Improving bladder cancer treatment | Queen’s Gazette

The $2.4 million multi-year funding will help advance three projects at the core of the team’s work. The first, led by SCRI researchers David Berman and Lynne-Marie Postovit, will explore how bladder cancer cells adapt and resist treatment, by studying tumours prior to and during disease progression in patients who do not respond to BCG therapy.

The second project, led by Dr. Koti and Robert Siemens, will use advanced AI and imaging to identify immune related features in patient tumors that may predict disease outcome. Using patient blood samples, they will work with Queen’s chemical engineers Carlos Escobedo and Laura Wells to develop a novel test for immune response monitoring that can be used during BCG therapy.

The third project, directed by SCRI researchers Charles Graham, Peter Greer, and Andrew Craig, will examine patients’ immune cells in the blood and seek to identify features within them that distinguish patients who respond to treatment from those who do not. 

Researchers Amber Simpson and Tricia Cottrell will support all three projects by building an advanced single-cell imaging core facility in the Centre for Health Innovation within Kingston Health Sciences Centre.

“The Terry Fox New Frontiers Program Project Grant enables us to unite our interdisciplinary research efforts, to strengthen national and international collaborations, and to build a world-class bladder cancer research program at the SCRI,” Dr. Koti says. “On behalf of our team, I would like to thank the TFRI and all the donors who support their mission. Success in this competition is a result of real team effort and we’re extremely honoured to be awarded this funding and to continue research on a treatment that started here at Queen’s more than 50 years ago.”

Training tomorrow’s researchers

The funding will also help support training the next generation of researchers, including undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral level trainees. Over 15 trainees at various levels of their post-graduate training made significant contributions that led to the success of this grant, which will also help boost recruitment of newer graduate and postdoctoral fellows to the program.

“Our bladder cancer research program is unique in that it allows trainees to learn from each other’s projects and apply that knowledge,” Dr. Koti says. “This program will provide them with opportunities to engage with a multidisciplinary team of fundamental and clinician scientists, and to acquire the skills needed to carry this research forward, with the hope of reducing the incidence and recurrence of bladder cancer — ultimately improving the lives of patients.”