Posted 26 February 2025
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43% of patients at death’s door are cancer-free after trial treatment; Victoria-Ottawa program to be expanded
One of the trials has already seen almost half of end-stage blood cancer patients go into remission
Dr. Brad Nelson, director of B.C. Cancer’s Deeley Research Centre, at the B.C. Cancer Immunotherapy labs at Royal Jubilee Hospital in 2023. ADRIAN LAM, TIMES COLONIST
The B.C. Cancer Foundation is launching a campaign to raise $6.8 million to expand immunotherapy clinical trials in Victoria, one of which has already seen almost half of end-stage blood cancer patients go into remission.
“We’re just so excited to have such an amazing facility in Victoria — on the Island — that’s literally going to change cancer care for people all over the country and beyond,” said William Litchfield, executive director of the foundation for Vancouver Island.
B.C. Cancer researchers over the next few months will treat the last 10 of 100 participants in a Victoria-Ottawa CAR-T immunotherapy clinical trial (CLIC-01) that saw 43 per cent of patients who had been at death’s door declared cancer-free.
Litchfield said to get on the trial, patients had to have exhausted every other option, including chemotherapy. “Right now, over 40 per cent of those patients are cancer-free, and more data is coming in every day, and so it’s working.”
One of those successful trial participants is James Bay’s Noel Schacter, 79, who was considering medical assistance in dying in 2020 after his third bout of an aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Reached Wednesday at an RV site in Bakersfield, California, while on a six-week road trip, Schacter said he’ll be five years cancer-free in September.
“My oncologist … is pretty confident I’m cured,” said Schacter. “I get up every morning and still shake my head and say, gosh, I’m still here, am I ever lucky, I thought for sure I was a goner.”
Once the final patients finish the immunotherapy clinical trial in late spring and the data is collated and analyzed, researchers will apply to Health Canada to expand access across Canada.
Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy — known as CAR-T — treats lymphoma and some types of leukemia by withdrawing white blood cells from the patient, isolating the cancer‑fighting T cells, and genetically engineering them into an enhanced product to target and destroy cancer cells once it’s delivered intravenously back to the patient.
Now a second clinical trial (CLIC-02) has just treated its first of 24 participants — about half of whom will be pediatric patients — with another cancer-fighting T-cell product that targets a different protein on leukemia and lymphoma cancer cells.
“We’re very excited,” said Victoria-based Dr. Brad Nelson, who co-leads B.C. Cancer’s immunotherapy program, and is director of the B.C. Cancer’s Deeley Research Centre. “It’s been years in the making to produce this product.”
Nelson said it’s a “100 per cent Canadian-made” CAR-T cell product that started with a group in Ottawa making what’s called the antibody portion of the CAR-T, adding the antibody comes from llamas.
The second trial will give clinicians another important option for treating leukemia and lymphoma patients, said Litchfield, adding the trial will expand across seven centres in four provinces.
The addition of pediatric patients in the second trial also means “the sickest kids in Canada with leukemia and lymphoma will be able to get the treatment that’s being manufactured in Victoria,” no matter where they are, said Litchfield.
Researchers are also preparing for a phase-one clinical trial (CLIC-03) with new CAR-T products targeting solid tumours, specifically ovarian, pancreatic and lung cancer, with plans to begin treating participants in 2027.
In pre-clinical trials on mice, the immunotherapy is having “fantastic results,” said Nelson, noting there are few options currently for people with these solid tumours.
“This is the piece that really is ground-shaking,” he said. “This is brand new for B.C. and the country, and we’re leading the way right across the country on these new treatments.”
There is already a B.C. government-funded commercial CAR-T immunotherapy product for some types of leukemia and lymphoma that is equivalent to the CLIC-01 clinical trial for patients who have first had other treatments.
However, Nelson said the CAR-T cells used in the CLIC-01 clinical trial target a broader range of leukemia and lymphomas, have less toxicity and lower side-effects for certain patient populations than the commercial product, and can be produced faster and be less expensive.
There is no commercial product that’s equivalent to what’s being undertaken in the CLIC-02 clinical trial.
As for the CLIC-03 planned trial for 2027, “there’s no commercial product approved for any solid tumour anywhere in the world,” said Nelson. “So this is really very much the cutting edge.
“CAR-T cells have been very successful against blood cancers, but they’ve had very little success against solid tumours so far.”
Nelson, however, said he’s confident in the product, which is in development, and anxious to get it “into the clinic to start treating patients.”
ceharnett@timescolonist.com