Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

Within each type of cancer there are multiple subtypes that exhibit different levels of aggressive behaviour and require different management strategies. As a result, the classical "one-size-fits-all" approach in cancer management is not efficient. To be efficient, a cancer therapy should be personalized by using patient-specific characteristics - this is the paradigm of personalized cancer medicine. MiRNAs are very promising molecular markers for accurately diagnosing cancer subtypes as every cancer subtype is presumably associated with a unique quantitative miRNA signature. Despite all efforts to identify miRNA signatures of cancer subtypes, there is not even a single miRNA signature validated and approved for clinical use. Discovery and validation of miRNA signatures require a miRNA analysis technology that is (i) quantitative, (ii) highly-sensitive, (iii) rugged, (iv) capable of simultaneously analyzing multiple miRNAs, (v) cost-effective, and (vi) rapid. Such a technology does not exist and this is arguably the major challenge on our way to practical use of miRNA signatures in cancer medicine. We propose to develop a Technology for Analysis of miRNA Signatures (TAmiRS), which satisfies the 6 requirements and can enable the discovery and validation of miRNA signatures. We recently invented instrumental and methodological approaches that can facilitate TAmiRS with its unique capability of measuring absolute amounts of multiple miRNAs without calibration curves. The TAmiRS results obtained in different laboratories can be pooled together for analysis, which is pivotal for discovery and validation of miRNA signatures requiring the analysis of thousands of patient samples. When a miRNA signature has been validated, TAmiRS can be used for cancer subtype diagnosis in a clinical setup. Knowing cancer subtypes will allow physicians to choose most suitable therapies. This will be a significant step towards personalized cancer medicine.