Cancer Stem Cell Research

The Ontario Cancer Institute at Princess Margaret Hospital leads the world in this area of research

Dr. John Dick (seated) with (L-R) staff member Liqing Jin, Affiliate Scientist Dr. Jean Wang, and staff members Jaime Claudio, Armando Poeppl and Amanda Mitchell. This group leads the efforts for Toronto in the collaboration with the University of California, San Diego investigating new drugs that target leukemic stem cells.

In the last decade scientists have come to understand more about human development, and ‘stem cell’ has become a household term. Since the initial discovery of stem cells by Dr. James Till and Dr. Ernest McCulloch at the Princess Margaret Hospital in the early 1960’s, scientists have learned not only that that there are different kinds of stem cells, but that the concept of a stem cell extends to the development of cancer. The idea that only certain cells within a tumour can sustain and grow the cancer leads to new ways of thinking about the treatment and eradication of the disease.
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Videos:
A Brief Interview with Dr. John Dick (2 min)
Dr. John Dick talks about his recent scientific paper (January 2011) on genetic diversity in leukemic propagating cells, published in collaboration with researchers at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.
Dr. John Dick’s Cancer Stem Cell presentation at Princess Margaret Hospital: Behind the Scenes