Grant: CIHR - ICR / Cancer Research Society Partnership - Research Grants

Cancers of the upper digestive tract, the esophagus and stomach, are a leading cause of cancer-related death. Only one in five patients will survive for more than five years. The spread of these cancers, metastasis, to the lining of the abdominal cavity, the peritoneum, is the leading cause death among these patients. Our goal is to improve the survival of patients diagnosed with these cancers by identifying the molecular changes that allow their cancer to spread to the peritoneum. These molecular alterations will allow physicians to identify patients most at risk of this deadly cancer progression, in advance, so they can be treated with more aggressive treatment protocols. These molecular changes can also represent potentially new drug targets and their identification could lead to the development of new drugs for the treatment of this devastating disease.