The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research has announced it has awarded a total of $8.7 million in funding to 17 research projects for the eleventh round of its Cancer Research Fund. The grants will support advances in a number of promising fields, including mass spectrometry and identification of predictive gene sets.

The Cancer Research Fund provides funding to academic researchers who work at laboratories throughout Ontario. OICR encourages collaborative projects with industry, but the principal investigator on the grant application must be at an Ontario university or research institute. Projects are selected through a competitive, peer-review process, and are normally funded for three years.

“We were very pleased with the calibre of the research proposals we received. Such high-quality submissions are testament to the immense potential we have to make discoveries in Ontario,” said Dr. Teresa Petrocelli, Director, Grants and Awards at OICR. “We’re especially excited about this round because many of the researchers are using techniques and technologies that are at the leading edge of the cancer research field.”

For example, two projects are using mass spectrometry, an analytical technique to identify the chemical composition of compounds and samples. While it is not a new technology, its potential in cancer research has only been recently understood.

Principal investigator Dr. Theo Van der Kwast and co-applicants Drs. Kenneth Evans, Neil Fleshner and Gina Lockwood will use mass spectrometry techniques to identify biomarkers for bladder cancer and develop urine tests to assist in diagnosing and managing the disease.

Currently, urine tests are available, but are not accurate enough to replace more invasive diagnostic methods. By using mass spectrometry to conduct proteomic analysis of urine samples, the OICR-funded project could lead to new tests that are more accurate and reliable.

“People do not realize that bladder cancer is one of the most expensive cancers. Most of the patients are prone to develop a cancer recurrence and therefore they require lifelong surveillance by cystoscopy. A simple point-of-care urine test detecting cancer-specific proteins may substantially reduce the patient burden and decrease the costs,” Van der Kwast explains.

Meanwhile, principal investigator Dr. Mike Moran and co-applicants Drs. Igor Jurisica, Natasha Leighl, Ming Tsao, and Thomas Waddell are using mass spectrometry to help predict response to treatments for non small-cell lung cancer. A previous clinical study led by Dr Tsao and colleagues for the National Cancer Institute of Canada showed that erlotinib, a small molecule epidermal growth factor receptor, could be effective in fighting cancer. However, more research is required to understand how erlotinib works in the body.

“Our preliminary work confirms our newly developed, mass spectrometry-based proteomics technologies may now be applied to analyze human tumour samples. With the support of the OICR we have assembled a multidisciplinary team to translate this new ultra-sensitive analytical technology from the bench back to the clinic. Together we’ll identify the molecular features of the proteins in individual tumours as a way to stratify the tumours according to which drugs, or drug combinations, will best inhibit their growth,” says Moran.

The researchers will use mass spectrometry to analyze non-small cell lung cancer cell lines and patient samples. Their study will identify sites within the samples where the drugs are effective in order to predict which patients will respond if it is developed into a treatment.

Several projects dealing with predictive gene sets were also approved in the grant competition. These studies will attempt to identify genes that could later be used in clinical tests to predict individuals’ likelihood of developing certain types of cancer.

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View a list of all projects funded by the Cancer Research Fund on OICR's website

Website of the Ontario Cancer Biomarker Network, an OICR-funded institute that uses mass spectrometry