Category: News

By: Andrew Duffy   Original Article: http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ottawa-poised-to-become-manufacturing-centre-for-cancer-fighting-agent     Canadian scientists have received $11 million to advance research into cancer immunotherapy, much of it conducted in Ottawa, including a promising treatment that uses genetically modified immune cells to fight leukemia and other blood cancers.   The funding, announced Wednesday by the federally funded BioCanRx network,… Read more »

  Development of promising engineered T cell therapy part of $11 million investment in 16 collaborative research projects in novel therapies to cure cancer   OTTAWA, ON – Wednesday, February 15, 2017, 10 a.m. ET – BioCanRx, and its partners, today announced funding for 16 collaborative research projects in novel therapies to cure cancer including… Read more »

By: Heather Blumenthal   Radiation? An essential tool, but has its limitations.   Immunotherapy? Promising, but not necessarily sufficient for every patient.   Put the two together though – and there is the potential for a new way to fight metastatic prostate cancer that no longer responds to hormone therapy. And, adds Dr. Julian J…. Read more »

A message from Dr. John Bell, Scientific Director, BioCanRx   February 4th is World Cancer Day. BioCanRx is proud to join in this global effort to unite the world’s population in the fight against cancer. This disease touches all of us, or will. Cancer is one of the biggest health challenges facing Canadians: 2 in… Read more »

Inspiring the next generation of researchers   By Curtis McCloskey, Ph.D Candidate, Vanier Scholar   It takes far less than 6 degrees of separation to find someone who has been affected by cancer. Humanity has been waging a war on this dark menace for centuries and I believe we are finally at a point where… Read more »

By: Heather Blumenthal   It’s like magic – insert a cancer patient’s blood cells in one end and out the other end come T-cells adapted for cell therapy.   But it’s not magic – it’s a very real and very promising way of making sure that the materials exist to better treat patients with cancer… Read more »

This past summer, BioCanRx accepted its inaugural cohort of undergraduate students into the BioCanRx Summer Studentship Program. This program provides funding for network investigators to recruit talented university and college students onto exciting cancer biotherapeutics research projects. The competitive application process ensured that the awarded studentships would provide a practical, hands-on research experience that would… Read more »

By: Brad Mackay     Dr. Jonathan Kimmelman Associate Professor, Biomedical Ethics Unit and Associate Member, Department of Medicine, Division of Experimental Medicine, McGill University Most of us have probably heard the saying “Failure is life’s greatest teacher” at one point in our life, but few of us have taken this time-honoured maxim to heart… Read more »

Today, the Ottawa Citizen featured members of the BioCanRx network in a feature on immunotherapy, “Is Immunotherapy a cancer game-changer? Here’s why scientists say yes,” about the state of the unfolding promise of biotherapeutic development for cancer treatment.   The feature is the result of BioCanRx’s Cancer Immunotherapy Journalism and Mentorship Award Program, a training… Read more »

by Jovian Tsang   The multi-door, air-locked entrances, background hum of machinery and frequent sightings of personnel in full-body biosafety suits could easily lead one to believe that world-ending biohazardous material were secretly being stored in the halls of The Ottawa Hospital.   In actuality, this facility is where human-grade oncolytic viruses, or OVs, are… Read more »