Category: Our News

Challenge: Classical medical Avatar models involve implanting patient tumor samples in immunodeficient mice for subsequent drug testing to tailor the optimal drug or combination of drugs to a given patient. This strategy proves to be an excellent approach for personalized medicine in various cancer indications such as melanoma, lung cancer, and breast cancer. Nevertheless, this…

Challenge: Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive form of breast cancer. Even in the early stages it is treated primarily by chemotherapy, often before surgery. The presence of remaining tumor after chemotherapy signals chemoresistance and poor prognosis resulting in the death of 30 to 40 % of patients with triple negative breast…

Challenge: Solid tumor growth is regulated by complex interactions of tumor cells with an assortment of adjacent non-malignant cells collectively referred to as the tumor microenvironment (TME). In “triple-negative breast cancer” (TNBC), which represents 15 to 20 % of all breast cancers, tumors can be characterized as “immune hot” or “immune cold” with respect to…

Challenge: Lung cancer is the most lethal cancer in industrialized countries, with different studies showing that its high mortality can be reduced through an early diagnosis. Implementation of a lung cancer screening program for patients at high risk of developing the disease has been recently recommended by the Quebec National Institute of Excellence in Health and Social…

Challenge: When considering drug discovery, the pharmaceutical industry faces many challenges. Indeed, each drug class, namely small molecules, antibodies or peptides-based therapeutics, possesses its own characteristics and comes with its own challenges. While presenting similar features than peptides in terms of activity, selectivity and potency, macrocycle peptides also present enhanced permeability and stability towards proteases.…

Challenge: Extensive characterization of tumors is central to the development of personalized therapies such as immunotherapy, now considered one of the most promising approaches to cancer treatment. The capability to detect a multitude of biomarkers simultaneously on the same tissue section would provide unprecedented headways in the field of cancer research and particularly on tumor…

Challenge: Bladder cancer is 5 th in frequency in Canada. Each year, approximately 80,000 people will be diagnosed with bladder cancer and more than 20 % of them will die from the disease. The treatment of advanced bladder cancer has been revolutionized in the recent years by the impressive clinical success of immune checkpoint (IC)-based immunotherapy. Advanced bladder…

Challenge: Cancer therapy has been transformed in recent years by the impressive success of immunotherapy using immune checkpoint inhibitors. However, the success of immunotherapy in some types of cancers, including prostate cancer (PCa), has been rather limited. A major challenge facing the development of PCa immunotherapy is the identification of tumors that would best respond…

Challenge: Because of their immunosuppressive properties, galectins play a critical role in many diseases, most notably in cancer. Some galectins can suppress the immune response by inducing the death of cells that are protecting against cancer cells development. Galectins can also promote tumor cell growth by preventing tumor infiltration by immune cells. For these reasons,…

Challenge: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder affecting elderly people. There is currently no early diagnostic method available and there is no effective treatment. Better characterization of new animal models is therefore essential to enable the discovery of new therapeutics for AD. Solution: To maximize the information obtained from MRI and PET imaging…