close

Join our Mailing List

Receive the latest news, event invites, funding opportunities and more from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

The secret to stopping deadly cancer recurrences may be in your blood

OICR-supported clinical trials are using blood tests to find cancer recurrence early and inform personalized treatment strategies.


Since being diagnosed with triple-positive breast cancer at the age of 40, Adina Isenberg has been poked, prodded, sliced and scanned.

She has had surgery, radiation, hormone therapy, 12 rounds of chemotherapy and even a targeted therapy to overcome the HER2+ genetic mutation that made her tumour extra aggressive.

And while her treatment was successful and she is cancer-free more than five years later, she can never fully put cancer behind her.

“Every cancer survivor I know is afraid of recurrence,” says Isenberg. “And that includes me.”

Despite advancements in treating cancer that have helped shrink tumours and extended people’s lives, recurrence remains a major challenge. Traces of cancer can live on – often undetectable – after treatment, and then come back even stronger than before.

In the case of diseases like HER2+ breast cancer, which makes up almost one fifth of all breast cancers, recurrence is often deadly.

But what if there was a way to find those lingering traces of cancer so that patients could be treated before recurrence took hold? And what if all it took was a blood test?

“Most people who have had cancer are used to getting poked a lot for different tests,” says Isenberg. “Having one more test to alleviate some uncertainty would do wonders for patients’ mental health.”

OICR is determined to give cancer patients that certainty. The Institute is supporting several trials, through the Clinical Acceleration Team Awards (CATA) funding program, that are exploring if blood tests can detect early signs of cancer recurrence and point people to the best treatment to stop it.

Seeing invisible signs of cancer recurrence

Dr. David Cescon

Isenberg is a patient partner for one of these CATA-supported clinical trials. Led by Dr. David Cescon, a medical oncologist and clinician scientist at University Health Network (UHN), the trial is testing whether adding targeted drug called neratinib to a HER2+ breast cancer patient’s standard-of-care treatment after surgery can slow a potential recurrence.

Neratinib has already proven effective against HER2+ breast cancer. Although it is one of several HER2-targeting drugs, it is not commonly used in current treatment regimens. That’s why Cescon and colleagues are harnessing an innovative blood test for circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) to identify which patients neratinib will work best for.

ctDNA is tiny pieces of a tumour’s genetic material that can sometimes be found in a person’s blood stream. These fragments are often present when all other signs of cancer are gone. And research shows that, when ctDNA is detectable after cancer treatment has been completed, it’s likely that cancer will recur.

In Cescon’s study, participants who’ve already had surgery for HER2+ breast cancer will get a ctDNA blood test. That test will be personalized to their tumour’s own unique fingerprint, based on the tissue sample that was taken when they were first diagnosed with cancer. Patients whose blood shows signs of residual disease will have neratinib added to their standard treatment, and follow-up blood tests will be used to see how the experimental combination is working.

The trial was initiated at UHN at the end of 2022. Cescon and colleagues are screening patients in Toronto and working to set up sites in Ottawa and in other hospitals across Ontario.

“The idea here is to use ctDNA to specifically identify individuals for whom the standard of care treatment isn’t enough,” says Cescon. “We want to find who is likely to have their cancer recur and tackle that risk of recurrence in a personalized way with the goal of achieving cure.”

Finding resistance for personalized treatment

Dr. Stephanie Lheureux

Dr. Stephanie Lheureux’s OICR-funded CATA clinical trial makes use of a blood test for ‘cell-free DNA’ – which are fragments of DNA in the bloodstream that don’t necessarily come from a tumour – to guide treatment at the time of recurrence.

In an earlier OICR-funded study, Lheureux and colleagues showed that you may use cell-free DNA to identify people for whom certain ovarian cancer treatments just won’t work. Ovarian cancer will recur in about 70 per cent of patients. Even targeted treatments like PARP inhibitors aren’t always effective. Working with OICR’s Dr. Trevor Pugh, Lheureux and colleagues sequenced the genome of samples of cell-free DNA and were able to find some mechanisms that make people resistant to PARP inhibitors.

Now, Lheureux and colleagues are using that knowledge to guide real-time treatment decisions. Participants in their CATA-funded clinical trial will receive PARP inhibitors alongside another type of cancer drug called ‘angiogenesis inhibitors.’ At the same time, they’ll have blood and tissue samples taken and tested for PARP inhibitor resistance.

People who don’t have the mechanism of PARP inhibitor resistance will continue with the original two treatments with potentially an immunotherapy added. People whose test shows they are resistant will stop PARP inhibitors and instead get chemotherapy with immunotherapy added to their angiogenesis inhibitor. Blood tests will be used throughout to monitor the progress of their treatment.

“Our goal is to act on our knowledge about resistance to PARP inhibitors and use these findings to guide treatment early,” says Lheureux, who is Clinician Investigator and Medical Oncologist Site Lead (Gynecology Oncology) at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. “This trial is very innovative using real-time genomic data from tumour DNA and cell-free DNA to potential adapt treatment strategy.”

Moving from tissue samples to ‘liquid biopsies’

These kinds of specialized blood tests are often called ‘liquid biopsies’ because they can help detect and diagnose cancer like traditional biopsies but without having to surgically remove a piece of tissue. They’re among the most exciting new developments in cancer because it’s a much easier experience for patients to give blood than provide tissue samples. That means patients can be tested regularly for signs of cancer with minimal inconvenience.

ctDNA testing is also critical to a CATA-funded study led by Dr. Natasha Leighl that is investigating recurrence in lung cancer. Patients in her trial whose blood test suggests their lung cancer is likely to recur after surgery will receive a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Then ctDNA blood tests will help monitor their progress over time.

These potentially practice-changing clinical trials using cutting-edge biomarkers are exactly what OICR hand in mind when it created the CATA awards. Part of OICR’s Clinical Translation Pathway, the awards are aimed at bringing new cancer diagnostics and therapies to patients through clinical trials and making sure they are effective.

“There are so many exciting innovations coming from Ontario researchers that can revolutionize how cancer is detected, diagnosed and treated,” says Dr. Teresa Petrocelli, OICR’s Director of Clinical Translation. “OICR is committed to bringing these discoveries to the patients who need them, and we are proud to support researchers who share our commitment.”

More than five years after her breast cancer diagnosis, Isenberg says that one of the biggest reasons she’s still here today is that her cancer was detected early.

She is grateful for all the people, tools and treatments that contributed to her positive outcome with cancer. That’s why she decided to give back as a patient partner in cancer research – to give all people with cancer the same hope she was given.

“When a patient hears the word cancer, we hear ‘death sentence’,” Isenberg says. “To have more options to help save lives, or even to prolong lives in a quality way, is critically important.” 

The Next Generation: Aisha Naamani

Drug Discovery trainee driven to reverse negative trends in colorectal cancer.

With more and more young adults being diagnosed with colorectal cancer, Aisha Naamani wants to provide better ways to treat the disease.


Naamani is a Ph.D. student on OICR’s Drug Discovery team, supervised by Dr. Rima Al-awar. She is working to validate potential therapeutic targets for colorectal cancer, which she hopes could one day lead to new therapeutic options.


“I hope that this research adds to our general understanding of the disease,” Naamani says. “I also hope this could pave the way for translating basic research into clinical practice and benefiting patients.”


Born in Oman, Naamani also wants to help develop the field of cancer research in the Middle East.
“I’m eager to take part of that development and contribute to the scientific community,” she says.
Find out more by watching Naamani’s The Next Generation video.

Cancer researchers focused on bringing new discoveries to patients get two-year funding awards

OICR is supporting six research teams through its Innovation to Implementation (I2I) funding competition.

June 14, 2023, TORONTO – Funding announced today by the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) will help six Ontario-based research teams pursue their ultimate goal of improving the lives of people with cancer.

Funding comes through OICR’s Innovation to Implementation (I2I) program, which aims to help ensure new discoveries about preventing, diagnosing and treating cancer are adopted into healthcare policy and clinical practice.

“Every cancer researcher wants their work to have an impact on patients, but there are a lot of challenges that must be overcome before a promising idea in the lab can have a meaningful impact in the clinic,” says Dr. Christine Williams, OICR’s Executive Vice President and Head of Implementation Science. “That’s why OICR is proud to support these talented Ontario researchers bring potentially life-changing innovations to the people who need them.”

“It’s very exciting to see OICR fund these projects,” says Carol Gordon, a member of OICR’s Patient and Family Advisory Council who helped review I2I applications. “They all address important topics from a patient’s perspective, including personalized medicine, accessible genetic testing, quality of life and patient engagement.”

First launched in 2022, I2I awards support the uptake of new cancer tools and knowledge for the benefit of cancer patients. The awards are part of OICR’s Implementation Science program, which emphasizes ways to assess, test and implement research discoveries into Ontario’s healthcare system.

“The Ontario government is committed to advancing new discoveries in cancer research by supporting entrepreneurs who have developed innovative technologies, treatments and tools to help cancer patients,” said Jill Dunlop, Minister of Colleges and Universities. “These six projects all have the potential to improve cancer patients’ lives, by providing personalized care and treatments, and by making genetic testing faster and more accessible to all Ontarians.”

The six research projects funded as part of the 2023 I2I awards will receive up to a total of $200,000 each over the next two years. They include investigations into new tools to diagnose cancer, new approaches to evaluate emerging cancer technologies and ways to ensure all communities have access to new discoveries.

Dr. David Berman of Queen’s University created a system to objectively grade bladder cancer so that it can be treated more effectively. ‘High-grade’ and ‘low-grade’ bladder cancers are treated very differently, but the process to determine grading is highly subjective. Expert pathologists will disagree on cancer grades in 20 to 40 per cent of cases. With I2I funding, Berman and colleagues will test a computer-aided grading system for bladder cancer based on quantitative measures and work with industry, academic and patient partners to help it make it available to clinicians.

“Having an objective, quantitative way to grade bladder cancers will help urologists provide personalized care matched to their patients’ individual risks.” – Dr. David Berman

Dr. Anthony Nichols of Lawson Health Research Institute and London Health Sciences Centre is developing a molecular test to predict how patients with HPV-related head and neck cancers, the fastest rising cancers in North America, will respond to treatment. Standard treatment for these cancers is high doses of chemotherapy and radiation, which carry significant side effects, so it’s important to know which patients will benefit from treatment and which patients could be spared unnecessary side effects. Nichols and colleagues will use their I2I award to confirm that their test is accurate and explore how it could be integrated into clinical care.

“With head and neck cancers on the rise, it’s more important than ever to know which therapies work for which patients, so they can get the best chance of survival with the least amount of side effects.” – Dr. Anthony Nichols

Dr. Rola Saleeb of St. Michael’s Hospital, a site of Unity Health Toronto, is exploring the use of a new tool to standardize genetic testing for glioma, the most common type of brain cancer. This technology uses a more affordable DNA sequencing technology and could make genetic testing more accessible. Existing genetic tests are done using large, expensive equipment that isn’t available in all laboratories, meaning tests are often sent away to other labs and patients must wait weeks for results before they can begin treatment. OICR funding will allow Saleeb and colleagues to develop a single test that looks for all relevant glioma biomarkers and runs on the nanopore sequencing platform, which costs only about $1,000 and can fit on a desktop.

“We want to help bring molecular testing into every laboratory so that clinicians everywhere have the information they need to set their patients on the right course of treatment.” ­­– Dr. Rola Saleeb

Dr. Yvonne Bombard of the University of Toronto and St. Michael’s Hospital, a site of Unity Health Toronto, is investigating how to make genetic services for cancer more equitable for all people across Ontario. Genetic testing can help identify people at high risk of developing cancer so they can be screened earlier and treated more effectively should cancer develop. But racialized communities have a more difficult time accessing genetic services and getting a definitive diagnosis, in part because most genetic research is done on people of European ancestry but also because of the barriers built into our healthcare system. With funding from OICR, Bombard and colleagues will interview people from diverse backgrounds as well as genomics researchers, healthcare providers and other stakeholders to identify barriers to accessing genetic services and work together with racialized communities on strategies to overcome them.

“Cancer genetic services can’t reach their full potential until they reach everyone; we are hoping to understand the barriers that currently prevent racialized communities from accessing them. This is an important first step to mitigating these barriers and improving care and health outcomes for all Ontarians.” – Dr. Yvonne Bombard

Dr. Kelvin Chan of Sunnybrook Research Institute is studying the impact of CAR-T cell therapy on quality of life for patients with lymphoma. CAR-T cell therapy shows a lot of promise in treating blood cancers like lymphoma and works by training the body’s immune cells to find and kill cancer. But it is very costly to manufacture and administer, making it difficult for regulators to measure its cost-effectiveness and manage access. In their I2I study, Chan and colleagues will ask lymphoma patients about their quality of life before and after undergoing CAR-T cell therapy so that their experiences can be factored into policy decisions surrounding this potentially life-changing new treatment.

“To fully understand the impact of CAR-T cell therapy, and the potential impact of public reimbursement for it, we need to understand how it affected the lives of the people who have first-hand experience with it.”  – Dr. Kelvin Chan

Dr. Kednapa Thavorn of The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa is exploring how patient voices can improve economic evaluation – an important part of how health systems assess the value of new technologies. In an earlier OICR-funded study, Thavorn and colleagues invited patients and caregivers to provide input on the financial benefits and burdens of CAR T-cell therapy, a groundbreaking immunotherapy that has delivered promising results for people with blood cancers. This new I2I study will engage a broader range of stakeholders, including patients, researchers and policymakers, to identify barriers that prevent patient engagement in economic evaluations and recommend ways to involve patients more meaningfully.

“Patients know the true costs of having cancer and of undergoing cancer treatment, and therefore should be involved in any discussion about the economic value of a new treatment.” – Dr. Kednapa Thavorn

These projects will build on and inform many other OICR initiatives, including a made-in-Canada approach to CAR-T cell therapy, and a platform to track hereditary cancers in Ontario and unify genetic testing. Altogether, they underscore OICR’s commitment to developing powerful and cost-effective solutions that improve the lives of people affected by cancer.

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

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.