Chemotherapy and radiation therapy are two of the most important weapons in the current anti-cancer arsenal. But despite their proven efficacy, both treatments still have one major limitation: they often cannot distinguish cancerous cells from healthy ones. This means that many people who are treated with either of these therapies experience negative side-effects that can dramatically alter their quality of life.
Today, finding new ways to improve the efficacy of these treatments while reducing their toxicity is one of the most pressing issues in cancer research. Doing this is paramount to improving survival rates for all cancers and improving the quality of life for people living with cancer.
Our Research Strategy
At the Terry Fox Research Institute, we are bringing together the best researchers from the country's top cancer institutions to work on projects that seek to make chemotherapy and radiation therapy more precise, improving their efficacy and decreasing their toxicity.
In 2022/23, roughly 3 per cent of the money invested by the TFRI supported chemotherapy and radiation research. This added up to a total investment of $431,000.*
To allocate our resources, we ask international experts to evaluate the excellence and the potential for impact of all our research projects. This approach distinguishes our research investment strategy from all others in Canada and allows donors to be confident that their investment is supporting the top 5% of Canadian researchers and their science.
*Our scientific discovery projects are interdisciplinary by design and often focus on more than one cancer type. The figures listed above are an estimate and should not be taken as exact figures.