News
CMAJ Gairdner presents cutting-edge cancer research
H
Gairdner Foundation
therapy,” Dr. Suzanne Topaow do you treat a lian, professor of surgery and patient with cancer oncology at Johns Hopkins once the tumour has University in Baltimore, told metastasized to multiple the Oct. 31 symposium. organs? Is it possible to preIndustry is also involved — vent relapse once a patient Bristol–Myers Squibb with leukemia is in remission? bought the small company Leading cancer researchers that developed anti-CTLA-4 from Canada and the United for $2.4 billion in 2009; States pitched experimental Goldman Sachs estimated findings and debated untested last year that cancer immutheories on these and other notherapy will have a market questions during the recent potential of US$10–15 bilGairdner Symposium on new lion by 2025. advances in the biology and One of the most striking treatment of cancer at the Uniaspects of using the immune versity of Toronto. system is that once actiThe celebrated winner of vated, it stays on. Topalian one of this year’s Canada described this phenomenon Gairdner International Awards, in a 57-year-old man with James Allison, professor and advanced kidney cancer and chair of the Department of liver metastases who entered Immunology at the University a trial she and her colleagues of Texas MD Anderson Canare running, after surgery cer Center in Houston, is intiand four attempts at drug mately acquainted with these regimens failed to stop his sorts of debates. Allison spent tumour from growing. The nearly two decades fighting trial uses the experimental skeptics over his innovative drug, nivolumab, which ideas for treating cancer by harnessing the immune sys- James Allison won a $100 000 Canada Gairdner award for discov- blocks another receptor that that receptors on the surface of T cells keep the T cells in inhibits T cells. The man’s tem to attack tumours. When ering check, preventing an immune response to cancer. tumour regressed while he other presenters at a roundtawas taking the drug, and The strategy he pioneered, known as ble discussion said that cancer though the drug was stopped after two immune checkpoint blockade, has led immunotherapy is now poised to enter years, the cancer did not regrow. to therapeutic breakthroughs for mainstream clinical oncology, he agreed, “Now this is very unusual in oncolpatients with late-stage and metastatic saying, “We don’t have to hide anyogy, to stop a drug and to be watching cancers for whom few treatments are more.” a tumour every two months when available. Anti-CTLA-4, now known The Canada Gairdner awards, the you’re scanning patients, and it’s just as ipilimumab, was approved in Cancountry’s leading science prizes, sitting there and not changing,” Topaada this year as a first-line therapy for include $100 000 to each of five scienlian said. “But we have seen this over patients with unresectable or metastatic tists who have moved their fields formelanoma. ward. Allison won for discovering that and over again in our patients.” The Gairdner Foundation is not receptors on the surface of T cells keep However, toxicity is a major probalone in taking notice. Science Magathe T cells in check, preventing an lem. Most patients experience adverse zine named cancer immunotherapy its immune response to cancer. Beginning effects with ipilimumab, some quite “Breakthrough of the Year” in 2013, in the mid-1990s, he focused on one serious, and in a published study of and on Nov. 9, Allison will take home particular receptor, cytotoxic T-lympatients with previously treated metaUS$3 million as a winner of the phocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLAstatic melanoma, 14 deaths were re- Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. 4), and figured out that blocking it with lated to the drug for about a 2% drugAnti-CTLA-4 “opened an entire an antibody — anti-CTLA-4 — could related mortality rate (NEJM 2010; new way of thinking about cancer turn on the body’s immune defences. 363:711-23).
© 2014 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
CMAJ, December 9, 2014, 186(18)
E667
News Another potential therapeutic agent discussed at the symposium was the use of genetically engineered viruses called oncolytic viruses that might work without causing serious adverse effects. At least, that’s what is seen in mice. “The oncolytic paradigm is: a virus goes in, finds the tumours, grows within them, destroys them and then is cleared from the body,” John Bell, senior scientist, Cancer Therapeutics Program, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute told
E668
the symposium. If all goes as planned, the virus replicates selectively in the tumour and does not damage normal tissues. As head of the Canadian Oncolytic Virus Consortium, Bell leads a group that took a virus found on sandflies in Brazil, did “a lot of engineering to make it more potent,” and tested it in mice and monkeys. Those tests led to approval for a first-in-human clinical trial: patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and metastatic non–small-cell
CMAJ, December 9, 2014, 186(18)
lung cancer can enroll in four cities across Canada as of this month. Though his research remains highly controversial, Bell sees the future as bright. He reached out to the students, urging them to think about oncolytic viruses, as “very cool machines that we can make do the tricks we want,” and encouraging them to enter the field. — Miriam Shuchman, Toronto CMAJ 2014. DOI:10.1503/cmaj.109-4939
© 2014 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
CMAJ Gairdner presents cutting-edge cancer research
H
Gairdner Foundation
therapy,” Dr. Suzanne Topaow do you treat a lian, professor of surgery and patient with cancer oncology at Johns Hopkins once the tumour has University in Baltimore, told metastasized to multiple the Oct. 31 symposium. organs? Is it possible to preIndustry is also involved — vent relapse once a patient Bristol–Myers Squibb with leukemia is in remission? bought the small company Leading cancer researchers that developed anti-CTLA-4 from Canada and the United for $2.4 billion in 2009; States pitched experimental Goldman Sachs estimated findings and debated untested last year that cancer immutheories on these and other notherapy will have a market questions during the recent potential of US$10–15 bilGairdner Symposium on new lion by 2025. advances in the biology and One of the most striking treatment of cancer at the Uniaspects of using the immune versity of Toronto. system is that once actiThe celebrated winner of vated, it stays on. Topalian one of this year’s Canada described this phenomenon Gairdner International Awards, in a 57-year-old man with James Allison, professor and advanced kidney cancer and chair of the Department of liver metastases who entered Immunology at the University a trial she and her colleagues of Texas MD Anderson Canare running, after surgery cer Center in Houston, is intiand four attempts at drug mately acquainted with these regimens failed to stop his sorts of debates. Allison spent tumour from growing. The nearly two decades fighting trial uses the experimental skeptics over his innovative drug, nivolumab, which ideas for treating cancer by harnessing the immune sys- James Allison won a $100 000 Canada Gairdner award for discov- blocks another receptor that that receptors on the surface of T cells keep the T cells in inhibits T cells. The man’s tem to attack tumours. When ering check, preventing an immune response to cancer. tumour regressed while he other presenters at a roundtawas taking the drug, and The strategy he pioneered, known as ble discussion said that cancer though the drug was stopped after two immune checkpoint blockade, has led immunotherapy is now poised to enter years, the cancer did not regrow. to therapeutic breakthroughs for mainstream clinical oncology, he agreed, “Now this is very unusual in oncolpatients with late-stage and metastatic saying, “We don’t have to hide anyogy, to stop a drug and to be watching cancers for whom few treatments are more.” a tumour every two months when available. Anti-CTLA-4, now known The Canada Gairdner awards, the you’re scanning patients, and it’s just as ipilimumab, was approved in Cancountry’s leading science prizes, sitting there and not changing,” Topaada this year as a first-line therapy for include $100 000 to each of five scienlian said. “But we have seen this over patients with unresectable or metastatic tists who have moved their fields formelanoma. ward. Allison won for discovering that and over again in our patients.” The Gairdner Foundation is not receptors on the surface of T cells keep However, toxicity is a major probalone in taking notice. Science Magathe T cells in check, preventing an lem. Most patients experience adverse zine named cancer immunotherapy its immune response to cancer. Beginning effects with ipilimumab, some quite “Breakthrough of the Year” in 2013, in the mid-1990s, he focused on one serious, and in a published study of and on Nov. 9, Allison will take home particular receptor, cytotoxic T-lympatients with previously treated metaUS$3 million as a winner of the phocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLAstatic melanoma, 14 deaths were re- Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. 4), and figured out that blocking it with lated to the drug for about a 2% drugAnti-CTLA-4 “opened an entire an antibody — anti-CTLA-4 — could related mortality rate (NEJM 2010; new way of thinking about cancer turn on the body’s immune defences. 363:711-23).
© 2014 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
CMAJ, December 9, 2014, 186(18)
E667
News Another potential therapeutic agent discussed at the symposium was the use of genetically engineered viruses called oncolytic viruses that might work without causing serious adverse effects. At least, that’s what is seen in mice. “The oncolytic paradigm is: a virus goes in, finds the tumours, grows within them, destroys them and then is cleared from the body,” John Bell, senior scientist, Cancer Therapeutics Program, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute told
E668
the symposium. If all goes as planned, the virus replicates selectively in the tumour and does not damage normal tissues. As head of the Canadian Oncolytic Virus Consortium, Bell leads a group that took a virus found on sandflies in Brazil, did “a lot of engineering to make it more potent,” and tested it in mice and monkeys. Those tests led to approval for a first-in-human clinical trial: patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and metastatic non–small-cell
CMAJ, December 9, 2014, 186(18)
lung cancer can enroll in four cities across Canada as of this month. Though his research remains highly controversial, Bell sees the future as bright. He reached out to the students, urging them to think about oncolytic viruses, as “very cool machines that we can make do the tricks we want,” and encouraging them to enter the field. — Miriam Shuchman, Toronto CMAJ 2014. DOI:10.1503/cmaj.109-4939
© 2014 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
