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The Garron Family Cancer Centre
Research
The GFCC’s innovative, novel and collaborative research improves and transforms our understanding of how cancer arises and progresses, and how we diagnose, treat and care for children with cancer.
The clinical oncology program at SickKids is the largest and busiest in Canada, seeing a new cancer patient every single day. The Division of Haematology Oncology’s patient care services is organized into six sections: Bone Marrow Transplantation, Haematology, Leukemia/Lymphoma, Neuro-Oncology and Solid Tumor.
Between 2015 and 2020, the GFCC received over $2 million dollars from the SickKids Foundation to support the adjudication of 39 discovery grants, 3 functional genomics team grants, 13 clinical grants and 26 basic/translational grants. Currently, we have 73 cancer clinical trials running.
Cancer research at SickKids Research Institute
Cancer research activities at SickKids involve all seven of the Research Institute’s research programs, covering a comprehensive range of disciplines and interests.
Flagship programs
The KiCS Program is a collaborative and innovative program that brings together experts in oncology, pathology, bioinformatics, genetics, genomic research, and genetic counselling at SickKids to determine the genetic profiles of metastic and treatment resistant tumors. This program, led by Drs. David Malkin and Adam Shilien, is the foundation of the Precision Medicine Oncology initiative at SickKids, which aims to identify the best individualized treatment options for children with cancer.
KiCS also provides pathways to new therapeutic interventions based on tumour-specific genetic alterations in collaboration with PROFYLE.
The New Agent and Innovative Therapy (NAIT) program at SickKids is supported in part by the GFCC, and is focused on providing access to new drugs and other treatments for childhood cancer patients.
Children from every province other than PEI have travelled to Toronto for two first-in-children clinical trials of precision cancer medicines.
PROFYLE is a trailblazing pan-Canadian program being conducted in partnership with the Terry Fox Research Institute, multiple childhood cancer foundations, and all 16 paediatric cancer programs across Canada.
PROFYLE and KiCS generate sequencing data from childhood cancers and match them with potentially life-saving targeted treatments that are already approved or are being studied in clinical trials. To date, over 419 cancer patients from SickKids, other centres in Ontario and Canada and internationally, have been enrolled in KiCS, with clinically relevant mutations found in almost 53% of cases.
Patient referrals for early phase trials
SickKids is a major referral centre across the country for early phase trials conducted by childhood cancer clinical trials consortia such as the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), the National Cancer Institute’s New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy (NANT), the Pacific Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant Consortium (PBMTC), the Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium (PNOC), Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium (PBTC), the Pediatric Cancer Immunotherpay Trials Network (PedCITN), and the Collaborative Network for Neuro-Oncology Clinical Trials (CONNECT).
If you are a patient of family member preparing for a visit to SickKids for oncology care, or are a health-care provider looking to refer a patient to SickKids, please refer to the Division of Haematology/Oncology for more information.
