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Philanthropist and business leader Peter Gilgan, whose foundation is donating $50-million to launch the research program, says the timing is right given ‘the tools that researchers have today to be able to really make advances.’Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation says it is creating a new early detection research program, billing it as the largest of its kind in the world.
The new Peter Gilgan Centre for Early Cancer Detection Research will be created through a $50-million donation from the Peter Gilgan Foundation, set to be announced Wednesday. The foundation was created by Mr. Gilgan, a Canadian philanthropist and business leader and the founder of Mattamy Homes.
The new centre will not involve new infrastructure, but will instead focus on advancing cancer research conducted in labs at the existing Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto. It aims to begin recruiting patients early next year.
“It’s the right time because of the tools that researchers have today to be able to really make advances,” Mr. Gilgan said in an interview. “I expect great things out of this.”
The creation of the new research program is taking place when studies show approximately 50 per cent of cancers are diagnosed at an advanced stage, complicating treatment options and adversely affecting patient health outcomes. Later diagnoses create physical and emotional challenges for patients as well as caregivers.
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And while cancer survival rates are on the rise, the global burden of cancer, including in countries where health care access is not publicly funded, is expected to grow as populations age.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer expects 35 million new cases of cancer around the world by 2050, which is an increase of 77 per cent from 20 million cases in 2022.
Keith Stewart, vice-president for cancer at the University Health Network and director of the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, said the “unprecedented investment in research” will help to close gaps in cancer care, better identify early markers of the disease and utilize advanced diagnostic tools.
The centre will focus on improving early cancer biology, identifying targets for early detection, developing technologies and creating a program to spur new discoveries, including the world’s largest molecular residual disease program. It will help detect microscopic cancer cells in patients who experience residual disease – a group considered to have the lowest survival rates.
Lillian Siu, senior medical oncologist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and UHN, said that in the past, conventional scans such as MRIs did not show what was going on inside patients’ bodies on a molecular level.
But Dr. Siu said technology has now improved to the point where small amounts, even molecules of cancers, can be detected in the blood through a liquid biopsy.
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For patients who test positive for molecular residual disease through such testing, the chance of cancer coming back is close to 100 per cent, she said. Dr. Siu said the new program will collect repeated samples from patients and use different treatments when residual disease is suspected.
Dr. Siu said when she began her work three decades ago, she probably wouldn’t believe she could cure cancer patients.
“Now I actually believe that I can cure patients in my lifetime,” she said.
Mr. Gilgan said scientists need to be empowered to access available advancements in the realms of genomics, artificial intelligence and precision medicine, where patient data is used to inform treatment.
“Hope was perhaps more the strategy decades ago,” he said. “Now the strategy is use the diagnostic tools that weren’t even available to us 20 years ago, even 10 years ago.”
