Dr. Raphaële Charest-Morin Awarded VCH Investigator Award

By Jolie Leung

We are proud to announce that UBC Orthopaedics Assistant Professor Dr. Raphaële Charest-Morin has been awarded one of five 2023 Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute Investigator Awards as a Clinician Scientist. This award recognizes Dr. Charest-Morin’s research on whole exome sequencing (WES) technology to assess completeness of primary bone tumour removal in the spine.

Primary bone tumours of the spine are challenging to treat, can be fatal, and have high rates of complication for oncological resection. The current recommended treatment is to remove the tumour in a single piece and possibly adjuvant high-dose radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy.

As a spine surgeon sub-specializing in spinal oncology, Dr. Charest-Morin seeks to understand the variety in surgical outcomes, and offer patients more personalized options. In her research, she uses WES to develop biomarkers that can detect the presence and changes in the level of circulating tumour cell DNA in a patient’s blood before and after tumour removal surgery.

Since 2021, Dr. Charest-Morin and her team have been bio-banking spinal tumours, including primary spinal tumours and metastases, as well as collecting blood samples from patients with spinal tumours, both pre- and post-surgical treatment. By taking blood samples from patients before and after surgery, she is able to compare the presence of specific mutations in the whole DNA between patients who have had their tumours completely or incompletely removed.

She describes the ongoing research as an example of translational medicine, in which her team aims to better understand spinal tumours at a molecular level in order to translate knowledge into improvements in patient quality of care and life. The end goal of the study would allow clinicians to draw blood from a patient with a primary bone tumour, develop a personalized biomarker, perform a surgery to remove the whole tumour, then use the biomarker in a post-surgical blood panel to detect any remnants of the tumour.

Compared to existing treatment recommendations for patients with primary bone tumours, which do not involve follow-up procedures in the long term, WES could enable clinicians to track patient recovery and detect any recurrence in real time, using only non-invasive blood tests available in both rural and urban areas. In addition, it would hopefully one day lessen the need for MRI scans post-surgery to determine tumour presence, where patients with steel implants could experience artifacts and distortions in their imaging results.

Dr. Charest-Morin stresses although this research is still in its early infancy, its ultimate goal is to revolutionize care for patients with spinal tumours, allowing clinicians to track, and patients to understand, their recovery without the need for invasive procedures after surgery.

Learn more about the Vancouver Coastal Health Investigator Awards:

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