Samuel Aparicio
A Faculty of Medicine researcher will help lead a new “Stand Up To Cancer Canada Dream Team” researching new approaches to treating triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and other aggressive types of breast cancer.
Samuel Aparicio, the Nan and Lorraine Robertson Chair in Breast Cancer Research and Head of the Department of Breast and Molecular Oncology at the BC Cancer Agency, will be co-leader of a project receiving $9 million over four years. The team will conduct clinical trials in six provinces.
The Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C) Dream Team will seek to develop new therapies aimed at changes in the genomes of cancer cells that make the tumours unstable and vulnerable to attack. The team will test three candidate drugs for their effectiveness in halting or slowing the processes by which cancer cells reproduce, and hope to identify biomarkers of drug activity that will help match patients with the most effective treatments for their particular form of breast cancer.
“If our clinical trials are successful, our program has the potential to eventually deliver new drugs that will act against several very aggressive breast cancer subtypes, which currently lack effective targeted therapies,” Dr. Aparicio said. “By exploiting our increased understanding of cancer evolution and genomics to the single-cell level, we hope to co-develop biomarkers and treatment combination strategies that will identify the patient groups most likely to benefit from the new drugs we are testing.”
Tak Mak. Photo courtesy of Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation
Leading the team will be Tak W. Mak, Director of the Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, and winner of UBC’s inaugural Dr. Chew Wei Memorial Prize in Cancer Research last year. The Faculty of Medicine bestows the prize each year to a Canadian physician or scientist who has made a transformational, internationally recognized contribution to the fight against cancer.
“Attacking the genetic instability of the tumour cells in aggressive breast cancers hasn’t really been tried before,” Dr. Mak says. “We will give our new drugs to patients for whom other treatments have not worked, and monitor them to see whether a significant percentage of these patients responds to one or more of these drugs. By respond, we mean that we hope these patients’ tumours shrink, or at least that their disease holds steady rather than getting worse.”
The Dream Team reflects a collaboration of Stand Up To Cancer Canada (SU2C Canada), the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF), with support from CIBC and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR). The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) International – Canada, is SU2C Canada’s scientific partner. SU2C Canada funds derive from its nationwide telecast last year that appealed to the Canadian public to pledge support for cancer research, awareness, and education.
Karen Gelmon, a Professor in the Department of Medicine, is a principal investigator on the team. Wendie den Brok, a UBC resident in medical oncology, will serve as a patient advocate, along with Zuri Scrivens of Langley, B.C.
The SU2C Canada-CBCF Breast Cancer Dream Team is the first to be announced since SU2C Canada was launched in 2014. The team is funded over a period of four years for $6 million provided by SU2C and by CBCF, with support from CIBC, and $3 million from OICR.
“We lack effective treatments for TNBC and other types of aggressive breast cancer,” said Phillip A. Sharp, PhD, Nobel laureate and institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, who serves as co-chair of the SU2C Canada Scientific Advisory Committee (CSAC). “The SU2C Canada-CBCF Breast Cancer Dream Team plans to change this by developing new drugs that will target the vulnerabilities of this disease.”
Serving with Sharp as co-chair of the CSAC is Alan Bernstein, PhD, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).
“The new Dream Team is made up of some of Canada’s top cancer researchers, building on many years of outstanding research conducted in Canada,” Bernstein said. “Importantly, the clinical trials will be carried out across the country. This is Canadian science at its best.”