Research cluster for Precision Medicine in Oncology

New therapeutic approaches are desperately needed for many types of cancer. This training cluster brings together five academic experts who will each mentor a trainee to establish a panel of novel cancer models in one of the following: glioblastoma stem cells, renal carcinoma cells, pancreatic tumor organoids, leukemic cells and tumor reactive T-cells – all directly isolated from cancer patients. The SGC is a not-for-profit organisation that seeks to catalyze the discovery of new medicines in partnership with industry and academia through open access research. As part of its “Epigenetic Chemical Probes” project, SGC has been developing inhibitory small molecules, called chemical probes (drug-like molecules), against proteins involved in epigenetic regulation in collaboration with its industry partners. The ‘primary’ cellular models which closely reflect the cancer in the patients will enable the testing of ~30 chemical probes per disease that selectively target proteins thought to ‘drive’ or maintain the cancerous state. In each disease the objective is to establish a correlation between response to drugs and the patient clinical history and/or tumor (epi)genetics for potential future patient characterization for more effective treatment. Trainees will address state-of-the-art cancer biology concepts such as cancer stem cells, epigenetics, cellular reprogramming and immunotherapy

Faculty Supervisor:

Laurie Ailles;Mark Minden;Peter Dirks;Naoto Hirano;Gary Bader

Student:

Partner:

Structural Genomics Consortium

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Toronto

Program: