Grant: Foundation Grant

Cancer is the leading cause of death and nearly 1 in 2 Canadians is expected to develop cancer in its lifetime. Our research program focuses on prostate cancer (PCa), the most common cancer in Canadian men, and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), the most diagnosed leukemia in Canadian adults. The progression of these cancers varies widely and is difficult to predict. Early determination of drug susceptibility is also a challenge that remains to be addressed to define which patients will respond to treatment, and which ones will not respond or develop resistance to treatment. One of our goals is to develop new tools to improve prediction of cancer progression and response to treatment using a simple blood draw, which can be easily incorporated in the clinic. Teaming up with clinicians-scientists, we focus on addressing which metabolites such as hormones and their pathways may serve as markers to help predict progression, and whether targeting these pathways can prevent or delay progression. This approach is applied to PCa, a cancer that is well known to be driven by hormones, but also to CLL, for which we have evidence that hormones significantly impact cancer aggressiveness, with a clear difference between men and women. At the tumor level, we want to understand how a key metabolic pathway related to hormones, oncogenic molecules and cancer therapeutics is linked to progression and also to a new mode of multidrug resistance. This pathway could be targeted to prevent/delay progression and restore drug sensitivity. By this mean we want to identify cancer cell weaknesses that could be exploited by novel therapies. Our research program offers high translational potential. We anticipate that it will provide new tools to help decision-making process, offer mechanistic insights and relevant drug targets. This knowledge will lead to the development of more effective strategies to identify and treat high-risk CLL and PCa patients and ultimately improve their survival.