OUR INITIATIVES 

Initiative: Oncology Clinician Scientist Awards
Beneficiary: University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine and all fully affiliated hospitals
Duration: 2019 – current
Funding: Up to $2M annually

Synopsis: One of the major challenges in medical research is securing stable funding for medical doctors who take additional time to learn the science of research itself (clinical, laboratory, epidemiological etc.). This Clinician Scientist Awards Program will have a major impact on the careers of these bright young doctors who are the future of cancer research.

Benefits of this awards program include:

• Bridging the gap between the laboratory bench and the patient bedside.
• Attracting the brightest and most promising trainees and fellows from across the country and the world. These remarkable individuals are critical to Canada’s ability to unlock the potential of new diagnostics and therapeutics, and the dissemination of new knowledge.
• Improving clinical care and building clinical capacity at hospitals, to ensure patients receive more personalized attention.
• Creating a ripple effect around the globe, as many fellows are international, and will return home with their newfound knowledge and expertise.

With one in two people facing a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, the future health of all Canadians will depend on our ability to attract and retain the brightest medical minds.

Initiative: Hold’em For Life Prostate Cancer Research Fund
Beneficiary: Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation
Duration: 2015 – 2018
Funding: $2.5M

The results of the program’s projects will significantly advance the body of knowledge in understanding the metabolic underpinnings of PCA. It will also have conducted definitive studies that may lead to bringing safe, inexpensive and novel approaches to delay disease progression, and to defining, in a personalized fashion, patient subsets for whom the novel approaches may be of value.

The Program will support highly-qualified researchers following completion of their PhD, the most important time in their career. This is when they formulate and expand their ideas on a path towards leading their own research programs. These future leaders, while receiving essential training, are also key contributors to The Princess Margaret research enterprise, executing complex experiments, developing critical thinking and charting new territory on a quest for knowledge.