Our Research

In this section:

• Overview
• Major Research Programs

Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer in Canada and the second leading cause of cancer deaths.  Within our country’s aging baby boomer population, prostate cancer cases will continue to increase and threaten longevity and quality of life.  Investing in research that focuses on understanding and controlling this disease is an important priority.

Research focus

As patient advocacy groups continue to demand faster bench to clinic timelines for new treatments, our world-class team of researchers is rising to the challenge.

The Vancouver Prostate Centre has a large, multidisciplinary research program that undertakes basic, clinical, translational and patient research. The research focus is aimed at discovering the reasons for cancer progression and treatment resistance at the molecular level and using this information to develop new services and products to improve cancer outcomes.

Current research is concentrated on understanding the mechanisms of castrate-resistant prostate cancer, including the development and commercialization of new classes of drugs that may be more effective following hormone therapy failure.

In addition, we are working to discover new genetic markers and targets for the diagnosis and treatment of advanced prostate cancer.

While we are focused on prostate cancer, our Centre includes researchers primarily focused on bladder cancer and kidney cancer. Building on the strong base of the VPC, the bladder and kidney programs will quickly have an impact on patients.

Two of our research programs are working on COVID-19.  With Dr. Cherkasov's novel AI-based platform, Deep Docking, and our existing translational research pipeline, we are working towards finding a cure for COVID-19. Dr. Jefferies has a COVID-19 research project to test and deliver a candidate COVID-19 vaccine and other clinical tools to address current societal needs; if these vaccines are successful, they will be produced safely and efficiently and then mass distributed, at a reasonable cost, and with acceptable shelf-life.

Our strengths

The Vancouver Prostate Centre is the largest program of its kind in Canada, and is recognized as one of the top tier prostate cancer research programs in the world.

Our strength comes from a combination of factors: top research talent, cutting edge facilities and a proven discovery and translational research program that draws on valuable resources such as in-demand technologies, human tissues, cancer models and clinical expertise under the same roof.

The Vancouver Prostate Centre has an 18-year history, discovering and developing novel targeted therapies. Many of these have led to the development of patented drug products and have contributed to creating, growing and sustaining a number of biotech companies here in B.C., and across Canada.

In addition to urothelial cancers, much of our research is applicable to other cancers such as breast, lung and colon.

By drawing on strong partnerships with national clinical trials, research networks, and industry via our commercialization program, PC-TRiADD, our Centre is able to accelerate new drug treatments into human trials, while promoting regional growth and investment in biotechnology, and improving patient care for Canadians.