Canadian Cancer Society recognizes Princess Margaret doctors
Miyo Yamashita
President & Chief Executive Officer at The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation
Gopi Sundar is an Indian music director, singer and songwriter who has won several accolades for his soundtrack albums and film scores, including a National Film Award, the most prominent film award in India. He is credited with saying, “The greatest award is the appreciation of the people”.
We couldn’t agree more, and that’s why we’re so excited about four recently announced awards honouring our clinical and research colleagues at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, three from the Canadian Cancer Society and one from the University of Toronto, one of the top 25 universities in the world.
Announced on September 14th, the Canadian Cancer Society Awards for Excellence in Cancer Research are awarded to leaders in their fields who exemplify excellence in science and outstanding service to the scientific community. This year, three out of the six award recipients are at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre!
First, the Lifetime Contribution Prize, awarded this year to Dr. Frances Shepherd is given to “an esteemed Canadian whose contributions to cancer research extend beyond traditional research accomplishments and outputs,” according to the Canadian Cancer Society. A physician at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Dr. Shepherd holds the Scott Taylor Chair in Lung Cancer Research and is an international leader in clinical and translational lung cancer research who has transformed the standard of care for lung cancer patients across Canada and around the world. “When I started as a medical oncologist, treatment of lung cancer was almost shunned,” Dr. Shepherd notes. “Chemotherapy drugs were not effective and were extremely toxic.”
However, over the course of her 40-year career, Dr. Shepherd has been instrumental in changing this attitude, with her research opening the door to lung cancer therapies that prolong patients’ lives and increase cure rates. "An early study we did found that giving patients chemotherapy after surgery prolonged survival and increased the cure rate by an astonishing 15 per cent,” says Dr. Shepherd, who is also a recipient of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario. “The study changed practise around the globe.” Today, Dr. Shepherd has contributed to more than 600 peer-reviewed publications and designed and led more than 100 innovative clinical trials which have changed treatment for people with early- and advanced-stage lung cancer.
The second award recipient from the Canadian Cancer Society is Dr. Amit Oza, the winner of the O. Harold Warwick Prize given for outstanding achievement in cancer control. The award is named in honour of Dr. Warwick, a Rhodes scholar and the first Physician in Chief of the newly opened Princess Margaret Hospital in 1958, as well as the first Executive Director of the Canadian Cancer Society. Dr. Oza holds the Daniel Bergsagel Chair in Medical Oncology and is head of the Division of Medical Oncology and Hematology at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. He is also a global leader in gynecological cancer research. With more than 400 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Oza’s work focuses on the design and development of early-phase clinical trials to test new anti-cancer drugs and to understand the biology that contributes to cancer response or treatment resistance. Dr. Oza has conducted more than 100 clinical trials and notably, played a key role incorporating novel targeted therapies into ovarian cancer to change the standard of care, particularly with bevacizumab and PARP inhibitors, which are therapies given to some patients after they complete chemotherapy to decrease the chance of cancer recurrence.
Third, the Bernard and Francine Dorval Prize is named in honour of Bernard and Francine Dorval whose long-standing support of the Canadian Cancer Society has helped raise more than $2 million to support cancer research, policy, and programs. The award is given to an early career scientific investigator whose outstanding contributions to basic biomedical research have the potential to lead, or have already led, to improved understanding of cancer treatments and cures. This year’s award recipient is Dr. Hansen He, a Senior Scientist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and co-lead of the RNA Nanomedicine Initiative. Dr. He's research has uncovered new diagnostic and treatment strategies for prostate and other cancers. His findings have been translated into multiple practical applications of benefit to cancer patients, including clinical trials and four patents for new approaches using RNA for cancer therapy. Dr. He has co-authored more than 100 publications in high-profile journals, including?Nature?and?Nature Genetics.
And last week the University of Toronto announced its intention to establish a new endowed award in support of medical students in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine in honour of Dr. Michael Baker. The award recognizes Dr. Baker’s far-reaching contributions to medical science and the broader Canadian healthcare sector, including as Physician-in-Chief of University Health Network for nearly two decades, as President of the National Cancer Institute of Canada, as a board member of the Canadian Cancer Society, and as Chair of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. In 2008, Dr. Baker was also appointed by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care as Executive Lead, Patient Safety, to oversee the government's patient safety agenda. A member of both the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario, Dr. Baker held all these roles while also leading important scientific investigations that have helped improve our understanding of leukemia and other cancers and contributed to significantly improved patient outcomes. ??
Finally, it’s important to understand the critical role philanthropy has played in enabling the research breakthroughs of these, and other, award recipients at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. As examples, Dr. He was recruited to Princess Margaret Cancer Centre through the support of Emmanuelle Gattuso, the late Allan Slaight, and The Slaight Family Foundation, who believe that creativity and collaboration among the best minds in cancer research yield the biggest breakthroughs. The same is true of several other scientists at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, including Dr. Trevor Pugh, last year’s winner of the Bernard and Francine Dorval Prize, as well as Dr. Benjamin Haibe-Kains who won the prize in 2020, and Dr. Daniel De Carvalho who won in 2017 – all funded by the Gattuso Slaight Family.
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Similarly, the Lusi Wong Lung Cancer Early Detection Research Fund, established in 2003, enabled Dr. Shepherd to set up Canada’s first lung cancer screening study. Today, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre conducts comprehensive molecular profiling to identify actionable subtypes of lung cancer and we are the leading centre in the country, and one of the leading centres in the world, for this kind of work. And research conducted by Dr. Tak Mak, last year’s winner of the Lifetime Contribution Prize from the Canadian Cancer Society, has resulted in the creation of new drugs to treat a variety of solid tumours and blood cancers, including breast cancer and leukemia, that was originally funded by the Campbell Family. In fact, when you read the list of previous winners dating back to 1993 when the Canadian Cancer Society first began awarding its prizes, you’ll see a disproportionate number of recipients from Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, with two-thirds of the winners of the Lifetime Contribution Prize coming from The Princess Margaret. These winners were all funded by our donors, who were not only critical financial backers of cancer research at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, but were also some of the “earliest believers” in our scientists’ work.
The greatest award is the appreciation of the people. At The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation, we raise money to enable and accelerate world-leading breakthroughs in cancer diagnosis and care that people with cancer can appreciate – and benefit from – everywhere.
Wishing you all a good week!
Miyo
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