Moncton Researcher is Going After Disease With a Single-minded Approach
Dr. Sandra Turcotte has been single-mindedly pursuing a goal since she started her career in kidney cancer research.
Since joining the Université de Moncton and the Atlantic Cancer Research Institute (ACRI) as the researcher in residence with a research chair from the Canadian Cancer Society New Brunswick, Turcotte has been working towards the development of new treatment for renal cell carcinoma since there are currently no proactive treatments to cure the disease.
Turcotte says the goal is to develop therapy that’s specifically targeted for kidney cancer and to do that, biomatter that is unique to this type of cancer must be identified so that it can be used in labs to detect the cancer.
“In our lab, we are focusing on a different approach, which is targeting a gene that is mutated directly in the kidney cancer cell,” Turcotte explains. “This gene is named VHL for von Hippel-Lindau and it’s inactivated in about 80 per cent of kidney cancer. We try to use small molecular or other types of drugs to target this cell that are inactivated for this gene, which means that we can kill the cancer cell and spare the normal tissue and reduce the cytotoxicity of treatment to normal cells.”
“We’re using a small molecular tag that I identified during my postdoc at Stanford and we try to understand what is the target of this small molecule, what genes are affected by this molecule and in this way, we can hopefully get into a more personalized or targeted approach to treating the cancer cells.”
Turcotte says while kidney cancer may not be as common as lung or breast cancer and is more frequent in men than women, it still results in approximately 6,400 diagnoses in Canada per year and is responsible for around 2,000 deaths.
She says the biggest problem with this type of cancer is it’s rarely diagnosed early. The symptoms are difficult to identify and often by the time a patient is diagnosed, the cancer is at metastatic stages, meaning it’s more difficult to treat.
Turcotte says the research community is growing in New Brunswick, with more and more resources available to them every day.
“It’s growing and I think the research that is being done here is good,” she says. “[Just] because we are not in a big centre [doesn’t mean] we are not doing good research. We have an excellent facility at the ACRI.”
“We have a growing environment of more researchers and development of critical mass.”
While her approach may change over years as progress and developments are made, Turcotte says her overall goal of truly being able to target and effectively treat kidney cancer remains unchanged.
“I would like to contribute to the development of new types of therapy for kidney cancer. That was the goal when I started my PhD,” Turcotte says. “It’s changing because we progress every year … but the main goal I think is close to the same from the beginning.”
Turcotte says she’s excited not only to participate in the research and development being done in her field but to share that work with the community.
“It’s always good to call a researcher and ask what they are doing in their research and share with the community. I think we need more and more funding options and not just about money, but I think it’s good that they know what researchers are doing, what we hope for and what our strengths are.”
“More and more people will know, more and more they will be engaged and I think that the research environment can increase.”