Principal Investigator: Dr. Darren Brenner

Affiliation: University of Calgary - Cumming School of Medicine

Start Year: 2025

Cancer death rates have gone down for many types of cancer in recent years. Even so, cancer is still the leading cause of death in Canada. More than 88,000 people are expected to die from cancer in 2024. Breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancers are among the most common causes of cancer death.

The best ways to reduce cancer deaths are to prevent cancer before it starts and to find cancer early through screening programs. In Canada, most prevention and screening programs are based mainly on age. They do not fully consider other important factors, such as lifestyle, family history, or a person’s genetic risk.

Canada’s health care system is under pressure, and the population is getting older. Because of this, it is important to better understand who would benefit most from prevention and screening efforts. This study aims to use genetic information, along with other known risk factors, to better estimate a person’s risk of developing certain cancers.

We will focus on four types of cancer where prevention and early detection strategies already exist. We will combine genetic risk with other factors, such as smoking history, to group people into low, average, or high cancer risk categories. We will then study how using this information could improve public health programs and cancer screening at a population level.

This study will use existing health data from the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health (CanPath). CanPath is a large national study with nearly 330,000 adults from across Canada who have been followed since 2008. Participants have shared detailed information about their health, lifestyle, family history, and social and economic factors. More than 55,000 participants also have genetic data available.

Using these data, we will create models that combine genetics and other risk factors to better identify people at higher risk of cancer. This approach could help health systems focus prevention and screening efforts where they are needed most. It may also help reduce health inequities, use health care resources more wisely, and support better planning for an aging population.

By using genetic information alongside other risk factors, people who are at higher risk for cancer—but may not know it—could receive more personalized information about screening and prevention. Over time, risk-based approaches like this could improve cancer prevention, guide future screening guidelines, and help reduce the overall impact of cancer on people in Canada.