Two teams of UBC researchers have received $4.8 million to advance cancer research from the 2023 Terry Fox New Frontiers Program Project Grant (PPG) competition.
The teams each received $2.4 million from the Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI), with additional co-funding from the Lotte & John Hecht Memorial Foundation. The projects aim to improve outcomes for cancer patients by personalizing care for patients with oral cancers and enhancing lung cancer detection in individuals at high-risk due to air pollution.
“The multidisciplinary nature of these teams ranges from exploring the biological mechanisms of cancer to improving early diagnosis, treatments and quality of life for patients suffering from a variety of cancers,” says Dr. Jim Woodgett, president and scientific director, TFRI.
“This new funding, including the support generously provided by the Lotte & John Hecht Memorial Foundation, will enable these world-class researchers to explore exciting new frontiers of cancer research and improve the lives of Canadians suffering from cancer.”
Personalized treatment of patients with oral cancers
Dr. Eitan Prisman
With $2.4 million over five years from TFRI, UBC’s Dr. Eitan Prisman, a clinical associate professor of surgery, is leading a multidisciplinary team of surgeons, engineers and to significantly improve outcomes and quality of life for patients undergoing surgery for oral cancer.
Approximately 5,000 Canadians are diagnosed with oral cancer each year. Many of these patients undergo aggressive surgeries to remove their tumours, which can result in significant impacts on their quality of life through the removal of sections of the jaw and surrounding soft tissue.
Addressing these impacts requires an advanced surgery known as jawbone (or mandibular) reconstruction. The surgery involves transplanting a section of bone from the hip, leg or shoulder and often requires on-the-spot decisions about placement, size and orientation. Unfortunately, the surgery is still largely unsuccessful, and can lead to lifelong difficulties performing essential tasks such as speaking, chewing and swallowing.
The newly funded UBC project aims to address these issues through the development, testing and implementation of tools and techniques that will enable surgeons to better prepare for surgery and personalize treatment for each patient.
As part of the project, the researchers will optimize virtual surgical planning (VSP) software, a technique that allows surgeons to plan the reconstructive surgery in advance, creating 3D-printed cutting guides that can be used in the operating room.
“While VSP has great promise in improving care, there are still various limitations and opportunities to improve the utility of VSP and its application to various other components of the cancer care workflow. Currently, VSP solutions are cost prohibitive and as such are not applied routinely in the Canadian Health Care system,” says Dr. Prisman. “Our goal is to provide high-quality evidence for the benefits of an accessible, low-cost VSP solution.”
Dr. Prisman and team have developed a cheaper, in-house VSP solution using open-sourced software. They will perform a randomized controlled clinical trial at nine sites across Canada, introducing the technology to these facilities and comparing its effectiveness with traditional free-hand surgery.
“With the generous support from TFRI, we will be able to further optimize care and quality of life for patients with oral cancer and oral diseases across Canada,” says Dr. Prisman.
Dr. Stephen Lam
Creating new strategies to detect lung cancer in non-smokers
Another team of researchers, led by UBC’s Dr. Stephen Lam, professor of medicine, and Dr. William Lockwood, assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, aims to improve the prevention, detection and treatment of lung cancer among individuals at high risk due to exposure from air pollution.
In 2022, an estimated 30,000 people were diagnosed with lung cancer in Canada, making it the most diagnosed cancer in the country. In the past, smoking has been the leading cause of lung cancer, but that is changing. Even though lung cancer rates in Canada are generally declining alongside smoking rates, lung cancer rates among people who have not smoked are increasing. Researchers are shifting their focus toward a likely culprit: air pollution.
Dr. William Lockwood
“With a growing and urbanizing world population and climate change, this program project addresses an urgent need to better understand how our environment impacts lung cancer development and progression,” says Dr. Lam. “We will use the funds to assemble a multi-disciplinary team of experts to study the effects of outdoor air pollutants and identify how they cause damage and promote the development of lung cancer in people who have never smoked. This in turn will allow us to develop interventions to detect and prevent lung cancer at an early stage and treat more effectively.”
The team will receive $2.4 million over four years to use global datasets to build a lung cancer risk prediction model for non-smokers, which could help identify high-risk individuals and inform future screening protocols for at-risk groups.
They will also identify changes in the lung microbiome – the collection of bacteria that live within our lungs – to create an innovative, non-invasive breath test for early lung cancer detection.
“It is our hope that findings from this new team grant will expand the benefits of early detection and prevention to a wider population by including those who have never smoked,” said Dr. Lam.
A version of this story was originally published by the Terry Fox Research Institute.