Chris Phenix has an ambitious goal in the fight against cancer.
The Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute scientist is attempting to develop a new imaging technique that will not only detect cancerous tumours, but also help doctors predict if and when the cancer will spread.
The potentially revolutionary research on Tuesday got a $190,494 boost, thanks to an innovation grant bestowed by the Canadian Cancer Society.
The money, the largest grant of its kind in Northwestern Ontario, is critical for a number of reasons, Phenix said.
“I think the first is obviously for cancer research. There’s a lot of really interesting research going on in Canada that’s looking to solve critical issues related to cancer,” Phenix said, adding it speaks to the quality of research going on at TBRRI.
In laymen’s terms, Phenix said they’re looking to develop new tests that can be used in a lab to figure out biochemically how cancer moves into a patient’s tissue, using molecular imaging and ultimately creating a positron emission tomography test to use in a clinic setting.
The test Phenix and his team is working on will only give off a signal when activated by a specific protein, which is suspected in having a major role in the spread of cancer and chemotherapy resistance.
Martin Kabat, the CEO of the Canadian Cancer Society in Ontario, said the innovation grants were created to help find new technology to fight the disease.
“We think this project has a tremendous opportunity to make a difference fighting one of the most lethal of all cancers, colon cancer.”
Success stories taking on breast cancer and other cancers gives Kabat hope that the hard-to-treat forms of the disease, including lung and pancreatic cancers, can someday also be beaten.
“We know that if we invest in research, especially the unusual research, research that looks at new ideas, new ways of fighting these diseases, that we can make progress. If you think of where breast cancer or childhood cancer were 75 or even 30 years ago, they were fatal, lethal diseases,” Kabat said.
“And today we’re beating them. And we can do that against cancers like brain cancer, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer and lung cancer.”
The grants themselves are being handed out in centres of all sizes for good reason, he added.
“I think it’s important for the people of Thunder Bay that they raise money here for the fight against cancer and we want everybody to see that great research is going on right in your community, not just down in Toronto.”
