Cancer institute invests $1M for new treatments

Dr. Tom Hudson, President and Scientific Director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) announced an investment of $1-million towards the development of two new promising cancer therapies.

The recipients of the awards are:

• Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, for Kullervo Hynynen's low-cost focused ultrasound system. This system can find and destroy tumours without surgery, increasing quality of life and lowering the cost of treatment for patients with inoperable bone and liver cancer.

• OncoTek Drug Delivery Inc., for Joseph Elliot's preclinical development of PoLi-PTX, an intraperitoneal ovarian cancer therapy invented by Drs. Christine Allen and Micheline Piquette-Miller at the University of Toronto, which would deliver localized cancer killing agents to the abdominal cavity with fewer side effects than traditional systemic chemotherapy.

"Both these therapies promise to provide patients and physicians with new tools to treat cancer that are less expensive or more effective than traditional treatments while vastly improving patients' quality of life," says Hudson. "This investment will help to make both therapies a reality."

"Our government is focused on finding better solutions for health care today and more sustainable care for the future," says John Milloy, Ontario's Minister of Research and Innovation. "By supporting researchers in the development of their ideas, we help them succeed, and ultimately provide major health and economic benefits for all Ontarians."

This news release was excerpted with permission from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.