For patients, research is hope. If we’re not doing research then there is nothing in the pipeline for them. For patients that have treatments fail, or no treatment options left, research is new hope for them. Research is absolutely necessary to find new treatments and look at why some fail.
While we continue to work on the EPI compounds, there is potential, based on literature that our new EPI compounds could possibly target some female cancers. Because this treatment is tied to the hormones used in these areas of the bodies, we can consider researching use across more than one kind of cancer. Possibilities are seen with ovarian cancer, triple negative breast cancer, and rare salivary gland cancers. In terms of drug development we are blazing a trail here, but these areas of research also require funding.
Specific to my research, we are still looking at other new therapies for prostate cancer and we continue to research in other areas too. We have high hopes for the EPI compounds, but there is a possibility that it could fail too. Then we would need something coming up, and we have the potential to do that.
Prostate cancer has had the most approved drugs of any tumour site. There are a lot of good things happening for prostate cancer research, just in the last few years alone. It’s phenomenal, this is very positive for patients. My team at the BC Cancer Agency is hopeful that we can contribute to this list of new and improved drugs. And we will start with advanced patients and hopefully we can move earlier in the treatment so that men never progress to advanced cases of prostate cancer.
Ultimately, we hope that you can go to your doctor and get a prescription for a drug that is from BC – everything was done here, from identification of the target, the mechanism, to screening and development of the drug, all done here in your backyard. That would be a phenomenal improvement in the lives of men with prostate cancer.
We do this work here in B.C. at the BC Cancer Agency, but as interest in this discovery has shown, our work is making an impact beyond our borders into the rest of Canada and the world. That is truly inspiring to me.
Thank you for reading,
Marianne
