating new ways to treat cancer are taking the crucial next steps to bring their discoveries to patients thanks to support from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR).

OICR announced it is funding five Ontario-based drug discovery projects between $150,000 and $300,000 per project through its Cancer Therapeutics Innovation Pipeline (CTIP) initiative. CTIP supports research into promising molecules that could become the next generation of cancer therapeutics.

This year’s cohort of CTIP projects aims to develop treatments for some of the most devastating cancers, including pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, breast cancer and late-stage prostate cancer.

Beyond funding, CTIP’s committee of experts from academia and industry advises research teams on the science and approaches needed to advance their discoveries, and the strategy to attract the partnerships and investments needed to bring a new drug to the clinic.

“Ontario is home to many talented drug discovery researchers, and OICR created CTIP to guide them through the challenges of the drug discovery process,” says OICR President and Scientific Director, Dr. Laszlo Radvanyi. “These exciting new projects have the potential to make a major difference in the lives of people with cancer, and we want to help realize that potential as soon and as impactfully as possible.”

The 2023 CTIP projects include:

Early Validation Projects

• Dr. Fred Dick of Western University and Lawson Health Research Institute is investigating new therapies to treat ovarian cancer more effectively by targeting ‘dormant’ cancer cells. Ovarian cancers are usually treated by chemotherapy, but ovarian cancer cells can survive treatment by entering a period of dormancy and then spreading again once treatment is done. Dick and colleagues have uncovered a process that keeps dormant cells alive and will use OICR support to look for ways to disrupt this survival mechanism.

“By going after ‘dormant’ cancer cells that elude the usual treatment options, we aim to prevent ovarian cancer from returning, and stop it once and for all.” – Dr. Fred Dick

• Dr. Richard Austin and Dr. Bobby Shayegan from McMaster University and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton are hoping to develop a new drug for prostate cancer that is effective against late-stage disease, when it is usually the hardest to treat. Austin, Shayegan and colleagues have created a synthetic antibody that targets a protein on the surface of prostate cancer cells, which plays a key role in the growth of tumours. After demonstrating promising results of shrinking tumours in mice, they will use CTIP funding to take the next steps toward advancing this potentially first-in-class therapeutic.

“Once prostate cancer spreads, it becomes much more difficult to treat. But we have found an exciting new way to attack prostate cancer cells that could provide new hope to countless men.” – Dr. Richard Austin

Early Accelerator Projects

• Dr. Razqallah Hakem and Dr. Mark Reed of the University Health Network are exploring new ways to treat breast and ovarian cancer patients with BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations. These mutations can restrain the body from repairing damaged DNA, which makes people more susceptible to developing cancer. Although patients with these mutations initially respond well to current therapeutic strategies, they develop resistance and recurrence of their tumours. Hakem and Reed identified a novel factor essential for cancer cell survival. They will use OICR funding to test about 25,000 molecules with the goal of identifying those that inhibit their novel factor and kill cancer cells.

“Cancer is stubbornly good at resisting treatments, so it’s crucial to keep innovating. The approach we’re exploring could provide transformative new options for people with BRCA-mutant breast and ovarian cancers.” – Dr. Razqallah Hakem

• Dr. Grant Brown of the University of Toronto and Dr. Rima Al-awar of OICR are looking for ways to maximize the effects of gemcitabine, a chemotherapy and one of the few treatments that is effective against pancreatic cancer. Brown and colleagues have found that ‘deactivating’ two genes makes gemcitabine kill pancreatic cancer cells more effectively. With their CTIP award, they will look for chemicals that inhibit the proteins made by these genes in the hopes of finding drugs that can be paired with gemcitabine to more effectively treat one of the deadliest forms of cancer.

“Pancreatic cancer moves quickly, so we need to harness all the tools we have to stop it. Our work aims to take one of the best treatment options for pancreatic cancer to the next level.” – Dr. Grant Brown

• Dr. Michael Olson, Dr. Marc Adler and Dr. Russell Viirre of Toronto Metropolitan University are investigating alternative treatments for ovarian cancer that has spread to other parts of the body. Only 20-30 per cent of women survive ovarian cancer when it is diagnosed in the late stages, and treatment options are limited in those stages. But researchers have discovered that disrupting the activity of a particular protein has the potential to kill ovarian cancer cells throughout the body. Thanks to support from OICR, Olson and colleagues will test how tumours respond when the protein is inhibited using three-dimensional ‘patient-derived organoids’ and work to develop new compounds that target the protein.

“Women with advanced ovarian cancer need improved treatment options against this really difficult disease. We hope our unique approach can help deliver an alternative treatment that gives them a better chance of living – and living well.” – Dr. Michael Olson

Including these projects, CTIP has now funded 26 studies since the program launched in 2017.

“The Ontario government is proud to support ground-breaking research that can advance new discoveries and innovation in cancer research,” says Jill Dunlop, Minister of Colleges and Universities. “The initiatives funded by OICR’s Cancer Therapeutics Innovation Pipeline are key to developing new drugs and treatments that have the potential to help patients who are battling cancer lead longer and healthier lives.”

OICR is a collaborative, not-for-profit research institute funded by the Government of Ontario. We conduct and enable high-impact translational cancer research to accelerate the development of discoveries for patients around the world while maximizing the economic benefit of this research for the people of Ontario. For more information visit http://www.oicr.on.ca.

The views expressed are those of OICR and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Province of Ontario.

Ask a Cancer Researcher: Why do we sequence tumour DNA?

OICR’s Head of Adaptive Oncology Dr. Lincoln Stein answers a question from patient partner Terry Hawrysh.

Is there a question about cancer or the science behind it that you’ve always wanted to ask?
OICR’s new Ask a Cancer Researcher video series gives you the opportunity to pick the brains of our expert scientists.


In the series opener, OICR’s Head of Adaptive Oncology Dr. Lincoln Stein fields a question from Terry Hawrysh about why researchers sequence DNA from tumours and healthy tissue, and how it could influence care for people with cancer.


See his answer in the video below and submit your own question for a chance to be featured in an upcoming video.

OICR-led teams receive historic multimillion dollar funding to tackle hard-to-treat cancers

The 2023 Breakthrough Team Grants from the Canadian Cancer Society comprise one of the country’s largest ever initiatives against six low-survival cancers.


Two OICR-led research teams seeking to improve outcomes for six of the deadliest cancers in Canada are receiving $7.5 million apiece over five years from the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS).

The teams were awarded CCS Breakthrough Team Grants, which fund research that brings together scientific, clinical and patient expertise to tackle cancers of the pancreas, esophagus, brain, lung, liver and stomach. These cancers have five-year survival rates of less than 30 per cent and are estimated to account for more than 40 per cent of all cancer deaths in Canada.

“Our goal is to support breakthroughs so fewer people die from these cancers and so that those living with or beyond them experience an improved quality of life,” Dr. Stuart Edmonds, Executive Vice-President of Mission, Research and Advocacy at CCS, said in a news release.

In total, 10 research teams comprising 230 individuals will receive more than $55 million, making it one of Canada’s largest ever efforts to improve outcomes for these low-survival cancers. The Breakthrough Team Grant program is delivered in partnership with Brain Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Cancer Research Society and the Lotte & John Hecht Memorial Foundation. 

Though they take different approaches, both OICR-led projects emphasize the importance of early detection and the potential of simple blood tests – known as ‘liquid biopsies’ – in cancer screening.

The project will build on years of OICR research into pancreatic cancer – an aggressive and hard-to-treat cancer – by focusing on early detection, personalized treatments strategies and stronger infrastructure for clinical trials. Researchers will collect and analyze blood samples to see if liquid biopsies can be used to detect pancreatic cancer earlier, test tumour samples for genetic variants and use the results to match patients to targeted treatments, study the cells surrounding the tumour (known as the ‘tumour microenvironment’) to understand their interaction with the immune system, and facilitate more clinical trials for pancreatic cancer so that more patients have access.

The project team comprises seven principal investigators (PI), including OICR investigators Dr. Faiyaz Notta and Dr. Hartland Jackson, with researchers across 11 organizations from Ontario and British Columbia.

Cancer screening is especially important for people with inherited genetic variants, known as familial cancer syndromes (FCS), that put them at higher risk of developing cancer. Through the cfDNA in Hereditary And High-Risk Malignancies (CHARM) Consortium, Pugh and colleagues have already shown that a simple blood test that looks for cell-free DNA (cfDNA) can be used to detect cancer early in people with FCS. Now they will run a randomized control trial focusing on people with FCS that are associated with particularly deadly cancers. The trial will test whether cfDNA blood tests can detect cancer earlier than medical imaging, which is typically used to screen people with FCS.

Pugh applied for the award through his role as Senior Scientist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (University Health Network. His co-PIs on the project include OICR associates Dr. Raymond Kim (also leader of the OICR-supported Ontario Hereditary Cancer Network (OHCRN)) and Dr. Yvonne Bombard.

In addition to these projects, OICR President and Scientific Director Dr. Laszlo Radvanyi joins Pugh and Notta as co-recipients for a study that focuses on biliary tract cancer, a hard-to-treat cancer resistant to chemotherapy. The research team will facilitate the formation of a community linking together patients, researchers and clinicians and will develop and test a new immunotherapy. Dr. Radvanyi and his lab will focus on finding tumour antigens that can be used for cancer vaccines and studying how retroelements and human endogenous retroviruses, emerging as cancer drivers, can be identified and targeted to detect and treat biliary tract cancer.

“Finding new tools and strategies to manage the most difficult cancers has long been a priority for OICR, especially efforts for more early detection and intervention that will be critical in increasing survival of patients with these cancers. My colleagues and I are proud to join in this massive team effort,” Radvanyi says. “Congratulations to Dr. Gallinger, Dr. Pugh, all the other awardees and to the Canadian Cancer Society and its partners. Working together in such large numbers and across diverse disciplines, we’re sure to make a lasting impact for patients.”


For more information about the Breakthrough Team Grants and the funded projects, visit the Canadian Cancer Society website.

New Associate Director says Ontario Tumour Bank can be ‘bridge’ to future cancer innovations

Dr. Dianne Chadwick joined the Ontario Tumour Bank with more than a decade of experience in biobanking.


Biobanks like the Ontario Tumour Bank (OTB) have become indispensable to cancer research, supplying the plasma and tissue samples scientists are using to make the next generation of discoveries. And Dr. Dianne Chadwick thinks that role will continue to grow as OTB collects even more diverse samples, offers even more advanced services, and builds even stronger relationships with clinicians and researchers.

Chadwick joined OTB as Associate Director in October 2022 after more than 10 years working in biobanks at the University Heath Network and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. With a PhD in Medical Biophysics and fellowship training in clinical laboratory genetics, she brings a strong understanding of the clinical side of hospital operations and appreciation for the needs of research.

In a recent interview with OICR News, Chadwick talked about her excitement for her new role and her goals for the future of OTB.

What made you want to take this role at OTB?

I’ve known about OTB for many years now. In the biobanking community, OTB is known for the quality of its samples and its procedures. Being associated with a world-class research institute like OICR is another huge asset. When the Associate Director position at OTB came available, I saw it as an opportunity to contribute to biobanking on a larger scale with a province-wide organization.

In your view, what is the role of biobanking in the research community?

I think biobanking can be a bridge between clinicians and researchers. Both sides are under tremendous pressure. With the demands of caring for patients, it’s impossible for clinicians to know the details of every research study being performed in their hospital. And if researchers don’t have clinical experience, they may not fully appreciate the challenges of approaching a very sick patient and asking for them to participate in a research study. As a biobank, I think our role is to support clinicians and researchers as much as possible with patient sample collection and distribution, taking as much as we can off their plate so that both sides can get on with their extremely valuable work.

Why is OTB well placed to be that bridge?

OTB is unique because it is part of OICR, which is focused specifically on cancer research. Because of that, we tend to be quicker with contracts and legal agreements than other biobanks. There are so many regulatory hurdles in clinical research, from ethics approvals to material transfer agreements, and they can take a long time. With access to OICR’s legal expertise, OTB can turn these agreements around quickly so that studies – and innovations – can move forward. We can also provide researchers with expert advice on submissions to regulatory agencies, for instance.

Being part of OICR also means we have access to its many outstanding programs. For example, if a researcher wants to do genomics assays at the same time as receiving samples from us, we can send those samples to have DNA extracted by OICR’s excellent Tissue Portal and then have sequencing done by a OICR’s world-class genomics lab.

What else can OTB offer the research community?

It all starts with having excellent samples, and our claim to fame is our high-quality surgical tissue and associated blood samples from patients with cancer. We look forward to expanding the diversity of our samples through our new collection site at Unity Health. That site sees a lot of patients with brain tumours, which is a type of cancer we haven’t had much access to up to this point. We are also in a strong position to meet the increasing demand for fresh tumours, which are collected and sent to the research lab on the same day.

We know the needs of researchers are evolving, so we are adding new custom services to meet those needs, including prospective tissue and blood collection that is tailored to the specific needs of researchers. We are also just launching a new information management system that’s going allow us to better meet research requirements, particularly the needs of data, which we see as a big area of growth for us.

What excites you most about the future of OTB?

OTB celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2024, and I think there’s a lot to be excited about as we enter our third decade. Researchers are on the cusp of major advancements in preventing, diagnosing and treating cancer, and OTB is playing a huge role. Our plasma samples are helping develop the tools for liquid biopsies that will transform cancer screening, our histology slides are informing machine learning tools for precision diagnostics, and our tissue samples are being harnessed to predict how tumours will respond to next-generation therapies. We are also working to strengthen the province’s biobanking community by creating the soon-to-be-launched Association of Ontario Tumour Banks. Together with researchers and clinicians, we are going to be partners in many big discoveries down the road, and that makes me very optimistic for OTB’s future and the future of cancer care.

For more information visit the Ontario Tumour Bank website or contact OTB at tumourbank@oicr.on.ca.