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Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
Dr. Linh Nguyen has been part of The Princess
Margaret’s immunotherapy efforts since they started
a decade ago. The field has changed rapidly and
Dr. Nguyen says a number of breakthroughs have helped
it take flight. She’s excited to see a growing number of
approved immunotherapies that can be used to treat
patients – and how they may be combined in future.
Dr. Nguyen went to graduate school at the University
of Toronto, before pursuing post-doctorate studies at
Harvard Medical School. She came back to Toronto to
join The Princess Margaret.
Today, Dr. Nguyen leads the Tumor Immunotherapy
Program’s Cell Production Team. Much of her current
work involves adoptive T-cell therapy.
Dr. Marcus Butler is motivated to help patients,
and in his own words, cautiously optimistic about
immunotherapy. For Dr. Butler, the challenge he
currently faces is determining how immunotherapy can
be tailored to treat each type of cancer effectively. He’s
excited about the possibilities of his work in adoptive
T-cell therapy.
In his lab, Dr. Butler and his team work to engineer
an immune response by taking cells from a patient’s
own immune system and modifying them to fight
cancer more effectively. Essentially, they supercharge
the immune system.
Dr. Butler was drawn to The Princess Margaret
for its international reputation and commitment to
immunotherapy as a powerful tool to treat cancer. He
was recruited from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The collaborative culture at the Cancer Centre
inspires Dr. Butler to push forward with innovative
research. “This is the kind of environment that anyone
would want to be in to help move the field forward.”
Cancer Experts
DR. Marcus Butler
clinical head, immune
profiling team
DR. Daniel De
Carvalho
Scientist
Dr. Linh
Nguyen
Head, Cell
Production Team
Throughout his 42-year career, Dr. Christopher
Paige has seen the field of cancer immunotherapy rise
and fall, but he believes it’s finally having its moment.
Studies of experimental models have given scientists
a better understanding of the immune system and the
therapies that can be derived from it. His hope is for
immunotherapy to become a standard form of
cancer treatment.
In his lab, Dr. Paige and his collaborators have
learned how to use viruses to alter cancer cells to
make them more visible to the immune system. They
are using these methods to develop cancer vaccines.
These vaccines have reached the clinical trial stage. Dr.
Paige says it has taken more than a decade of work to
get to this point.
DR. CHRISTOPHER PAIGE
Senior Scientist
Since he was young, Dr. Daniel De Carvalho always
had a keen interest in science. That continued into his
university years in Brazil and has carried into his work in
cancer research at The Princess Margaret.
Today, Dr. De Carvalho does research on cancer
treatments involving epigenetics and immunotherapy.
He is currently working on treatments that make cancer
cells appear as virus-infected cells, so the immune
system can take action. A clinical trial is taking place
right now at The Princess Margaret which combines
that approach with immunotherapy drugs, to boost the
immune system to attack cancer.
Dr. De Carvalho is also interested in researching
blood-based methods of cancer detection, in hopes of
finding the disease earlier.
Epigenetics is the study of
changes in gene activity that
can be passed on, but which
also occur without changes
in the DNA sequence.
