Thanks, Stéphanie.
My name is John Bell. I'm a senior scientist with the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and a professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa. I currently serve as the scientific director of BioCanRx.
Cancer remains the emperor of all maladies. It's causing over 85,000 Canadian deaths this year, and that number is rising. It's also leaving tremendous economic and sociological carnage in its wake.
The good news on the horizon, however, has been the development of a whole new strategy for treating cancer that involves training a patient's immune system to be able to recognize, attack and eliminate their own cancer. Canadian scientists have made key contributions to the development of this new field of cancer immunotherapy; however, what has been particularly frustrating for me is to see these Canadian discoveries being turned into products outside our borders and, even worse, seeing Canadian cancer patients having delayed, limited or no access to breakthrough drugs that were built upon Canadian-funded science.
It was apparent to me both as an academic scientist and an entrepreneur that there has been a major strategic funding and coordination gap in Canada, making it very difficult, if not impossible, for laboratory and biomedical discoveries to be developed into therapeutic molecules within our own country. This inspired me to apply to the Networks of Centres of Excellence program to form BioCanRx and to create what has become, by all measures, a very successful and effective translational ecosystem. Since we build on the existing excellence in science and clinical care in Canada, we are able to cost-effectively expedite discoveries out of the lab and into trials.
Now let me give you just two examples of how we've been able to rapidly respond to cancer patient needs in Canada.
First, in response to the pandemic, our ecosystem rapidly mobilized its engine of expertise in immunology in clinical trials for cancer patients undergoing treatment, to help them stave off a COVID-19 infection. The trial sought to recruit 1,500 Canadians, and from the ideation to the launch of the trial, it all happened in six weeks. This is really lightspeed for this kind of activity in the biotech sector. It could only happen because we have a very highly coordinated network of motivated scientists, clinicians and industry partners, supported by a nimble government system.
A second example is CAR T-cell therapy. This is a type of immune therapy that harnesses the power of a patient's own immune cells to treat their own cancer. Between 2016 and 2018, there were 63 clinical studies where U.S. patients had access to this life-saving therapy. In that same time frame, only two CAR T-cell clinical studies sponsored by pharma were conducted in Canada. These were in major urban centres and thus provided very limited access to the vast majority of Canadian patients who might have benefited.
BioCanRx scientists and clinicians felt compelled to use our skills, our know-how and our collective infrastructure to reverse the situation, and I can tell you that we are now manufacturing our own made-in-Canada CAR T-cell therapeutics for the treatment of Canadian patients in a very cost-effective fashion. Through this program, we pioneered the delivery of personalized point-of-care manufactured products for patients with refractory leukemia and lymphoma, with the goal of making these kinds of treatments accessible to Canadians wherever they live in our country.
It's our hope that our network will be able to continue enabling science innovators from all sectors to capitalize on existing Canadian infrastructure and expertise while developing their technologies on Canadian soil.
With the sunsetting of the NCE program, however, we are concerned that we'll no longer be able to sustain our support for preclinical to clinical development for those who need it most—the Canadian patient—and we strongly urge the government to consider this and to keep funding organizations with a demonstrated track record in addressing an unmet need in Canada, such as BioCanRx.
We really appreciate the chance to come and meet with you here today.
Thank you.