"Imagine a child getting a therapeutic vaccine instead of enduring a two-year, grueling chemotherapy treatment with immediate and long-term consequences that irreversibly worsen their quality of life," says Dr.rang Hoang.
That's what she's hoping to achieve with a $200,000 grant from the Leukemia and Society of Canada, per a press release.
Hoang is one of 37 Canadian researchers to receive a total of $5 million in 2023 research grants in the field of pediatric blood cancer, with the majority of that amount going to the University of Montreal researcher.
Hoang's goal is to identify proteins only found on the surface of leukemic cells, called tumor-specific antigens (TSA), that can be targeted to trigger patients' anti-leukemic defense.
"In this era of precision medicine, we can do better," Hoang says.
Another recipient, Dr. Jason Berman, is studying how a gene in zebrafish affects blood production and causes defects in blood cells.
He hopes his findings can be used to screen for drugs that can impact blood defects, restore normal blood production, and potentially halt leukemia development.
The rest of the grants, totaling $600,000, will go to researchers at 21 universities and hospitals in five provinces.
About one-third of all funding for blood cancer research
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