The most common form of lung cancer is “non-small cell lung carcinoma,” and it has an average 5-year survival rate of just 15%. Tumour stage is known to be the strongest predictor of survival, with patients in the earliest stages of the disease showing the strongest promise for survival. Recent studies have shown that treating these early-stage patients with chemotherapy in combination with surgery can significantly improve their chances, as long as the patient’s cancer responds well to chemotherapy. However, this approach is often met with highly variable rates of success, depending on the patient’s unique response to chemotherapy. Knowing which patients will benefit from the addition of chemotherapy – and which patients could avoid this toxic and expensive round of treatment – has been a major challenge in treating patients with early stage lung cancer. In late 2006, a UHN team developed an innovative solution to this challenge. The team was co-led by Princess Margaret Hospital’s Dr. Ming-Sound Tsao (holder of the M. Qasim Choksi Chair in Lung Cancer Translational Research at UHN) and Dr. Frances A. Shepherd (holder of the Scott Taylor Chair in Lung Cancer Research at UHN), working with collaborators from other UHN hospitals and research labs.

Dr. Igor Jurisica, a computational biologist at Princess Margaret Hospital, provided the computational horsepower to enable these results. Dr. Jurisica heads a UHN-IBM research collaboration dubbed the “The Life Sciences Discovery Centre,” equipped with a P-series supercomputer to enable analysis of molecular profiles from cancer samples. Through genomic analysis of lung tumour samples from patients at Princess Margaret Hospital, Dr. Tsao and his team identified a genetic signature that distinguishes two different patient groups with significantly different survival outcomes. The team tested the predictive power of the genetic signature using publicly available genetic data from other lung cancer patients. The result? The gene expression sequences identified by Dr. Tsao and his team successfully predicted which patients could benefit from chemotherapy at an early stage. This information will prove incredibly valuable to clinicians and patients, ensuring chemotherapy treatment is targeted to the lung cancer patients who could benefit most.  In April 2008, TDC negotiated an exclusive license and collaboration agreement with the Vancouver biotechnology company MedBioGene Inc. to further develop this groundbreaking prognostic genomic analysis for early stage non-small cell lung cancer. MedBioGene is currently engaged in further development and is seeking regulatory approval for the new test. In recognition of their accomplishments in advancing the field of personalized medicine, the Tsao-Shepherd-Jurisica team was recognized with the 2008 “Inventor of the Year” award from TDC.