Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Sarcomas are a unique group of heterogeneous cancers that respond very poorly to current standard medical therapies. This research project will focus on exploring oncolytic viruses (OVs) as a novel strategy for the treatment of sarcoma patients, who currently are in dire need for new alternative therapies. Although numerous clinical and preclinical studies have shown promising results for OVs in carcinoma patients, there have only been a handful of preclinical studies testing OVs in sarcoma models. We believe that in order to translate the therapeutic benefits of OVs successfully to sarcoma patients we first need to establish a method that can guide/predict which OV candidates are most likely to succeed and whether some histological subtypes are more likely to benefit. Our study will test an innovative approach of screening fresh sarcoma surgical specimens against a panel of OVs, and correlate tumor response to its aberrant epigenetic dysregulation. This approach will provide valuable information about the basic epigenetic landscape of sarcoma that can ultimately guide the design of future clinical trials and the development of new modalities to overcome OV resistance. The long term mission is to facilitate the translation of a novel therapy to our sarcoma patients that can potentially improve their quality of life.