Drs. Jean Wang, John Dick and Jayne Danska win 2024 Inventor of the Year Award!

Last night, we celebrated UHN trailblazers and legacy builders at the inaugural UHN Mission Excellence Awards ceremony.

Drs. Jean Wang and John Dick, along with Dr. Jayne Danska, are the winners of this year's Inventor of the Year Award for their work in cancer immunotherapy, being recognized for identifying a novel way that cancer cells evade destruction.

‍“Don’t Eat Me”.

‍It’s a simple biological message whispered by crafty cancer cells to the immune system as they attempt to evade cancer therapies and avoid destruction.

The complex work to understand and control that signal which gives those dangerous cells the power to hide has taken decades of research to understand - work undertaken by Drs. Jean Wang, John Dick, both at UHN's Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, and Jayne Danska of the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute.

Their research led to development of TTI-621, a SIRPα fusion protein that specifically targets the signal receptor CD47, responsible for activating the “Don’t Eat Me” signal that cancer cells give to the immune system as they attempt to spread​, grow and avoid destruction. The novelty of the discovery at the time was unprecedented – while everyone was looking at other strategies, they began looking at signal receptors. This work partially underpinned the platform for UHN start-up Trillium Therapeutics, created in 2004.

In 2022, Pfizer Inc. acquired Trillium Therapeutics in a US$2.22 billion deal to further develop the TTI-621 asset, re-naming the drug to Maplirpacept. As of February 2025, Maplirpacept is still undergoing global Phase II clinical trials for multiple hematological malignancies and remains competitive in the immunotherapy market.

All this possible because of a discovery made at UHN decades ago by Drs. Jean Wang, John Dick and Jayne Danska.

Congratulations! Drs. Dick, Wang!

Read the history of their discovery and commercialization of TTI-621 here. ‍

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