A grant handed out Wednesday under a program backed by the Windsor Essex County Cancer Centre Foundation will help a University of Windsor researcher in determining any connection between shift work and colorectal cancer.

“This is not to discover a drug,” said Phillip Karpowicz, an assistant professor in the university’s biological science department who will lead the study.

“It’s more preventative. It’s to help identify individuals who are more susceptible to cancer and determine how much more susceptible.”

Colorectoral cancer is the third most common cancer in Canada. There are also higher incidence of the disease and lower survival rates in Windsor and Essex County than the rest of Ontario.

There are three per cent more colorectal cancers locally than the provincial average. Colorectal patients here have a 60 per cent survival rate compared to 64.4 per cent in the rest of Ontario.

When it comes to shift work, the Windsor area’s largest employers such as the Windsor Assembly plant, Caesars Windsor, local hospitals, police and fire services also feature a high proportion of shifts outside the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. norm that see sleep patterns for employees constantly changed.

Karpowicz was among three recipients named to receive two-year grants which overall total $233,500 under the cancer foundation’s Seeds4Hope — a program in its seventh year which focuses on assisting projects outside the mainstream of cancer research.

Karpowicz has long studied the impact on the body’s cells when the natural 24-hour rhythms are disrupted by changes in sleep patterns, such as those caused by shift work.

The disruptions affect sleep, how we metabolize food, plus a body’s ability to grow or heal, he said.

“We know there are increased rates of cancer with shift work,” Karpowicz said.

He expects findings from the two-year shift work study cannot only be applied in determining whether there are increased number of colorectal cancers, but also used to assess how often those who suffer from colitis or Crohn’s disease eventually get cancer.

Also receiving a Seed4Hope grant Wednesday was university chemistry professor James Gauld who will study mutations in cancer-related proteins that may hopefully lead to making better decisions on combination therapies to fight cancer.

Another university chemistry professor, Lisa Porter, received a grant to study a cancer-related protein known as Spy1 that plays a large role in the progression of many liver cancers. It is hoped her efforts lead to better treatment intervention.

Seeds4Hope since 2009 has awarded nearly $1.7 million in grants to support local cancer research.

The program is led by Michael Dufresne, a retired University of Windsor researcher who touts the importance of helping such local cancer research efforts that may never otherwise qualify for grants from big national research funders.

“It means so much to me because I know how difficult it is to get funded and have the local community involved,” he said. “Because of how the funding works, the best people often leave small cities for bigger areas. Having something like this is so important to our community.”

Dufresne often cites the example of the da Vinci robot surgery machine frequently used to fight prostate cancer.

“What I try to educate people is the research today will be achieving results in 20 years,” he said. “If you don’t have that, you wouldn’t have the da Vinci machine.”

Mortality for cancer does remain high, but survival rates through the years keep increasing, Dufresne said. “A magic bullet is not in our future (to eliminate cancer),” he said. “With the calibre of research and calibre of people, more and more types of cancers are being cured all the time.”

Source: The Windsor Star

University of Windsor biology researcher Lisa Porter and Windsor Regional Hospital oncologist Dr. Carolyn Hamm recently received more than $765,000 to study triple-negative breast cancer.

Cancer cells from tumours from about 100 patients will be put in mice so Porter’s lab can look for better drugs for patients who don’t respond well to current chemotherapy drugs. Porter also wants to know if there is a way to predict, prior to treatment, whether patients will respond to specific chemotherapies. It’s important because triple-negative breast cancer patients have to rely only on chemotherapy and some don’t fare well on the treatment because they have high levels of a protein that Porter studies.

“This kind of research occurring in Windsor is very important for patients because it brings the latest ideas to something that right now there is no current thing we can do for those patients,” Porter said Thursday.

The five-year funding came from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The study can’t help patients directly in the first five years but will produce an abundance of information on drugs tested in mice against a patient’s specific tumour. Porter said five-year survival rates are good so patients with triple-negative breast cancer who got to five years could benefit.

“The very first time these drugs come out we’ll know what patients would benefit from that drug so if they relapsed or if they do relapse we would have the latest, greatest thing available for them right away.”

One in eight women get breast cancer in Canada and 10 to 20 per cent of those are triple-negative breast cancer, she said. Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive cancer that commonly affects younger women. It gets its name from three different proteins that patients lack, she said. Because there are drugs that target those proteins patients without them have fewer treatment options.

Survival rates for women with triple-negative breast cancer range from 90 to 100 per cent survival when it is caught early to about 20 per cent survival in those with Stage IV cancer, she said.

Porter and her post doctoral lab in San Diego first isolated in human form a protein dubbed Speedy or Spy1 in 2003. This protein encourages cells to continue to divide. Speedy or Spy1 is found in high levels in some cancers and research suggests that’s why some patients with lots of the Speedy proteins don’t respond as well as others to chemotherapy. Porter said chemotherapy works by forcing cancer cells to stop dividing and if there are a lot of these proteins the cells keep dividing and spreading.

There isn’t going to be one miracle cure for all cancers but Porter said if you find a drug to work for a group of cancer patients then it would be a miracle for that group.

You can’t offer to be in the study. An oncologist will ask patients if their tissue can be used.

Source: The Windsor Star

Lisa Porter, Associate Professor, Biological Sciences, University of Windsor

Project Summary:

Medulloblastoma is the most prevalent of all childhood brain cancers, with average 5 year survival rates of approximately 62% for children ages 0-14.

There are at least 4 very distinct types of this disease that have different prognoses and likewise require independent treatment strategies. Among these groups, those denoted as ‘Group 3’ are known to have the worst probability of survival, seeing little benefit from the current generalized chemotherapy/radiotherapy approach. It is of high priority to find novel therapeutic strategies for this subset of medulloblastoma patients.

We, and others, have data to support that targeting a specific group of proteins known as Cdks represent an important therapeutic avenue that may offer exceptional benefits to Group 3 medulloblastoma patients.

This study will use patient samples and cells in a unique drug screening model to test the potential of using these Cdk drugs to treat medulloblastoma patients. This project holds promise for improving survival and quality of life for a subset of medulloblastoma patients that currently rely on suboptimal treatment options.

Source: Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada