Finding and treating cancer early is the key to survival. That’s because the sooner a cancer is found, the less likely it is to have spread to other parts of the body, meaning doctors have far more options when it comes to treating it.
Early detection isn’t easy: diagnosis often takes a long time and many cancers have few known symptoms in their early stages. This, coupled with the fact that many people put off going to see a doctor until symptoms become unbearable, means that many cancers are diagnosed in late stages.
Today, improving diagnostic tests, creating accurate screening protocols for high-risk individuals and developing mathematical models that help determine when and where tumours may develop are important steps to improving outcomes for patients 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 are improving our ability to detect and diagnose cancer early.
In 2022/23, roughly 4 per cent of the money invested by the TFRI supported early detection and diagnosis research. This added up to a total investment of $472,000.*
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.