First of its kind Canadian research is getting a big funding boost

St. Joe’s is receiving over $7 million for new Alzheimer's and cancer research projects. CTV London’s Reta Ismail reports.

Lawson Research Institute of St. Joseph’s Health Care London has received $7.2 million in funding to support research that advances the detection and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and to personalize cancer care.

“By the time that the Alzheimer’s is detected in the brain or in the blood, that may be too late,” said Principal Investigator Ting-Yim Lee, PhD, Lawson’s director of PET/CT research.

Lee says using new PET/CT scan machine allows researchers to simultaneously study both blood flow and glucose metabolism in the brain — something that is crucial, as both mechanisms are believed to be contributing factors in the onset of Alzheimer’s.

According to Lee, by measuring both at the same time, the research team hopes to uncover early signs that the brain is in trouble.

“It is very important to detect when the disease starts to make the brain kind of a toxic to this type of plaque, so this is the new imaging method that we are going to develop with this grant,” explained Lee.

The second part of the study is hoping to develop theranostics techniques to achieve personalized cancer care.

“We are going to develop a new method so that the treatment would be titrated to the patient’s characteristics as well as the tumor characteristics,” said Lee.

In collaboration with GE HealthCare, St. Joseph’s says it is developing Canada’s first GE HealthCare Centre of Excellence in Molecular Imaging and Theranostics.

In the initial phase of the studies, 100 patients will be recruited from St. Joseph’s Aging Brain and Memory Clinic at Parkwood Institute for the Alzheimer’s study, while 90 patients will be recruited from London Health Sciences Centre’s Verspeeten Family Cancer Centre for cancer studies.