The Advanced
Therapeutics Program
The ATP, at Sunnybrook and Woman’s College Health Science Centre was initiated in 1995 under the leadership of Dr. Neil Berinstein. This program was founded in order to provide patients with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma with novel leading edge treatment approaches including high dose therapy and transplantation. Funding for the core program was provided both through Cancer Care Ontario (then the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation) and the research division of Sunnybrook and Woman’s College North Science Centre.
The program was developed through a collaborative effort between clinicians and

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clinical/scientists at the Toronto-Sunnybrook Regional Cancer Centre and the Laboratory Medicine Department and Sunnybrook and Woman's College Health Sciences Centre. The program was designed to incorporate the technology advances and equipment with high quality personalized clinical care including standardized and efficient management practices. The program has grown over the last several years and now includes participation by two clinician scientists, two clinical hematologists/medical oncologists, one laboratory haematologist, one pathologist, one clinical nurse coordinator, two clinical fellows, two transfusion support personnel for stem cell collection and cryopreservation, stem cell enumeration by flow cytometry, molecular diagnostics and a research scientist dedicated to immunological monitoring and therapeutic manipulations. The program works closely with inpatient support personnel at Sunnybrook and Woman's College Health Sciences Centre. Although the primary mandate of the Advanced Therapeutics Program is to provide the best of medical care to patients with Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the philosophy of the program is to do this in context of translational clinical research so as to both learn from it's activities and make improvements to them for patients at Sunnybrook and wordwide. Several research protocols have and are being generated to investigate new treatment approaches. The programs primary research focus is to investigate immunologic strategies to minimize and delay recurrence post autologous stem call transplantation. Various immunologic approaches have and are being studied including the use of recombitant Interferon Alpha post stem cell transplantation and the use of humanized monoclonal antibody Retuxan both as an "in vivo" purge and consolidative immunotherapy post stem cell transplantation. Most recently, Advanced Therapeutics Program has received three years oof funding from the Medical Research Council of Canada to generate novel cellular vaccines for patients with low grade Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma post autologous stem cell transplantation.