Raymond Reilly reflects on a decade of leadership at Centre for Pharmaceutical Oncology

Throughout Raymond Reilly’s ten years as director of the Centre for Pharmaceutical Oncology (CPO), the Centre has achieved many of its initial goals such as growing the membership, supporting the education of trainees, providing resources for cancer research including support for clinical trials, and hosting a seminar series and conferences featuring world-leading scientists.

As he steps down from the director role, Reilly, professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, says he is most proud of creating a community of cancer researchers and trainees whose research will hopefully lead to improved outcomes for cancer patients.

“The community of cancer researchers and their trainees in the CPO have worked together to build the Centre and deliver its programs including cancer research seminars, scholarships and an annual world-class cancer research symposium,” says Reilly, whose research program focuses on developing radiopharmaceuticals to detect and treat cancer.

“The community of cancer researchers and their trainees in the CPO have worked together to build the Centre and deliver its programs including cancer research seminars, scholarships and an annual world-class cancer research symposium.”

In 2015, Reilly envisioned and founded the CPO with the goal of building and supporting an interdisciplinary community focused on cancer research. The CPO aimed to act as a bridge supporting discoveries in basic cancer biology, preclinical cancer research and clinical trials to advance discoveries that could transform cancer treatment.

From its start with 41 members, the CPO has since attracted more than 250 members from across the university and affiliated hospitals representing fields ranging from cancer biology, to molecular diagnostics and imaging to cancer treatment.

To improve access to specialized equipment, the CPO established a core instrument facility with a major investment from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and Ontario Research Fund (ORF), which allowed members to access critical research tools. These tools have enabled the analysis of the purity of new drugs for cancer, detected target receptors on cancer cells for drugs, imaged the properties of cancer cells, characterized cancer nanomedicines and enabled studies of new radiopharmaceuticals for imaging cancer using a preclinical PET scanner. The facility supports thousands of hours of research studies conducted by CPO members every year and provides expert training and guidance on the use of the instruments to achieve their greatest impact.

From the beginning, education has been a key priority of the CPO. In addition to the more than 100 scholarships awarded by the Centre to students pursuing cancer research, the CPO has hosted numerous seminars and symposia that have featured world leaders in cancer research. These were led and organized by CPO trainees.

“I’m very proud of the CPO trainees who, with guidance, planned and organized the delivery of a world-class cancer research symposium each year. This created opportunities for student leadership and collaboration and allowed students to learn about state-of-the-art discoveries in cancer research from local, national, and international experts,” says Reilly.

Good Manufacturing Practices facility supports leading-edge clinical trials

One of the most impactful recent contributions of the CPO to cancer research at U of T has been establishment of the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) radiopharmaceutical facility supported by additional investments from CFI and ORF, which produces human-grade radiopharmaceuticals for clinical trials. So far, the facility has supported two clinical trials with more in development.

In one trial, led by researchers at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the GMP facility was used to produce a radiolabelled form of trastuzumab (Herceptin), a drug used to treat HER2-positive breast cancer. By administering the radiolabelled trastuzumab and tracking it by imaging, the Sunnybrook team was able to demonstrate that applying MRI-guided focused ultrasound to the brain improved the uptake of trastuzumab into brain metastases in breast cancer patients, which could improve their treatment. The same research team is planning to extend this approach to improve the delivery of immunotherapy drugs to brain metastases in lung cancer patients and is collaborating with Reilly on this next trial.
 

In the second trial, now underway at the University Health Network, the GMP facility is being used to produce radiolabelled porphysomes, a new type of cancer nanomedicine that destroys tumour cells by activation with laser light. The radiolabelled porphysomes are being used in this trial to track the delivery of porphysomes to tumours in patients with gynecological cancers using a PET scan. This is the first time that porphysomes have been administered to cancer patients and their uptake into tumours tracked by PET imaging.

Lisa Dolovich, dean of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, says that these trials and the CPO’s other accomplishments reflect Reilly’s vision and commitment to building capacity to impact the lives of people with cancer. Faculty leadership is working to support the CPO to ensure a thoughtful and seamless transition and maintain the Centre’s strong momentum.

“We are sincerely grateful to Professor Reilly for his outstanding vision, leadership and service with the CPO,” says Dolovich. “His contributions have strengthened our Faculty, advanced the field of pharmaceutical oncology, and created a legacy that will continue to benefit researchers, trainees, and patients for years to come.”

“Professor Reilly's contributions have strengthened our Faculty, advanced the field of pharmaceutical oncology, and created a legacy that will continue to benefit researchers, trainees, and patients for years to come.”

With his term as CPO director complete, Reilly is now focusing on his translational radiopharmaceutical research program with the goal to support clinical trials of these agents in cancer patients. He says that he is looking forward to collaborating with researchers and clinicians at the university-affiliated cancer centres to continue advancing cancer treatment and care – which he says has always been his vision for research at the CPO and beyond.

“As pharmaceutical scientists, there are tremendous opportunities to engage with cancer biologists, oncologists and imaging scientists at the university-affiliated cancer centres to collaborate on high impact translational research, and it’s important to be included as members of the broader community of cancer researchers. This is why I named the centre the Centre for Pharmaceutical Oncology,” says Reilly.

“The CPO has created a community of cancer researchers and trainees at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, which has raised the profile of pharmaceutical science in cancer research and has already yielded impactful results with more to come.”