Four outstanding clinician-scientists named inaugural Clinician-Scientist Awardees following Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network competition

Four early-career clinician-scientists in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec are the first recipients of the inaugural Clinician-Scientist Award funded by the Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network (MOHCCN). Each receives $225,000 over the next three years to be matched by the host institutions for a total of $450,000 to support groundbreaking research in precision oncology. 

This new injection of funding totaling $1.8M will support research for brain, pancreatic, lung, and skin cancers.

The award recipients are: 

• Dr. Ana Nikolic, University of Calgary (Calgary) for: The evolution of transcriptional cellular state dynamics in recurrent glioblastoma
• Dr. Robert Grant, University Health Network (Toronto) for: Mapping pancreatic cancer biology to drug responses
• Dr. Bertrand Routy, Centre de Recherche du Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (Montreal) for: How microbiomes influence intratumour immune contexture and response to immune-checkpoint inhibitors in patients with non-small cell lung cancer
• Dr. Philippe Lefrançois, Lady Davis Institute, McGill University and Jewish General Hospital (Montreal) for: Understanding the genomic and cellular landscapes of advanced basal cell carcinoma (BCC)

“The Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network is delighted to support four of the most promising clinician-scientists in Canada as they establish their research groups,” says Dr. André Veillette, MOHCCN Executive Director. “We look forward to working with these bright and talented new team members and following their progress as they help us to advance the implementation of precision medicine for cancer in Canada.” 

The recipients of the 2022 MOHCCN Clinician Scientist Awards are: Dr. Bertrand Routy, Dr. Philippe Lefrançois, Dr. Ana Nikolic and Dr. Robert Grant.

About the award

The MOHCCN Clinician-Scientist Award provides outstanding early-career clinician-scientists with funding to support high-quality research in precision oncology. The award is designed to support early-career investigators as they develop their careers as independent clinician scientists, in close collaboration and mentorship with established MOHCCN-funded teams. The final awardees were selected after a peer-review committee reviewed the 13 full applications received from clinician-scientists across Canada.

In addition to new funding, the researchers will have access to expertise, data and resources generated by the Network. In turn, they will contribute knowledge and data from their projects to the Network, helping to accelerate the implementation of precision medicine for cancer in Canada.