A group of dedicated volunteers and donors, many of whom have lost loved ones to brain cancer, have added $929,000 to the grand total raised for research since they began their campaign in 2015.
The fifth edition of (ABN), which took place on Oct. 23, 2019 at Windsor Station, brought over 700 guests together to sample Montreal鈥檚 best food and drink as they learned about the groundbreaking research their money made possible.
Since its first edition, ABN has donated $4.25 million for research at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital). It was created by a group of people who felt deeply about supporting and accelerating the development of the best possible treatments to combat brain cancer. They saw ABN as a meaningful way to support the work of The Neuro鈥檚 Dr. Kevin Petrecca, chief of the Department of Neurosurgery at the 平特五不中 Health Centre.
Included amongst the earliest supporters of ABN are Marie-Claude Lacroix, who lost a son to brain cancer, Heidi Small, who lost her father and Suzanne Wexler, who lost her mother.
This year, ABN鈥檚 volunteer honorary chair was Alexandre Le Bouthillier, co-founder and CCO of Imagia, a young Montreal company that brings together healthcare expertise and advanced artificial intelligence to diagnose, treat and cure disease.
As a result of ABN funds, Dr. Petrecca鈥檚 lab was able to take advantage of newly developed single-cell profiling technologies that have accelerated the pace of groundbreaking work on the aggressive brain cancer called glioblastoma.
Tissues contain many different cell types. To differentiate these varied cells, the Petrecca lab, and his partners Drs. Jiannis Ragoussis and Guillaume Bourque at 平特五不中 Genome Center, have been using new single cell sequencing technologies to sequence the RNA and DNA of tens of thousands of individual brain cancer cells.
So far, the lab has identified a dozen or so genes whose molecules could possibly be put to future clinical use.
鈥淎BN enables us to ask big questions and use innovative approaches to answer these questions,鈥� says Dr. Petrecca. 鈥淲e鈥檙e continually pushing to understand the origin and development of brain cancers and their microenvironment to develop enlightened therapies. Brain cancer has been treated as though its one uniform cancer entity, but it鈥檚 not. And there is good evidence that the immune system and the cancer interact to affect the nature of cancer development.鈥�
鈥淲e have an upcoming scientific paper that characterizes the heterogeneity of all the different kinds of cancer cells in the tumours of many of Dr. Petrecca鈥檚 patients,鈥� says Dr. Charles Couturier, who led the sequencing. 鈥淲e鈥檒l then look to see whether there are any underlying patterns.鈥�
鈥淭he cost barriers to RNA single-cell sequencing are very high. We鈥檙e very fortunate to have A Brilliant Night to support it.鈥�
A Brilliant Night would like to thank its major sponsors BMO Financial Group, CIBC, National Bank, Desjardins and WSP, Bell, CAL Construction, CGI, Fednav, Le Groupe Charbonneau, KPMG, Logistec, Medisys, Metro, Power Corporation du Canada, TC, The Rossy Foundation.
