Research provides hope. Hope is a way of making dreams a reality.

It is an exciting time in the research department at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, Ottawa ON, for brain cancer research, in particular Glioblastoma.

Under the leadership of Dr. David Stojdl, CHEO is making great strides in genetic research as it relates to GBM therapy. Not only is CHEO one of the thought leaders in looking at gene research in this area but the CHEO team is leveraging technology that has been traditionally used in chemical testing.

Dr. Stojdl’s research program is directed at developing virus-based therapies as selective tumor killing agents to treat brain cancer. These viruses have several advantages over existing therapy strategies, as they appear to overcome many of the current limitations to effective treatment for GBM. Combined with this approach is the utilization of special technology that allows the CHEO research team to study the function of all human genes simultaneously in response to virus therapy.

This is a “think outside of the box” approach to research which is viewed as a breakthrough in gene research. One gene at a time, this new robotic technology not only allows the researcher to look at the full scope of genes at a much faster pace, it allows them to look for solutions in a completely new way. CHEO’s research team is one of only a few in the world using genome-wide approaches to discover the critical genes that govern effective new therapies.

This team has turned its attention to one of the most difficult cancers to treat – Glioblastoma – with the hope of finding an effective therapy to battle this too frequently fatal disease.