Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Surgery is one of the most important steps in curative cancer treatment. Most patients with solid tumors, like breast, colon or lung cancer, have an operation to remove the tumor, but for a number of patients the cancer will come back, often spreading to distant organs (metastasis). My work in Drs. Auer/Bell's lab and others has shown that surgery itself can increase the spread of cancer to distant sites. Many patients get toxic treatments, like chemotherapy, many weeks after surgery to try and prevent this. Our research is focused on trying to understand how cells of the immune system, specifically natural killer (NK) cells are involved in the spread of tumor cells after surgery so that more effective and less toxic treatments can be given to patients around the time of their operation. In this proposal, I will find out how NK cells are profoundly suppressed after surgery and more importantly, I will reverse this effect by using novel virotherapy that targets tumor cells and spares normal healthy cells. Cancer treatments that are specifically aimed at preventing recurrence of cancer following surgery will improve survival in all cancer patients undergoing surgery to remove their tumor.