Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Currently the majority of cancer patients are treated based on criteria such as their cancer type, age, sex, health and family history. Large clinical trials are established where patients with similar characteristics are assigned the same therapeutic. However, recent advances in cancer research, facilitated by advances in technology, have allowed researchers to characterize cancer tumors more comprehensively and to identify mutations, alterations in the tumor's DNA, which are unique to each patient and are not necessarily shared by all individuals with the same cancer type. We now know that these mutations lead to the growth and spread of disease and that some of these can be blocked very effectively with emerging drugs generally referred to as targeted cancer therapies. Our goal is to examine each patient's complete genetic information for the presence of these well-characterized mutations and to recommend the more effective and less toxic targeted therapeutics. We also intend to identify variations between individuals, which might predict response to chemotherapeutic intervention. These variations occur naturally in the population and are often harmless; however, they could affect individuals' response to therapy. The second goal of this project is to identify the mechanisms with which the tumor escapes the effects of treatment and becomes an aggressive and in most cases a metastatic disease. The majority of cancer deaths worldwide occur when the cancer ceases to respond to therapy; however the route of this acquired drug resistance is not understood. We will examine large cohorts of patients who have developed resistance and who have had their complete genetic information examined before and after receiving therapy. We will be able to identify biological pathways that are altered in response to therapeutic intervention and allow the tumor to grow despite receiving treatment; drugs blocking these particular pathways could eradicate the metastatic disease.