In a national first, a team of top Canadian cancer researchers, including BC Cancer distinguished scientist Dr. Poul Sorensen, is joining forces with world-class US scientists at leading cancer institutes south of the border to tackle together the challenges of osteosarcoma (bone cancer), or what is sometimes called the Terry Fox cancer.
Today, the US-based Break Through Cancer foundation with dozens of funders and partners, including the Terry Fox Research Institute and BC Cancer Research Institute, announced a multi-million dollar research collaboration, the Defying Osteosarcoma TeamLab, to improve treatments and outcomes for patients with this rare and often deadly cancer.
Despite advances in some kinds of treatments, standard chemotherapy treatment mostly remains what it was in Terry’s day. While outcomes with early diagnosis and the primary occurrence of the disease have improved with an up to 80 per cent survival rate, both treatments and outcomes for metastatic disease, relapse and recurrence are dismal.
This newly formed collaborative led by Break Through Cancer will use $15-million (USD) from patient-driven foundations and other donors to develop new treatment options to increase survival from this disease. TFRI is providing $1.4-million (CAD) to a BC group involved in the TeamLab, based at the BC Cancer Research Institute in Vancouver and led by Dr. Sorensen who specializes in pediatric cancers, including osteosarcoma.
“This exciting new partnership marks the first time a team of top Canadian scientists will collaborate directly with Break Through Cancer TeamLabs at leading US cancer centres. The initiative aligns marvellously with TFRI’s goal to collaborate here at home on precision oncology and share data, knowledge and resources with the goal of delivering treatments that improve patient survival and quality of life for all types of cancer,” says Dr. Jim Woodgett, TFRI’s president and scientific director.
Founded in 2021, Break Through Cancer empowers outstanding researchers and physicians to both intercept and find cures for several of the deadliest cancers by stimulating radical collaboration among outstanding cancer research institutions.
The TeamLab brings together more than 20 researchers from eight institutions (BC Cancer Research Institute, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, Stanford Medicine, and The UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center) in a coordinated, multi-year effort to rewrite the future of osteosarcoma care. The researchers will share samples, insights and data.
“To me this is one of the best opportunities to really make an impact on aggressive forms of osteosarcoma,” says Dr. Sorensen, who will use the TeamLab pipeline to validate some existing immunotherapy targets more quickly than the team could do otherwise, and to also identify new ones. “We have world experts that can vet the data more expediently for clinical application than we could. These big science networks really work!”
The team of investigators, as members of the new TeamLab, will spend the next four years working on a project which they hope will result in a new standard of care for patients and a reduction in metastasis.
They will employ various strategies and methodologies to improve outcomes through immunotherapy. Clinical trials are planned, along with biology studies to identify molecular subtypes, as well as whole and single cell genome sequencing.
Over the past 50 years progress in outcomes from osteosarcoma has been small compared to many other types of cancer, as have investments in osteosarcoma research. In part, this is due to the relative rarity of the disease — another reason why a collaborative effort is needed. And unlike some cancers, molecular targets that allow for precision medicine approaches, have yet to be found in osteosarcoma.
View the Break Through Cancer press release