ARCHIVED - Research About – Cancer

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The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is the Government of Canada’s agency for health research. CIHR’s mission is to create new scientific knowledge and to catalyze its translation into improved health, more effective health services and products, and a strengthened Canadian health-care system. Composed of 13 Institutes, CIHR provides leadership and support to more than 13,000 health researchers and trainees across Canada. Through CIHR, the Government of Canada invested approximately $138.1 million in 2008-09 in cancer-related health research.

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The Facts

• An estimated 171,000 new cases of cancer (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers) and 75,300 deaths from cancer will occur in 2009 in Canada
• Generally, incidence and mortality rates for cancer are higher in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, and lowest in British Columbia.
• Forty-three per cent of new cancer cases and 60% of cancer-related deaths occur among those who are 70 years of age and older.
• An estimated 836 children under the age of 14 develop cancer each year. Because of success in the treatment of most common cancers, the number of deaths is one-sixth the number of cases.
• Relative survival rates are highest for thyroid, testicular and prostate cancer. Pancreatic, esophageal, lung and liver cancers have the lowest survival ratios.
• Forty per cent of women and 45% of men will likely develop cancer during their lifetimes.

Source: Canadian Cancer Society’s Steering Committee: Canadian Cancer Statistics 2009. Toronto: Canadian Cancer Society, 2009.

Finding Solutions

Diabetes drug may turbo-charge cancer therapies

A Canada/U.S. research team has found that a diabetes drug appears to make vaccines and cancer treatments more effective. The study, funded in part by CIHR, found that a type 2 diabetes drug called metformin boosted the number of cancer-fighting T cells in mice and left their immune systems in better shape to battle tumours. “Our study is the first to suggest that by targeting the same metabolic pathways that play a role in diabetes, you can alter how well your immune system functions,” McGill University’s Dr. Russell Jones told the Globe and Mail after Nature published the findings. The research suggests that metformin may enhance the effectiveness of vaccines or new cancer therapies that use the immune system to fight tumours.

Researchers find key mechanism for tumour trigger

Low oxygen levels in the body promote tumour growth by stimulating cell division and the formation of new blood vessels. A research team, led by the University of Toronto’s Dr. Michael Ohh, has significantly advanced the understanding of how low oxygen levels, known as hypoxia, act as a trigger for tumour growth by identifying a mechanism that appears to be intrinsic to the process. According to Dr. Ohh’s research, hypoxia makes cells more responsive to epidermal growth factor, a naturally occurring protein that promotes cell division. The results of the CIHR-funded study, published in Nature Medicine in March, cast new light on the biology of cancer and should help medical researchers develop better cancer therapies.

Carbon nanotubes could deliver treatments

Carbon nanotubes – tubes about one- to three-billionths of a metre in diameter that are made of sheets of pure carbon – hold promise as a biomedical drug delivery device. Essentially, the nanotubes could be loaded with therapeutic molecules and delivered to the site of a disease, such as colon cancer. Getting the nanotubes to the tumour site, however, has been problematic. In the journal Nanotechnology, McGill University’s Dr. Satya Prakash outlined a “novel microcapsule carbon nanotube targeted delivery device” that uses antibodies to promote adhesion to specific target sites. The research, conducted by a team of Canadian and American scientists with funding from CIHR, provides new evidence that microcapsule carbon nanotube devices could be taken orally to fight cancer and other diseases.

Vaccine/protein combo buys time in pancreatic cancer

Canadian researchers believe they have come up with a way to boost the body’s immune response to cancer. Dr. Pamela Ohashi, a CIHR-funded Canada Research Chair in Autoimmunity and Tumour Immunity at the University of Toronto, worked with German and American researchers to develop a new therapy that combines a vaccine with interleukin-7 (IL-7), a naturally occurring, non-toxic protein that helps keeps white blood cells healthy. The treatment significantly extended the lives of mice with pancreatic cancer, according to findings published in Nature Medicine.

The Researchers

Dr. Cynthia Hawkins – Children’s Brain Cancers: Unravelling the Mysteries

Dr. Cynthia Hawkins carefully analyzes the cancerous brain tumour a surgeon has just removed from a young patient. To guide further treatment, she needs to make an immediate diagnosis of the tumour type.

But Dr. Hawkins knows that the longer-term potential for saving the lives of children with brain cancer lies not in her immediate diagnosis, but with molecular secrets the tumour might later reveal through her CIHR-supported research.

“Unfortunately, the prognosis for many patients with pediatric brain tumours is poor, and current treatment options offer little survival benefit,” says Dr. Hawkins, a pediatric neuropathologist at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.

“Our goal is to better understand the biology of these tumours so we’ll be able to develop new, targeted treatment options.”

Brain cancers account for one-third of childhood cancers and are the leading cause of cancer-related death in children. Pediatric oncologists face a daunting task in healing their young patients in that radiation and chemotherapy treatments are in themselves particularly toxic for developing bodies.

One of only a handful of Canadian researchers investigating the biology of pediatric brain tumours, Dr. Hawkins says that improvements in treatment now rely on a better understanding of the enemy.

“We’d like to start to use some of the biological markers that we and others are discovering to try and further categorize the types of pediatric brain tumours. This would mean that patients with certain tumours wouldn’t need as aggressive chemotherapy and radiation treatment.”

One promising molecular target being studied by Dr. Hawkins’ lab is telomerase. It’s one of the proteins that enables cancer cells to multiply indefinitely, and is present in about three-quarters of pediatric brain tumours.

“In cell cultures of several different types of pediatric brain tumours that produce telomerase we’ve found that we can in fact stop the tumours from growing by using a drug that inhibits telomerase,” says Dr. Hawkins.

This result is encouraging, she says, because telomerase appears to be a key dividing line for survival with some cancers. For example, with the common childhood brain cancer ependymoma, there’s a 90% long-term survival for children whose tumours don’t express telomerase compared with 20% survival for those whose tumours do.

Telomerase inhibitors are already in trial for the treatment of adult cancers. Dr. Hawkins is hopeful that her diagnostic and molecular efforts will one day provide the combination knock-out punch to beat more pediatric brain cancers.

“In theory, if you could develop a drug to completely reverse the effect of telomerase you’d be making a huge difference in the survival rate of children with brain tumours.”

For More Information

CIHR’s Institute of Cancer (CIHR-IC) has identified eight strategic priorities for cancer research in Canada: palliative and end-of-life care; molecular profiling of tumours; clinical trials; early detection of cancer; risk behaviour and prevention; molecular and functional imaging; access to quality cancer care; and research training. To learn more about these priorities and other CIHR-IC activities, please visit the Institute’s website

For more information, go to ARCHIVED - Your Health Research Dollars at Work.