What is cancer dormancy?
Even long after successful treatment, some cancer cells can reactivate and cause a recurrence of cancer. When these cells survive undetected in the body for years, this is what we refer to as ‘dormancy.’ Finding and getting rid of dormant cancer cells can reduce the risk of the cancer coming back.
When ovarian cancer is found, it’s usually already at an advanced stage. Even after responding to treatment, the tumours often come back – possibly because some cancer cells become dormant after the first successful treatments.
Dr Francis Rodier at Centre de recherche du CHUM is leading a Canadian Cancer Society (CCS)-funded team to study ways ovarian cancer cells can go dormant and reawaken later to cause a recurrence. The team hopes to discover and target a new weak point in these dormant cancer cells to prevent the cancer from coming back.
“The ultimate goal is to really understand these cells at the individual level and discover their vulnerabilities so we can target these vulnerabilities and eliminate the dormant cancer cells,” Dr Rodier says.
Understanding and targeting dormancy in ovarian cancer
With funding from the CCS 2025 Breakthrough Team Grant, Dr Rodier and his team are using brand new technologies to search for vulnerabilities in dormant cancer cells.
“We don’t really understand why [the cancer] comes back and why it is different from person to person. The project is designed to try to understand this problem at the single cell level,” Dr Rodier says. “Our big hope would be to discover a new vulnerability in these dormant cancer cells that we can specifically target, for example, with a new drug.”
Dr Rodier’s team has partnered with people with ovarian cancer who are currently in or have recently finished treatment. They will gather samples to collect the necessary information about dormant cells, then test ways of targeting each tumour’s weak points to prevent the cancer from returning.
“The patients are involved at all levels. We have access to a biobank that has been built for the last 25 years with a lot of clinical data on the patients. This will allow us to study samples from the patients and define the characteristics we’re looking for in cancer dormancy.”
There are multiple ways the discoveries from this project can make an impact. One of the outcomes Dr Rodier’s team is working towards is discovering new biomarkers that will allow them to find the dormant state and know in advance which people are at risk of recurrence. The time at which the disease would come back is also something that they are hoping to come out of their research.
“At this moment, what excites me most about our research is our ability to dissect cancer down to every single cell, and to consider each tumour as a complex city or community to decode how each member talks to each other. We hope this knowledge will help cure the disease.”
Every moment is a gift
As the leading charitable funder of cancer research in the country, the Canadian Cancer Society funds researchers who are helping prevent cancer, enhancing screening, diagnosis and treatment, and making sure people diagnosed with cancer can live longer, fuller lives.
With donor support, Canada’s brightest researchers are finding new ways to prevent, find, diagnose and treat cancer to save more lives.
As a recipient of the CCS 2025 Breakthrough Team Grant, Dr Rodier understands the importance of funding research. The grant will allow 6 labs to work together for this project, each with their own unique expertise.
“The grant will support a community of labs dedicated to solving a single complex problem – in our case, the dormancy of ovarian cancers that almost inevitably recur even though they initially respond well to treatment,” says Dr Rodier. “This funding will make the difference between stumbling around and walking a straight line towards translating innovative therapies into the clinic.”
Long-term funding over a period for example of five years is really critical for cancer research because we build up knowledge, we build up team expertise, we link teams together and without these continuous and stable funding, it’s very difficult to achieve breakthroughs in cancer research.
For those affected by cancer, the holidays are a reminder that every moment is a gift.Help give more of them by supporting cancer research. Your donations help give the gift of time and connection, allowing families to create more memories in the years to come.
This holiday season, support Canadian cancer research like Dr Rodier's.