The Vita Children’s Foundation: $50,000 in Support of the Leukemia Cell Bank

The Vita Children’s Foundation has donated $50,000 to the HMR Foundation to support the research being conducted by the Quebec Leukemia Cell Bank (BCLQ) right here at the Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont (HMR) Research Centre.

The Quebec Leukemia Cell Bank: A unique infrastructure in Canada

Created in 2001, the Quebec Leukemia Cell Bank (BCLQ) is a provincial project funded by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec en Santé (FRQS) Cancer Research Network and other partners, including the Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont and the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer.

A donation for pediatric oncology research

Driven by a desire to foster the development of new therapeutic approaches, the Vita Children’s Foundation provides tangible support to the work carried out by Dr. Josée Hébert and her teams. Through their research, they are seeking to understand the mechanisms involved in hematological cancers, which will make it possible to develop new treatments for these cancers.

D^re Josée Hébert, hématologue, hematologist, clinician scientist at the Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont and Director of the Quebec Leukemia Cell Bank, D^re Sonia Cellot, hematologist and clinician scientist at CHU Ste-Justine, Daniela De Santis, Co-founder of The Vita Children’s Foundation, Sonia Sardelli, Co-founder of The Vita Children’s Foundation, et Valérie Paquette, Senior Advisor, Philanthropic Development, FHMR.

Thus, the $50,000 donated by the Vita Children’s Foundation will contribute to the BCLQ’s pediatric and young adult acute leukemia program. This program aims to optimize research into childhood leukemia by making research resources available to the scientific community. The program has four main objectives:

• Advance the development of precision medicine, optimizing treatment for patients suffering from the various subtypes of childhood and young adult leukemia.
• Participate in the development of new drugs to better target leukemia in children and young adults.
• Improve the genetic characterization and clinical annotations of the specimens in the BCLQ collection.
• Promote research programs to study families with a leukemia predisposition syndrome, which are emerging and newly recognized entities.

The BCLQ’s pediatric program investigators, Dr. Josée Hébert, hematologist, clinician scientist at the Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont and Director of the Quebec Leukemia Cell Bank, and Dr. Sonia Cellot, hematologist and clinician scientist at CHU Ste-Justine, were delighted with this gift.