Dr. Arielle Elkrief, a researcher in the Cancer research theme of the CHUM Research Centre (CRCHUM), will receive $525,000 over the next three years to support groundbreaking cancer research.

She is one of five recipients who will receive a total of $2.6 million from the Terry Fox Research Institute. This funding will advance research into melanoma, lung, brain, blood, pediatric and young adult cancers.

Unravelling the tumour microbiome

Thanks to the grant from the Terry Fox Research Institute, Dr. Elkrief and her team will study the bacteria present in and around tumours in order to better understand how the tumour microbiome influences the success of immunotherapy and whether it can be modified to improve patient outcomes.

“By the end of this project, we want to know whether live bacteria are present within the tumour and, if so, how these bacteria might impact the immune system’s response to immunotherapy,” says Dr. Elkrief. “If we discover that bacteria are present in tumours and influence immunotherapy response, we can then use this as a novel biomarker for predicting how patients will respond to immunotherapy.”

This new research builds on Dr. Elkrief’s previous work, which confirmed that the gut microbiome—the trillions of bacteria that live in the digestive tract—can affect immunotherapy responses in lung cancer and melanoma.

Find out more: Terry Fox Research Institute