St. Joseph’s to be first in Canada to offer new way to personalize medicine to treat cancer, other diseases

St. Joseph’s is to be the first in Canada to offer a new way to personalize medicine to treat cancer and other diseases.

St. Joseph’s Health Care London and Lawson Health Research Institute have partnered with General Electric HealthCare to be the first ‘centre of excellence’ in Canada. The centre will focus on personalizing cancer treatments and other diseases through molecular imaging and targeted therapy.

“For decades we’ve talked about a magic bullet. Something you can target just one thing and not have any collateral damage to normal cells. This is as close as you’re going to get so that’s what theranostics is all about,” explained Dr. Narinder Paul, Lawson scientist, chief, medical imaging at St. Joseph’s and physician executive, medical imaging at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC).

MIT is a two part approach to diagnosing and treating disease by using imaging and radiotracers that can see identify cancer or other disease in the body and also destroy the abnormal cells without affecting the healthy cells.

Despite current treatments for cancer, Paul said there are patients with advanced cancers that are not easy to treat.

“Until recently there’s not really been a solution for those people so this MIT is a potential avenue for some of those patients,” he said.

Molecular imaging offers detailed imaging at the molecular level. Theranostics is a term that combines the words 'therapeutics' and 'diagnostics.'

Theranostics is about treating each patient as an individual, and “Recognizing that the same treatment plan doesn’t work for everyone, with the goal of providing more efficient and effective medical care,” said Mike Hamilton, president, General Electric HealthCare Canada.

“This collaboration aims to advance this practice for the benefit of clinicians and patients around the world,” he said.

Previously there was not the technology and expertise in molecular biology in order to accomplish this, according to Paul.

“The molecular biology as a field has grown to the point where it can start creating the molecules to attach to cancer cells and nothing else,” he said.

A new PET-CT will be coming to St. Joseph’s. The new machine will be the first in Canada and offer benefits by taking images quicker, with less radiation dose exposure and offers a new way to look at complex diseases.

“We will leverage the combined scientific expertise and innovation of scientists from GE HealthCare and Lawson to maximize the future opportunities of molecular imaging theranostics made possible through PET-CT imaging and be leaders in Canada in this area of medical science,” said Dr. David Hill, Lawson’s scientific director.