Nearly all (96 percent) people aged 65 or older diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) die within five years, as do two-thirds of younger patients. Because it primarily affects older people, the incidence of this aggressive cancer is expected to rise in the coming years as the population ages. Chemotherapy regimens for AML have remained essentially unchanged since the 1970s. With standard treatment, many patients can achieve remission, but most will relapse; following relapse two-thirds of patients will die within three years.

One of the reasons for the high rate of relapse in AML is that standard chemotherapy does not kill leukemia stem cells, leaving them to grow and mature into new leukemia cells. Leukemia stem cells express high levels of a protein called CD47. This protein sends a “do not eat” signal that stops white blood cells of the immune system called macrophages from surrounding and “eating” cancer cells.

With previous support from Genome Canada and Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (TTI), a publicly traded biotech company in Toronto, Canada, Dr. Jean Wang and team at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, and Dr. Jayne Danska and team at SickKids have developed SIRPaFc, a novel therapeutic that blocks the “do not eat” signal, freeing the immune system to attack leukemia stem cells. With new funding of $3.4M, Drs. Wang and Danska and TTI are again collaborating to complete formal preclinical studies and to carry out clinical trials aimed at demonstrating SIRPaFc’s safety and efficacy. This will help realize the commercial potential of this promising discovery.

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Not all cells in our bodies are created equal. Scientists around the world are working hard to understand the differences. The work has been difficult, because even seemingly uniform tissues like skin can consist of a diverse population of cells, usually in many different states. The differences between cells are important because, for example, they can lead cells to respond in surprisingly different ways to the same drug treatments. Progress has been slowed by the lack of good tools for accurately tagging individual cells in intact tissues for careful study. Researchers in Ontario are developing innovative technologies to address that need.

Drs. Matthew Bjerknes and Hazel Cheng (University of Toronto) aim to develop new methods for measuring the genomic status of single cells in intact tissues. Collaborating with scientists at the University of Georgia, the research team will validate and optimize efficient methods using micro laser beams to attach unique barcodes to cells. This will make single cell genomics more accessible to labs with limited resources and provide researchers with an effective, low-cost, and easy to use methodology for tagging individual cells in intact tissues for genomic analysis.

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Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a form of brain hemorrhage responsible for 10 percent of all strokes. It affects about 90,000 people in North America each year, more than half of whom either die or are disabled. Anywhere from one-quarter to 44 percent of those who survive have recurring ICH. The annual economic burden of ICH is estimated at $300 million to Canada and $6 billion to the United States. Apart from treating hypertension, which is one of the causes of ICH, there is currently no way to prevent recurrent ICH.

Dr. Xiao-Yan Wen, director of the Zebrafish Centre for Advanced Drug Discovery (ZCADD) and his team at St. Michael’s Hospital, used genomics-driven research tools to identify several existing drugs that are already approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that have shown the ability to prevent ICH in zebrafish models. Edge Therapeutics partnered with Dr. Wen in this project, to perform preclinical studies on the most potent anti-ICH molecules known as EZF-0100 for treatment of ICH and brain microhemorrhages (BMH). The project was awarded $5.9 million.

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Canada has one of the highest rates of IBD in the world, a disease that causes significant suffering and serious health issues due to chronic gut inflammation.

In partnership with Toronto-based startup Biotagenics, Ontario researchers are developing simple and quick tests to determine optimal personalized treatment plans for IBD patients using next generation genomics.

Inflammatory bowel disease inflames the lining of the gastrointestinal tract and disrupts the body’s ability to digest food, absorb nutrition and eliminate waste in a healthy manner. With more than 10,000 new cases diagnosed each year in Canada and an estimated total of over 250,000 patients nationally (including more than 5,900 children), IBD costs the Canadian economy approximately $2.8 billion per year. Most alarming, the number of Canadian children with IBD has doubled since 1995.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwV-QMB8Ulo

Dr. David Mack at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, talks about the work that he and Dr. Alain Stintzi at the University of Ottawa are doing, in partnership with Biotagenics, to develop precision medicine for IBD patients.

Treating IBD can be unpredictable. If treatments are not sufficiently aggressive, they may not be of help. On the other hand, if treatments are too aggressive, there is a risk of doing more harm than good. There is no cure for this lifelong condition and its cause remains unknown, although it seems to be tied to an imbalance of key beneficial and deleterious intestinal microbes.

Building upon the outcomes of an earlier 2012 Large-Scale Applied Research Project, Ontario researchers are developing precision medicine for IBD patients. Led by Dr. Alain Stintzi at the University of Ottawa and Dr. David Mack at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, in collaboration with spinout company, Biotagenics, researchers are using genomics to characterize, identify and quantify the microbes that change in IBD patients during treatment. They are using this information to design simple and quick tests to reveal the optimal personalized treatment based on each patient’s characteristics in order to keep people with IBD healthy. These tests will help clinicians use the right drug at the right time for the right patient.

Quick Facts

• The project team is unraveling the mechanisms underlying IBD development.
• As part of this work, researchers have developed an industry leading end-to-end platform that provides sophisticated analysis of the impact of diet on intestinal bacteria – providing important information on personalized dietary changes needed to keep people with IBD healthy.
• They are also identifying new targets for future drug development that have the potential to restore the long-term biological interaction and healthy balance between intestinal microbes in order to modify and manage the course of disease.

The work being done by this project team will set the stage for future clinical trials aimed at restoring IBD patients’ microbes to a healthy state. It will reduce long-term disability and enable patients to reach deep and long-lasting remission, thereby improving quality of life and enabling significant cost savings for individuals and our healthcare system.

For more information about Biotagenic’s progress, please visit http://www.biotagenics.com/.

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