B.C. doctors will be teaming with Ontario colleagues in a new joint research project that aims to better classify brain tumours and treatment.
The three-year study focuses the most common cause of cancer death among children --a brain tumour called medulloblastoma. It will look into the prevention of over-treatment that can cause life-altering side effects.
"We don't have to invent anything new, we just have to walk over the machine and turn the dial down and by doing that we can decrease the suffering for the family, decrease the cost for the health-care system, and improve the outcome and the quality of life for those children," said project leader Dr. Michael Taylor.
Nineteen-year-old Taylor Date is promoting the research as a way to give back to the organizations that helped her while she was sick. Now cancer free, she was diagnosed with medulloblastoma when she was only nine months old.
"To know that I am a survivor and I have this amazing quality of life means so much to me that I'm able to share my story," said Date.
Date's parents had decided to put her through chemotherapy and surgery but made the difficult choice to opt out of radiation.
The radiation treatment was considered unnecessary and there was potential of worsening her condition or causing severe side-effects including mental and physical disabilities.
"If no one had to make that choice that I had to, if she had both treatments -- I would never want that for any parent to have to decide that again," said Date's mother Penny Flynn.
Genome B.C. and other partners have provided $9.8 million to fund the project to work towards eliminating this decision for families and medical specialists.
The research also aims to ease the burden for the health-care system of an estimated $100 million annual toll from childhood cancers.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Maria Weisgarber
