In the midst concerns about surgeries and treatments being impacted by the stress COVID-19 is having on Canada’s health care system, a Canadian researcher is being recognized by Mitacs for engineering cancer-killing viruses to treat breast and ovarian cancer.
“The work that I specifically am doing is looking at breast and ovarian cancers that have become resistant to conventional drug therapy and making viruses that can hopefully overcome the resistance,” Taylor Jamieson-Datzkiw, MD-PhD student at the University of Ottawa, told Yahoo Canada.
Her work, explained as “a new option for those patients who’ve run out of options,” involves manipulating viruses at the genetic level. They target the tumour, alter the expression of cancer cells and surrounding cells, and alert the individual’s immune system that a tumour exists.
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