Boosted by grant, Montreal research seeks to prevent dormant cancer cells from reawakening

Montreal researchers who are studying how ovarian cancer cells can reawaken after going dormant are ultimately trying to prevent cancer from coming back after treatment.

The project, led by Dr. Francis Rodier at the CHUM, wants to reconstruct cancer one cell at a time to find the cells’ weak points, reduce resistance, and discover personalized therapies that can prevent recurrence.

“Chemotherapy is initially very effective in a high grade serious ovarian cancer. This disease is a silent killer because women don’t feel any symptoms before the disease is very advanced,” said Dr. Rodier.

“One of the things that we want to tackle in this project is to really understand the changes that happen during chemotherapy and very rapidly intervene to kill these cancer cells that are now changing their biology.”

Finding and eliminating dormant cancer cells – which can survive undetected in the body for years – can reduce the risk of relapse, researchers say. The research could improve long-term outcomes and save lives.

“For some women it will come back five or even 10 years later,” Rodier said. “So those are the ones where we know it’s really going dormant for a long period of time and then eventually reemerge. We also don’t know why it’s reemerging at that moment in time. So those are the kind of things that we can study in this project.”

It’s one of three large-scale projects that is benefiting from a $17.9 million investment from the Canadian Cancer Society – the second round of CCS Breakthrough Team Grants in partnership with Brain Canada.

Another project selected to receive grant money focuses on treating anxiety, depression and hopelessness, which are common in people living with advanced cancer, with psychedelics. It’s a joint project led by researchers at the University of Calgary and Queen’s University.

The third project receiving CCS grant money is focused on building a platform that connects patients with clinical trials for palliative treatments. The end goal is to improve advanced cancer patients’ symptom control and quality of life.

“Through these grants, we’re fueling innovative research that could transform the future of cancer care,” added Dr. Stuart Edmonds, the executive vice-president of mission, research and advocacy at CCS. “This kind of big-picture thinking is vital to improving not only cancer survival, but also quality of life for people living with or beyond cancer.”

“What we ultimately want is to kill these cancer cells. So you want them to go away for good”

—Dr. Francis Rodier

Dr. Rodier says the team will receive $6.5 million for the next five years of research – noting six teams across four cities are searching for vulnerabilities in dormant cancer cells and testing new treatment strategies. Dr. Rodier says it’s something many patients have pushed for due to the pain caused by the current treatments.

This includes Dr. David Andrews in Toronto, Dr. David Cook in Ottawa, Dr. Jeanette Boudreau in Halifax, Dr. Philippe Roux in Montreal and Dr. Anne-Marie Mes-Masson also at the CHUM. Key clinician scientists are involved including Drs. Diane Provencher, Elizabeth Tremblay, and Kurosh Rahimi at the CHUM and Dr. Helen Mackay in Toronto.

“In Canada, there are very few large-scale grants such as, which makes this program essential,” he said.

‘Very rare that we have this opportunity’

Dr. Rodier said he and the team are working on cell aging – a tumor suppressor mechanism that at first protects but then later could enhance cancer development – noting the older you get the chances of getting cancer get higher.

“(We) know aging is the prime cause of cancer and at the cellular level the mechanisms that cause aging protect us against cancer. So we’re trying to understand in my lab biologically how this cell aging works and what we discovered is that it actually is induced also in cancer cell in response to therapy,” he explained.

“Radiation or chemotherapy will cause DNA damage in the cell and then these cells will activate a premature aging program. And that’s really an important part of the cancer response to treatment which is really the focus of my lab.”

Dr. Rodier notes the treatment options have been progressing slowly and that these type of projects shed a light on hope thanks to the research.

“The funding that we are getting, these are our philanthropic foundations, so it’s coming from the people,” he said.

“(They) are providing us the ability to do this research and eventually maybe find a cure for this disease.”