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

The treatment of cancer over the past century has been challenged by tumours that grow so fast that they run out of oxygen, and this project will be focusing on a solution - a breath of fresh air for cancer cells. Low oxygen (or 'hypoxia') develops in many tumour types, makes them resistant to radiation therapy and most chemotherapy, and increases the risk for cancer progression. It is possible to detect hypoxia in tumours to some extent, but a major challenge for this field is reliable detection of 'unstable hypoxia' - when oxygen levels in a tumour are constantly changing. Importantly, much laboratory data suggests that unstable hypoxia is more impactful for driving cancer aggression than general hypoxia. This research project intends to improve upon past methods and develop innovative new strategies for detecting unstable hypoxia that will be applicable to further basic science as well as clinical practice, including biopsy analysis and non-invasive imaging. On top of improving detection strategies, we plan to test therapies for the ability to directly address unstable hypoxia. We believe a rational avenue for this application is a group of drugs termed 'anti-angiogenics'. These drugs act to modify the blood vessels in tumours and data from human patients suggest that anti-angiogenic therapies could stabilize tumour blood flow and halt unstable hypoxia. Using the detection techniques developed from the early aspects of this project, we will test if anti-angiogenic drugs do indeed solve unstable tumour hypoxia. The inability to detect unstable hypoxia is a significant limitation to current cancer therapy. This project will improve our understanding of this phenomenon, improve detection methods for basic science and clinical practice, and test strategies to address unstable hypoxia with already approved and in-use therapeutics.