3 - Friday, April 7, 1989 - North Shore News N. VAN FIRM PIONEERS CANCER- FIGHTING TECHNIQUES Company gets $1 million grant A NORTH Vancouver company, pioneering research in the development of an innovati cancer-fighting dnigs, will be from Discovery Enterprises Inc. ve new method of delivering receiving $1 million in funding (ED to further its research into improving pharmaceuticals. The Canadian Liposome Co. Ltd. (CLC), a company formed in 1987 as an offshoot of research conducted by members of the bio- chemistry department of UBC, is developing a full range of anti- cancer drugs enclosed in liposomes — manmade microscopic bubbles of fatty lipids. The company is also working on ways to deliver these liposomal drugs specifically to diseased areas inside the body. The North Vancouver company will receive $500,000 this year and $500,000 next year from DEI, which its Princeton, New Jersey, based parent company, The Liposome Company Inc. (TLC) will match. DEI, the local funding agency, is an_ early-stage venture capital company funded by the province of B.C. Formed five years ago, DEI works with a fixed fund of $56 million. To dete $12 million has been allocated to 30 companies based in B.C., including the CLC. “We see a lot of business plans and this was one of them,” said Burke Corbet, DEI investment of- ficer. ‘‘We look for a targe market opportunity and we look for it to be good for B.C. We look for evi- dence of a good management team, We’ve been very impressed with the parent company. Dr. Pieter Cullis and his team are leaders in this particular techno- logy. Our return will come, if it comes at all, by the way of royalties.’”’ The royalties anticipated by DEI will come once the new drug delivery system has passed the EDWARD NAHAN By MICHAEL BECKER News Reporter clinical testing stage and is avail- able on the market. That process may take another three to five years. Dr. Pieter Cullis, a UBC pro- fessor of biochemistry who has in the area of lipids, MICKOSCOPIC LIPOSOMES are frozen and capiured by the cam- era’s eye, liposomes and membranes since 1973, heads the CLC as exccutive vice-president and chief operating officer. Cullis and a team of scientists, who began researching phar- maceutical liposome technology in earnest earlier in the decade, have devised a way of producing oniformly-sized liposomes (micro- sco-ic spheres of lipid) and encap- sulating drugs in them. Lipids are the fats which make up the membranes which surround all cells, Cullis and his team take cE Band elder dies THE SQUAMISH Indian Band lost a_ highly- respected band elder Monday when Edward Gilbert Nahanee died. He was 91. Mr. Nahanee played an in- tegral part in helping to establish the Native Brotherhood of B.C., which represents the interests of native fishermen, and was awarded lifetime membership in the brotherhood when he retired as its business agent in 1977. In 1967, Mr. Nahanee was awarded a Canada Confedera- tion Medal by the federal gov- ernment in recognition of his work with B.C.'s native people. A memorial service is being heid for Mr. Nahanee today (Friday) at 10:30 a.m. at St. Paul's Catholic Church in Home & Garden... Auto...........6......21 What's Going On........18 Mailbox......... 7 Classified..............26 North Vancouver. EDWARD NAHANEE _... played an integral part in establishing native brotherhood. WEATHER Friday, cloudy with sunny breaks, high 14°C. Saturday and Sunday, sunny with cloudy poriods, high 14°C, low Second Class Registration Number 3885 them from egg yolks. Said Cullis: ‘‘Liposomes are ob- tained when you extract those lipids from the membranes. You put them in water and they spon- taneously form liposomes.”’ Liposomes were first discovered in the early 1960s. Cullis estimates there are 200 to 300 scientific groups involved in liposome research worldwide. But the local team’s efforts have produced breakthrough developments and pave the way for an effective in- traveneous drug delivery system. Said Cullis: “‘For example with cancer drugs, they all have the ef- fect that you want, to cure the disease, but they also have toxic side effects. Cancer drugs work by inhibiting cell division, by in large. “So in areas where you have rapidly dividing celis, you have very bad effects. That starts with your hair, and it goes on to your gut or intestines.... This delivery system, which is injected. is more site specific,’’ he said. The liposomes the local scientific team deals in are 1/100th the size of a red blood cell. A red blood cell is 10 microns or 10/1,000th of an inch. The researchers found that by putting an electrical voltage across the membrane of the liposome, they could get the drug to spontaneously move to the in- side of the fatty bubble. Said Cullis, ‘‘The drugs tend to be pusitively charged ana we maxe the insides of the liposome nega- tive. We can get over 99 per cent of a drug to go into a liposome and stay there.’’ Doxorubicin, the major anti- cancer drug used right now, is one of the approximately half dozen anti-cancer drugs the local com- pany is working to get a liposomal version of. Cullis said the one drug alone ‘represents a $250 million worldwide market. Clinical trials of the liposome ing it closer to home and set up a clinical trials program at the Cancer Contral Agency of B.C. in Vancouver."* technology on humans are current- ly being conducted in Hamilton, Ontaric, and in the U.S. Said Cullis, ‘‘We’re trying to br- NEWS photo Neil Lucente DR. PIETER Cullis, head of The Canadian Liposome Co. Ltd., prepares a vial of liposomes in the company’s North Vencouver lab. The company is pioneering a new method of delivering arugs. Liposomes are tiny spheres made of lipids, the building blocks of membranes. Cullis and his team of scientists are developing a range of liposomal anti-cancer drugs and are working to deliver the drugs specifically to cancerous and diseas- ed sites inside the body. Cap College Faculty Assoc. MEMBERS OF the Capilano College Faculty Association (CCFA) voted 82 per cent Tuesday night in favor of striking to back contract demands for public school teachers. The association also issued 72- hour strike notice to the college and will be in a legal strike posi- tion by the weekend, which is ap- proximately two wecks before final exams for many of the college’s students. CCFA chief negotiator Ed Lavalle said 196 of the associa- tion’s 335 members voted Tuesday night, including 123 of 143 full- time college faculty. The vote result, he said, ‘‘tells me we have solid support for a strike for wage parity.’’ A wage and benefits package from the college was expected to be presented to faculty Thursday night. The strike vote was initiated after the CCFA expressed frustra- tion at limited progress on union wage demands. But college representatives, who purposely put off dealing with the CCFA’s monetary demands until details of the college’s 1989-90 provincial grant were made avail- able following the March 30 release of B.C.’s spring budget, have said they don’t understand the association’s reasons for call- ing a strike vote. College negotiator Geoff Holter said Wednesday he was not sur- prised at the outcome of the vote, but declined further comment. With final term papers for some students due next week and final exams scheduled for the following week, Capilano College Student votes to strike are going to have them,’’ Jardine said. ‘‘We don’t need a strike."’ Negotiations between the two wage parity with North Shore sides were scheduled to contiaue By TIMOTHY RENSHAW News Reporter Society chairman Kerry Hall said an extended instructor strike would have an adverse impact on a lot of people by delaying student plans for summer work, travel and education at universities and other institutions. “Its a crucial point right now," she said. ‘‘It could harm a lot of people.’’ But college president Douglas Sardine said students should not use the threat of a strike as an ex- COLLEGE PRESIDENT Doug Jardine ... ‘“‘We don’t need a strike.”” cuse to ease up on studies. “My advice to students is to study for their exams, because we 1oday, and Holter said the college was prepared to bargain into the weekend if necessary. College faculty went on strike for 16 days in [986 to back de- mands for increased wages and reduced full-duty instructor workloads, which were increased in May 1985 to help the college cope with budget cuts under gov- ernment restraint. The three-year contract that ended the strike expired March 31. It provided for . total 9.25 per cent wage increase over three years and a recently arbitrated workload agreement that reduced the col- Jege’s definition of a full-duty in- structor from nine to 8.5 sections (or courses). This time around, the CCFA’s economic package calls for a one- year wage and benefits increase totalling 26.82 per cent: a basic 14 per cent wage increase, which would be similar to the 13.7 per cent wage hikes won by both North Shore teachers associations in their recently signed two-year contracts, an additional 2.82 per cent cost to reduce the number of steps in the current instructors’ wage scale from 14 to 10, and a 10 per cent increase in faculty benefits. According to the CCFA, the average college instructor’s salary is worth -15 per cent less now than what it was in 1980 and is currently 14 per cent lower than comparable salaries of North Shore public school teachers.