Chemotherapy research gets critical investment

McMaster’s Anna Dvorkin-Gheva has received a $119,000 grant from the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation to study drugs that can be combined with current chemotherapy to make it more effective.

The post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences was among eight McMaster researchers who received a total of nearly $1.8 million in grants from the foundation to support research projects and fellowships. Almost $10 million in grants was awarded across the province.

Dvorkin-Gheva will study the effects chemo-sensitizers have on breast cancer tumours. Instead of looking at new treatment options that would take time before becoming the preferred therapy by practitioners, she is looking to modify existing therapies in order to bring better care to patients sooner.

“I know people who are currently living with breast cancer and it has been hard to see friends go through such difficult treatments,” Dvorkin-Gheva said. “What I really want to do is to provide hope by making established treatments more effective and increase survival rates.”

The drugs Dvorkin-Gheva is looking at are already established compounds with a lot of information compiled about them, which should be a strong base of knowledge to work from and help to develop improvements faster.

Current anti-cancer drugs don’t provide a complete cure and patients with particularly aggressive breast cancers have much lower survival rates in the years following treatment, with only 30 per cent of patients treated surviving more than five years.

The other McMaster researchers to receive funding through the CBCF’s fellowship program are:

Punam Rana

Chemoprevention in Breast Cancer
Area of focus: Prevention
Funding approved: $143,000 over 2 years

Robin Hallett

Identification of agents that overcome endocrine resistance
Area of focus: Treatment
Funding approved: $47,500 over 1 year

Hanxin Lin

Screening for novel inhibitors to block breast cancer-induced bone pain
Area of focus: Biology of Breast Cancer
Funding approved: $142,500 over 3 years

Justin Kale

Characterization of Bax Activation Mechanism in Human Breast Cancer
Area of focus: Biology of Breast Cancer
Funding approved: $112,500 over 3 years

McMaster researchers to receive research projects grants are:

Anita Bane

Prognosis in Basal-like Breast Cancer (BLBC)
Area of focus: Early Detection, Diagnosis, Prognosis
Funding approved: $380,918 over 3 years

John Hassell

Role of acetylcholine receptors in breast cancer
Area of focus: Biology of Breast Cancer
Funding approved: $449,400 over 3 years

Tim Whelan

Prospective Cohort Study Evaluating Risk of Local Recurrence Following Breast Conserving Surgery Alone in Low Risk Luminal A Breast Cancer
Area of focus: Early Detection, Diagnosis, Prognosis
Funding approved: $444,752 over 3 years