10 Reasons Why The Princess Margaret Is Creating Brighter Tomorrows for People with Cancer Everywhere

Every new year brings excitement and anticipation for what might happen over the next 12 months. This is particularly important in cancer, which kills around 10 million people every year around the world and is a leading cause of death globally, according to the World Health Organization. In Canada, cancer is the leading cause of death, with 2 in 5 Canadians receiving a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. However, there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of cancer in 2025. Here are 10 reasons why Princess Margaret Cancer Centre is creating brighter tomorrows for people with cancer everywhere, with most of these advances made possible, or accelerated, by philanthropy:

1. We are about to enter a new era for drugging the undruggable cancers with the next generation of mutant-specific molecules, according to Dr. Lillian Siu, Director of the Phase 1 Clinical Trials Program at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, BMO Chair in Precision Cancer Genomics, and the first President of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) elected from outside the US to lead the largest body of oncologists in the world. Cancer is caused by the appearance of faults in our DNA, called mutations, which cause cells to grow uncontrollably. Underlying the 200+ different types of cancer are a myriad of different genetic mutations. Using current strategies most of these mutations are not “druggable” and we don’t have precision therapy options for these targets. Yet, with work by Drs. Cheryl Arrowsmith and Mark Reed, and others, we are making breakthrough discoveries in drug development, allowing us to develop therapies against these classically “undruggable” targets.
2. More effective targeted therapies and immunotherapies. Dr. Siu also sees advances in technologies such as spatial transcriptomics (a technology that studies gene expression in tissue samples to understand the complex biology of cancer), single-cell sequencing (a powerful technology for studying cancer because it provides a more detailed picture of the cellular and molecular landscape than bulk sequencing, which averages data), and artificial intelligence and machine learning will all further our understanding of the tumor microenvironment, thereby allowing us to develop more effective targeted therapies and immunotherapies. For example, through the work of Drs. Benjamin Haibe-Kains and Gregory Schwartz, we are learning that by applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze stained tissue samples (e.g. hematoxylin and eosin slides) and imputing transcriptomic profiles of a patient’s tumor sample, doctors may be able to spot hints of treatment response or resistance earlier than currently available methods.
3. Cancer therapies will continue to move into earlier disease treatment settings, where they could make the biggest difference in increasing cancer cures. There will be an increased focus on clinical trials for neoadjuvant therapies in 2025 and beyond. Neoadjuvant therapy refers to?any treatment given before the main treatment, typically surgery.?Examples of neoadjuvant cancer therapies include chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormone therapy, and immunotherapy. For example, a patient with breast cancer might receive neoadjuvant therapy before a mastectomy to make the surgery both more successful and less invasive. Princess Margaret Cancer Centre leads the country in clinical trials, with nearly 1 in 4 cancer patients on a clinical trial, one of the highest per-capita participation rates globally and a rate that is more than double that of major cancer centres in the US and UK. Research from our clinical trials benefits people with cancer across Canada and globally!
4. A greater emphasis on cancer early detection and prevention, including expanding research into the broad determinants of cancer such as climate change, diet, lifestyles, and cancer vaccines. On the latter, we already know that HPV vaccines can prevent cervical and head and neck cancers. But now we have early proof of concept that vaccines may help the immune system fight cancers that typically harbor very few mutations, such as?pancreatic cancer?and?glioblastoma, two of the deadliest cancers, as well as highly mutated cancers like?melanoma – all made possible through philanthropy.
5. An increased focus on scalability and access. As the world’s top cancer centre in a publicly funded healthcare system with one of the most diverse patient populations in the world, researchers at The Princess Margaret are leading voices in greater access to cancer prevention, diagnostics, and treatments within Canada, as well as between countries. For example, most cell-based therapies like chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy use autologous T cells, meaning they are extracted from a patient, re-engineered to recognize and attack cancer cells, and then infused back into the same patient. This process, however, requires expertise, and is time consuming and cost prohibitive. But at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, donors have funded cell manufacturing capabilities that potentially accelerate this process and reduce cost! Additionally, off-the-shelf CAR T-cell therapies are currently being tested to see if T cells from healthy donors can be used effectively to treat cancer – initiatives which all have the potential to increase scalability and access.
6. We’ll continue to better understand how some cancer cells are able to resist treatment and eventually even regrow the tumor.?There’s increasing evidence that along the evolutionary process of some hematologic (blood) tumors that certain cells are fated to resist therapy, according to Dr. John Dick, Senior Scientist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. In an AACR interview on forecasting cancer research and treatment advances in 2025, Dick explained that “These cells are already there the day the person walks into the clinic. They can be very rare elements of the tumor, but they are already wired with metabolic and epigenetic properties that cause them to resist standard therapy.” According to Dick, advances in single-cell analysis of gene expression, chromatin accessibility, and methylation are helping to identify these cells and offer a better understanding behind the wiring that keeps them in the state of being able to both resist therapy and later regenerate a cancer recurrence. These insights into “cell states” will enable doctors to better predict treatment resistance and response rates.
7. We’ll give new meaning to “early detection”, potentially targeting tumors in a premalignant state. Dick’s previous research?into the states of leukemia cells helped find predictors of drug treatment response, but he believes our understanding of cell states will advance further in 2025. This includes a deeper understanding of clonal hematopoiesis, a natural feature of aging in which one blood stem cell can pick up a clonal advantage over many other stem cells. According to Dick: “We already know that there’s often crosstalk between a solid tumor and the blood system or the immune system, but now there is work that implicates clonal hematopoiesis as another factor that has been previously unrecognized. This is going to become a major player in how patients with any kind of solid tumor will respond to therapy.”?Finally, it could also play a role in a new era Dick sees us entering in which we are able to target cancers much earlier in their evolution. Dick believes from insights we gather about clonal hematopoiesis and by monitoring cell-free DNA and methylation signatures, we could potentially target cancers in a premalignant state.
8. Cancer mental health will be understood as a critical component of cancer care. Research shows that up to 25% of cancer survivors experience symptoms of depression and up to 45% experience anxiety. Many cancer survivors also experience symptoms meeting the criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and cancer survivors are twice as likely to die by suicide than the general population. In addition to ongoing world leading research in cancer mental health through the Princess Margaret Department of Supportive Care, 2025 and beyond will allow researchers at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre to understand the molecular basis of how stress and anxiety can impact cancer, and how cancer impacts cognition at a molecular level.?
9. We’ll expand the number of patients we can treat at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, including in cancer mental health, as well as increase our cancer research and education capacity, through UHN’s acquisition of a 15-storey building located at the southwest corner of University Avenue and Elm Street. The newly acquired property will allows Princess Margaret Cancer Centre to pursue new clinical and research breakthroughs in cancer, develop innovative treatments and technologies, enhance adoption of artificial intelligence, educate the next generation of cancer experts, and ultimately set new standards of cancer care that will improve outcomes for cancer patients across Canada and worldwide.
10. ?We’ll launch a new signature event in support of The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation on May 31, 2025 (announced in 2023) – Cricket to Conquer Cancer. Cricket to Conquer Cancer will be Canada’s first ever street cricket fundraiser. Highlighted by record-breaking attendance at the No Frills T20 Cup,?support for cricket in Canada reached unprecedented levels in 2024. Cricket Canada reported record viewership for the ICC T20 World Cup with more than 75 million global viewers watching Canadian matches! Finally, also new in 2025, The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation’s Big Game Sweepstakes is offering two tickets to this year’s Superbowl in New Orleans, plus $5000 cash. (Did you know that 50% of Canadians watch the Superbowl?). See 17-time Grammy Award winner Kendrick Lamar perform during the halftime entertainment and attend exclusive pregame events – plus the prize comes with roundtrip airfare and a 4-night stay at beautiful Le Pavilion. While Foundation employees aren’t eligible to win, please spread the word in your network. People can enter at The Big Game 2025 Sweepstakes.

Stay tuned for more exciting announcements from The Princess Margaret in 2025! Wishing you all a happy and healthy New Year. Mission Monday will return on Monday, January 27th.