Research summary
Chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity is an emerging problem in which commonly used cancer therapies cause heart failure. Currently, there are no treatments to prevent or limit this problem or biomarkers to predict which patients will be susceptible to it.
As Canada Research Chair in Cardio-Oncology and Molecular Medicine, Dr. Gopinath Sutendra aims to discover new mechanisms and drug targets that would prevent cardiotoxicity while at the same time enhancing chemotherapy-mediated tumour regression. He and his research team are also identifying novel serum biomarkers that would predict which cancer patients are susceptible to heart failure during cancer therapy. To do this, they are focusing on novel pathways that are selective to the heart (a tissue that is exposed to high levels of oxygen) versus the tumour (a tissue that is exposed to low levels of oxygen). Ultimately, Sutendra’s research will benefit patients with heart failure and/or cancer—the two most common conditions leading to death among Canadians.