The soon-to-be constructed Kamloops cancer centre at Royal Inland Hospital won’t just be a space where area locals can receive radiation treatment, but a centre for research as well.

BC Cancer Foundation President and CEO Sarah Roth said research brings about better cancer treatments.

“And BC Cancer as a global leader in that, and that's not here [in Kamloops] now, so that's it's not just bringing equipment, but it's also bringing that,” Roth said. “Because the field of cancer is changing so rapidly you want to be in, and get your care in, an environment that's plugged into research.”

Roth said the creation of a BC Cancer Centre in Kamloops will bring the area into its provincial research system.

“There are lots of ways that the community here in Kamloops and the surrounding areas will be a part of and have the opportunity to be a part of gaining more knowledge which will help everybody's potentially cancer treatment,” Roth said.

“Once you're part of BC Cancer you're part of that whole system of innovation and discovery, and the BC Cancer Foundation, we are a huge funder in that. There's so many examples of research that we have funded that has led to dramatic changes in therapeutic care.” Roth said.

Roth said among the research being conducted at the moment by BC Cancer is a Prince George-led study looking at whether the amount of radiation used in prostate cancer treatment can be reduced from up to 40 rounds, down to between two and five.

There is also a province-wide study every breast cancer patient is being asked to contribute to donating a portion of their tumour tissue or saliva or blood, to analyze and hopefully understand why treatments work unequally for people with the same diagnosis.

BC Cancer Victoria, meanwhile, is studying immunotherapy, specifically looking at whether the immune system can be enhanced by extracting a person’s T cells, biomedically engineering them and putting them back in the body to fight the cancer, which Roth said, is showing huge promise in blood cancer.

“Research drives innovation, and it drives knowledge and then that leads to advances in care,” Roth said.

“For the harder-to-treat cancers like pancreatic, ovarian some lung cancers, we want to continue to have tools in our toolbox — that's what the oncologists say — so that they have they never have to say to you, ‘I’m sorry we've run out of options,’ and that's what research does. It gives them a menu of therapies to try.”

The Kamloops cancer centre is a project that’s been decades in the making, having first been promised by the NDP government of the 1990s. While area residents can receive chemotherapy treatment at RIH, the new centre will bring in the ability for cancer patients to receive radiation therapy locally for the first time.

“BC Cancer Kamloops is going to be huge benefit to this community and the surrounding communities. In the next decade, the cancer incidence in this region is projected to increase by 33 per cent and that's largely because we're an aging and growing population,”Roth said.

She noted half of all cancer patients require radiation therapy and it is a burden to have to travel long distances for that treatment.

“Often it's multiple rounds of radiation — sometimes five times a week, for many weeks. Having that locally will save so much time,” Roth said, noting having the service closer to home for people will also make it easier to have their family support around them during treatment.

The Kamloops facility will also have an MRI suite CT simulator, which plans the radiation before one receives it, ensuring that it's the most targeted and precise beam that enters the body.