Dr. Raymond Lai

Even though researchers have made steady inroads in understanding and treating cancer, one particular kind, mantle cell lymphoma, remains stubbornly resistant to treatment—particularly after it’s treated with the first rounds of chemotherapy.

Those diagnosed with the disease usually only have about three years to live and can only be treated with the most aggressive regimes of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Building on seminal work of a few years ago that sparked a vigorous and potentially fruitful approach to uncovering important new information on how the cancer proliferates, University of Alberta Laboratory Medicine and Pathology assistant professor Raymond Lai is embarking on a second stage in landmark work he hopes will lead to new, more successful therapies in treating the deadly cancer.

Dr. Lai was recently awarded $330,000 over three years by the National Cancer Institute of Canada to further the work.

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is one of the few types of cancer to see a rise in incidence rates in recent years. Dr. Raymond Lai is studying a highly aggressive form of the disease called mantle cell lymphoma.

With his first research grant from the Canadian Cancer Society, Dr. Lai hopes to add to this slim base of knowledge – and ultimately improve treatment for patients. Over the next three years, he’ll investigate a protein called STAT3, which he’s found to be overactive in some mantle cell lymphoma tumours.

He will try to determine why this overactivity occurs, and whether or not it affects clinical outcome. If his theory is correct and STAT3 is found to play an important role in mantle cell lymphoma, then it might be possible to use drugs that inhibit the protein’s activity to help treat the disease.

Mantle cell lymphomas are currently difficult to treat and often resistant to chemotherapy, so new treatment approaches are urgently needed.

"The long-term goal," says Dr. Lai, "is to explore new therapeutic strategies for this poorly understood disease through a better understanding of its biochemical defects."

In 2005, it’s estimated that 6,400 Canadians will be diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and 3,000 will die of the disease.

For further information, please contact Dr. Raymond Lai using the Email contact form or by phone at 780 407-8708