The New Idea Award recognizes researchers who are investigating potentially transformative ideas to significantly improve clinical outcomes for patients with blood cancers. These research projects may eventually lead to significant improvements in the clinical outcomes of patients with hematological malignancies.
University Health Network
Toronto, Ontario
Co-applicant: Dr. Mark Minden
Targeting repressive chromatin complex mutations in acute myeloid leukemia
PRC2 is a multi-protein complex that controls the genes important for normal blood cell development and leukemia progression. Mutations in the genes encoding the components of PRC2 are found in myelodysplasia, myeloproliferative disorders and Acute Myel...
The University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
Therapeutic potential of variable lymphocyte receptor antibodies
Conventional antibodies play an increasingly important role in cancer therapy because of their ability to bind to target cells with very high specificity. However, it remains a great challenge to identify targets that are uniquely expressed on cancer cells so as to avoid damage to non-cancer cel...
Université de Montréal
Montréal, Québec
Co-applicants: Dr. Claude Perreault, Dr. Pierre Thibault
Uncovering tumor specific antigens in ETP acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Early T-cell Precursor Acute lymphoblastic leukemia subtype (ETP-ALL) is associated with resistance to chemotherapy and poor prognosis, especially in adults. Stem cell transplantation is beneficial in a large proportion of pati...
University Health Network
Toronto, Ontario
A novel method to identify synergistic lethality in B-cell lymphoma
Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is a common and aggressive lymphoma subtype in which relapse after front-line treatment remains a major challenge. Such patients have very poor outcomes. Better therapeutic strategies are thus urgently needed to increase upfront cure rates. We propose to ...
Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario
Co-applicant: Dr. Michael Rauh
Small molecule targeting of CYP26B1 in myeloid leukaemia
Retinoic Acid (RA) has been used since the 1980s to treat certain types of blood cancers. AML is a blood cancer characterized by the growth and accumulation of immature cells, known as blasts, in the bone marrow and blood. RA is able to change the blast cells that cause can...