THE INSTITUTE ANNUAL REPORT 2025
CANCER RESEARCH PROGRAM (CRP)
SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS
A new hope for men with metastatic prostate cancer
MUHC patients are the first enrolled in a new global Phase 1 clinical trial testing Actinium-225, a therapeutic agent used in nuclear precision medicine
The Institute has enrolled the first patients to take part in an early-stage, multi-centre clinical trial of Actinium-225, a radioactive isotope used as a treatment for metastatic prostate cancer. The Institute is proud to be selected as the first site worldwide to launch this new clinical trial, which introduces a promising new therapy in precision medicine for patients who have exhausted all other options in the treatment of their disease.
Led at The Institute by Dr. Ramy Saleh, Medical Oncologist at the MUHC’s Cedars Cancer Centre and Medical Director, Oncology, at the Centre for Innovative Medicine (CIM) at The Institute, the study will evaluate the safety (i.e. the drug’s ability to act without adverse effects) and tolerability (i.e. the subject’s ability to withstand adverse effects) of Actinium-225, which works by targeting the prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA). Learn more
New advances in lung cancer treatment
International clinical trial shows perioperative immunotherapy prolongs life in non-small-cell lung cancer patients
Positive results from a randomized Phase III clinical trial for patients with operable, early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have recently been published in The Lancet.
These show that an immunotherapy drug called pembrolizumab (KEYTRUDA®), used in conjunction with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (i.e., given before surgery) and again after surgery, improves patients’ lifespan without adversely affecting their quality of life.
“Non-small cell lung cancer is the most common form of lung cancer, and this is the first paper in 30 years of research in this field to show a benefit in terms of overall survival, i.e., lifespan for patients, associated with the addition of neoadjuvant immunotherapy to standard treatment for this type of cancer,” says the first author of the paper and lead surgeon of the study, Dr. Jonathan Spicer, a scientist in the Cancer Research Program at The Institute, a thoracic surgeon at the Montreal General Hospital of the MUHC and the medical director of the McGill Thoracic Oncology Network. Learn more
More research highlights from the CRP Program
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Jonathan D. Spicer, Marina Chiara Garassino, Heather A. Wakelee, Moïshe Liberman, Terufumi Kato, Masahiro Tsuboi, Se-hoon Lee, Keneng Chen, Christophe Dooms, Margarita Majem, Ekkehard Eigendorff, Gaston L. Martinengo, Olivier Bylicki, Delvys Rodríguez-Abreu, Jamie E. Chaft, Silvia Novello, Jing Yang, Ashwini Arunachalam, Steven M. Keller, Ayman Samkari, Shugeng Gao on behalf of the KEYNOTE-671 Investigators. Neoadjuvant pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy followed by adjuvant pembrolizumab compared with neoadjuvant chemotherapy alone in patients with early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (KEYNOTE-671): a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 3 trial. The Lancet 404(1459): 124-1252, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01756-2
Gautier Marcq, Ronald Kool, Alice Dragomir, Girish S. Kulkarni, Rodney Henry Breau, Michael Kim, Ionut Buscǎ, Hamidreza Abdi, Mark T. Dawidek, Michael Uy, Gagan Fervaha, Nimira S. Alimohamed, Jonathan I. Izawa, Claudio Jeldres, Ricardo A. Rendón, Bobby Shayegan, Robert Siemens, Peter C. Black, Fabio Luis B. Cury, Wassim Kassouf. Benefit of Whole-Pelvis Radiation for Patients With Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer: An Inverse Probability Treatment Weighted Analysis. Journal of Clinical Oncology 43(3): 38-317, 2025. DOI: 10.1200/JCO.23.02718
Thierry Alcindor, James Tankel, Pierre Olivier Fiset, Sanjima Pal, Touhid Opu, Michael K. Strasser, Mehrnoush Dehghani, Nicholas R. Bertos, Dongmei Zuo, Carmen Leandra Mueller, Jonathan J. Cools-Lartigue, Marc P. Hickeson, Victoria A. Marcus, Sophie Camil. Phase 2 trial of perioperative chemo-immunotherapy for gastro-esophageal adenocarcinoma: The role of M2 macrophage landscape in predicting response. Cell Reports Medicine 6(4), 2025: 105002415524: DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2025.102045
Chelsea de Bellis, Sujay Vennam, Christopher B. Eeles, Pegah Rahimizadeh, Justin M.M. Cates, Thomas P. Stricker, Jenny Hoffman, Kristen N. Ganjoo, Gregory W. Charville, Benjamin Haibe-Kains, Matt van de Rijn, Joanna Przybył. Genomic, Epigenomic, and Transcriptomic Inter- and Intratumor Heterogeneity in Desmoid Tumors. Clinical Cancer Research 31(1): 25-216, 2025: 85214452521: DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-24-1240
Ansley Gnanapragasam, Eftyhios Kirbizakis, Anna Li, Kyle H. White, Katelyn L. Mortenson, Juliana Cavalcante de Moura, Wajih Jawhar, Yifei Yan, Reilly Falter, Colleen S. Russett, Betty Giannias, Sophie Camilleri-Broét, Nicholas R. Bertos, Jonathan J. Cools-Lartigue, Livia Garzia, Veena Sangwan, Lorenzo Edwin Ferri, Xiaoyang Zhang, Swneke Donovan Bailey. HiChIP-Based Epigenomic Footprinting Identifies a Promoter Variant of UXS1 That Confers Genetic Susceptibility to Gastroesophageal Cancer. Cancer Research 84(14): 2377-2389, 2024. DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-23-2397
Kyle K. Dickinson, Archi Sharma, Ramanakumar Venkata Agnihotram, Selin Altuntur, Morag Park, Sarkis H. Meterissian, Julia Valdemarin Burnier. Circulating Tumor DNA and Survival in Metastatic Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. JAMA Network Open 7(9), 2024: 85203336554: DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.31722
Ansley Gnanapragasam, Eftyhios Kirbizakis, Anna Li, Kyle H. White, Katelyn L. Mortenson, Juliana Cavalcante de Moura, Wajih Jawhar, Yifei Yan, Reilly Falter, Colleen S. Russett, Betty Giannias, Sophie Camilleri-Broét, Nicholas R. Bertos, Jonathan J. Cools. HiChIP-Based Epigenomic Footprinting Identifies a Promoter Variant of UXS1 That Confers Genetic Susceptibility to Gastroesophageal Cancer. Cancer Research 84(14): 2377-2389, 2024: 85199126082: DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-23-2397
Talía Malagón, Eduardo Luis Fabiano Franco, Romina A. Tejada, Salvatore V. Vaccarella. Epidemiology of HPV-associated cancers past, present and future: towards prevention and elimination. Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology 21(7): 522-538, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41571-024-00904-z
Carla Herman, Nathalie Harb, Meghri Ghazarian, Éric Belzile, Nina Morena, Ari Nareg Meguerditchian. BIO25-022: Why Don't They Want to Wear Sunscreen? Quantifying Anti-Sunscreen Messaging on TikTok. Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network : JNCCN 23(35), 2025: 105002489079: DOI: 10.6004/jnccn.2024.7105
Sophie Poulet, Meiou Dai, Ni Wang, Gang Yan, Julien Boudreault, Girija Daliah, Alan Guillevin, Huong Nguyen, Soaad Galal, Suhad Ali, Jean Jacques Lebrun. Genome-wide in vivo CRISPR screen identifies TGFβ3 as actionable biomarker of palbociclib resistance in triple negative breast cancer. Molecular Cancer 23(1), 2024: 85195004427: DOI: 10.1186/s12943-024-02029-4
Nader Sadeghi, Thavakumar Subramaniam, Keith Richardson, Marco Antonio Mascarella, Anthony G. Zeitouni, George Shenouda, Khalil Sultanem, Alex M. Mlynarek, Derin Caglar, K. Esfahani, Arjun S. Joshi, Robert S. Siegel, Joseph F. Goodman, Punam G. Thakkar, E. Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy and Transoral Robotic Surgery for Human Papillomavirus-Related Oropharyngeal Cancer. JAMA Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, 2025: 85218493892: DOI: 10.1001/jamaoto.2024.3303
Mark Sorin, Connor J. Prosty, Louis Ghaleb, Kathy Nie, Khaled Katergi, Muhammad H. Shahzad, Laurie Rose Dubé, Aline Atallah, Anikka M. Swaby, Matthew Dankner, Trafford R. Crump, Logan A. Walsh, Pierre Olivier Fiset, Boris Sepesi, Patrick M. Forde, Tina Ca. Neoadjuvant Chemoimmunotherapy for NSCLC: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. JAMA Oncology 10(5): 621-633, 2024: 85190275560: DOI: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2024.0057
