Immunotherapies represent a major advancement in cancer research and have the potential to transform cancer care, particularly for patients with limited treatment options. The problem is: they still don’t work for all tumours and only benefit one in five patients.
A key cause of immunotherapy resistance is the environment around tumours, which includes a dense barrier that physically blocks drugs and immune cells from reaching and attacking cancer cells. This barrier protects tumours, allowing them to evade treatment and continue to grow and spread.
With $525,000 in support from a Terry Fox New Investigator Award, Dr. Miffy Hok Yan Cheng, assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, and her team will develop a new approach to remove tumours’ protective barrier, allowing treatments to reach cancer more effectively.
Notably, Dr. Cheng is the recipient of the 2026 Dr. Victor Ling Terry Fox New Investigator Award. This award, named after the Terry Fox Research Institute’s founding president and scientific director, distinguishes the highest ranked New Investigator of the year.
“If we can remodel the tumour environment, we could make cancer cells more accessible and boost the number of patients who benefit from these advanced immunotherapies,” says Dr. Cheng.
She compares this concept to what we see in nature: When trees and brush become overgrown, birds have a harder time getting in to settle. But by strategically pruning back the overgrowth, birds can move through freely and begin to nest.
Over the next three years, Dr. Cheng’s lab will employ the latest technologies to cut back the fibrous barrier surrounding tumours, allowing drugs and treatments to enter more efficiently and do their job.
The team will use lipid nanoparticles to deliver advanced messenger RNA (mRNA) into tumour cells and the tumour microenvironment, instructing them to produce a protein called MMP-8. This protein acts as the pruning shears, breaking down the collagen fibres surrounding the tumour. And by training local cells to produce this protein themselves, this approach could potentially create long-term immunity.
They will also explore whether this process attracts immune cells to the area – sensitizing them to recognize the cancer as a threat and help destroy it – and whether this could be leveraged to locate metastases elsewhere in the body.
If successful, this could become a widely available and adaptable standalone therapy to weaken the tumour’s protective structure, or it could be combined with existing immunotherapies to help those treatments access and destroy cancer cells more effectively.
“Nanomedicine has made monumental contributions to cancer research, enabling many clinically approved cancer therapies that are already benefitting patients,” says Dr. Cheng.
“I feel very fortunate to be supported by this Terry Fox New Investigator Award so we can continue working to create more precise, effective and affordable treatments for patients who currently have limited options.”