The Society funds a number of high-impact projects across the country including:
Also, the Society supports research that investigates the environmental causes of cancer. In addition to providing grants, the Society has contributed to three major strategic initiatives in that area.
Thanks to research, more and more children are now surviving cancer. However, a large proportion of them experience serious secondary effects later in life.
The Cancer Research Society, with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and five other partners, provided $3 million in funding for the PETALE Study, led by Daniel Sinnett at the CHU Ste-Justine in Montreal, which focuses on survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most frequent cancer in children. The study has demonstrated that childhood cancer survivors suffer from problems most often encountered in older populations, indicating that treatments they received at a young age might trigger something akin to premature aging.
The team focuses its work on the relationship between treatments received, survivor genetic background and long-term effects.
The Cancer Research Society, in collaboration with PROCURE and generous donors, provided $4.5 million in funding for a biobank of over 2,000 patients to help identify genetic and biomolecular indicators of prostate cancer associated with tumor aggressiveness and recurrence, which should lead to new treatment avenues.
To accelerate and build a Pan-Canadian network for personalized medicine, the Cancer Research Society and its partners Merck Canada and New Brunswick Health Research Foundation, have provided $4 million to fund the Exactis "Personalize My Treatment" initiative. Personalized medicine aims to match cancer patients with the best possible treatments based on the characteristics of their tumor.
For over 20 years, the Cancer Research Society has been supporting research that explores the environmental causes of cancer. This area of research has helped to identify links between elements we are exposed to in the environment and the risks of developing cancer.
In 1988, an endowment of $1 million was made to McGill University for the creation of the Cancer Research Society Division of Epidemiology in the Department of Oncology. Under the direction of Eduardo Franco, the Division has been very active with the publication of more than 400 peer-reviewed scientific papers in the last 20 years.
The primary research focus of the Division is to study cancer causes and prognostic factors, primarily with regards to human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancers. The research has been instrumental in providing essential knowledge towards proving that HPV vaccination successfully prevents the appearance of cervical cancer.
Founded in 2007, the Guzzo Environment-Cancer Research Chair of the Cancer Research Society at the Université de Montréal aims to explain the causes of cancer by studying potential risk factors such as lifestyle, workplace, and the environment.
The Research and Prevention Group in Environment-Cancer program (GRePEC) is a Cancer Research Society program funded in collaboration with the Quebec Ministry of Economy, Science and Innovation. A total of $12 million has been awarded to three high-impact projects and for the creation of two epidemiologist faculty positions.
The three GRePEC projects focus on:
