Jean-Benoit Legault, The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — A $40 million donation unveiled Thursday by the CHU Sainte-Justine Foundation should accelerate discoveries in the fight once morest cancer, it was announced Thursday, and possibly save the lives of children for which we can’t do anything at the moment.
This donation is presented as “the largest (…) ever made to a hospital center in Quebec”. It is done on a personal basis by Michel Lanteigne and Diane Blais, two former senior executives of the accounting firm Ernst & Young.
Mr. Lanteigne’s son, Benoit, died of leukemia at the age of eight in 1989. The CHU Sainte-Justine Specialized Units Building will be renamed in his honor in recognition of this donation.
Part of the donation will allow the creation of a fund for the development of innovative treatments in hemato-oncology, which was developed by doctors Sonia Cellot, Michel Duval and Elie Haddad, in collaboration with the director of research of the CHU Sainte -Justine, Doctor Jacques L. Michaud.
“This is a highly strategic donation for oncology research, for the fight once morest childhood cancers, said Dr. Michaud in an interview, before the official announcement of the donation. It is difficult to cure all the children who have cancer. We have made extraordinary progress over the decade, but 20% of children who have cancer still die. We need new weapons, new strategies.”
Capping
After dazzling progress, the cure rate for children with cancer has leveled off at around 80% in recent years.
This leveling off stems in part from the tendency that researchers have had, over the past few decades, “to use somewhat the same recipe for all cancers, without really developing therapeutic strategies that are really targeted, that take into account the specificity of each cancer,” explained Dr. Michaud.
The reality, he continues, is that cancers “are very heterogeneous, very complex, everyone has a different profile”.
“Breakthrough technologies” like genomics, gene editing, stem cell manipulation, screening small molecule libraries and artificial intelligence might help transform care for children with cancer, a- we said in a press release.
“With the new technologies, we have good hope of really being able to treat cancers more specifically,” concluded Dr. Michaud. We think it will allow us to cross the finish line and cure all the children.
Approximately 350 children are diagnosed with cancer each year in Quebec.
