With over 229,000 patient visits per year, the Odette Cancer Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is the sixth largest cancer care centre in North America. In partnership with Cancer Care Ontario and affiliated with University of Toronto, the Odette Centre offers the highest level of patient care while conducting world-class research and teaching. With numerous site groups focusing on specific cancers such as breast, prostate, colorectal and non-hodgkins lymphoma, our researchers and clinicians share information in a multidisciplinary framework, ensuring a unique and diversified approach.

The Odette Centre is home to Canada’s first patient-centred, multi-disciplinary clinic for the treatment of women with locally advanced breast cancer and inflammatory breast cancer—a stage three breast cancer that is often difficult to treat.

The Advanced Therapeutics Program treats patients with specific types of cancer using stem-cell transplantation. Healthy stem cells are collected before treatment with highdose chemotherapy and then returned to the patient to restore blood cell production and immunity.

The Rapid Response Radiotherapy Program provides palliative care to patients with effective, timely pain-relief and treatment of symptoms associated with metastatic and recurrent disease.

Our current international trials aim to effectively shrink tumours while also preventing drug resistance in cancer cells. Odette Centre researchers are pioneers in combining low chemotherapy doses and anti-angiogenic drugs to drastically impede tumour growth.

The Odette Centre’s breast cancer team has completed the world’s first treatment that implants small beads of radioactive material directly into the tumour in a simple one-day outpatient technique.

The Odette Centre is the first cancer centre in Canada to have a combined Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Computed Tomography (CT) simulator dedicated specifically for cancer research and radiation treatment planning.

Laparoscopic-assisted radical vaginal hysterectomy is a surgical alternative to a standard hysterectomy. The procedure’s success rate is equal to that of standard hysterectomies, but the patient is still able to bear children.

The Odette Centre is one of the first centres in Canada to perform Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) for cancers of the head and neck, prostate, and breast. The treatment tailors the dose of radiation to the shape of the patient’s tumour, providing a more even dose of radiation and signifi cantly reduces the skin reactions that can occur when an area receives too much radiation.

Odette Cancer Centre

Sunnybrook Foundation