OICR Advances Development of Two Investigational Cancer Innovations - press release

TORONTO -- 03/12/10 -- The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) today announced a significant investment toward the development of two new promising cancer therapies. The recipients of the awards are:

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, for Kullervo Hynynen's low-cost focused ultrasound system. This system can find and destroy tumors without surgery, increasing quality of life and lowering the cost of treatment for patients with inoperable bone and liver cancer. Hynynen will use the investment from OICR to develop a complete prototype and perform pre-clinical testing of the new system.

OncoTek Drug Delivery Inc., for Joseph Elliot's preclinical development of PoLi-PTX, an intraperitoneal ovarian cancer therapy invented by Drs. Christine Allen and Micheline Piquette-Miller at the University of Toronto, which would deliver localized cancer killing agents to the abdominal cavity with fewer side effects than traditional systemic chemotherapy.

"Both these therapies promise to provide patients and physicians with new tools to treat cancer that are less expensive or more effective than traditional treatments while vastly improving patients' quality of life," said Dr. Tom Hudson, President and Scientific Director of OICR. "This investment will help to make both therapies a reality."...cont'd