Every Tuesday, for last 15 years, Dr. Rebecca Auer could be found in an operating room at The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) removing cancer tumours from patients. As a surgeon who treats patients with locally advanced cancer, she knows how difficult the recovery is for patients and how devastating the outcomes can be, even when the cancer is gone. She also knows the power of hope.
“I continue to persevere because I truly believe that someday I will no longer need to do this. I know that every day we are discovering and evaluating better treatments. Working at a research hospital and being part of a research team has always given me that hope,” she explains.
Now, Dr. Auer is bringing that hope to her new role as TOH’s Executive Vice-President of Research and Innovation.
The road to international success
The former Chief Fellow in the Department of Surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York was recruited to TOH in 2007, after previously completing medical and research training in Ottawa. “My research experience as a graduate student at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa was excellent,” she says. “I had fantastic clinical and research mentors and I also wanted to come back to Canada to work in our healthcare system.”
By 2018, she was appointed Director of Cancer Research where she provided leadership for more than 300 scientists, clinician investigators, trainees, and staff. She implemented innovative programs to accelerate human tissue research, connect trainees and patients and advance environmental sustainability in laboratory research.
In 2023, she received the hospital’s Chrétien Researcher of the Year Award, and was awarded a multi-million dollar grant to launch an innovative cellular immunotherapy clinical trial and enhance support for patients with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, called cholangiocarcinoma.
Today, she’s ready to help lead the hospital’s internationally acclaimed research programs. “Research often provides the best or the only treatment option for patients, and it also provides hope. The Ottawa Hospital recognizes that research is care. I look forward to strengthening research at all levels within the organization through integration into patient care and ensuring translation of our discoveries into new and better treatments and cures for today and tomorrow,” says Dr. Auer.
The importance of The Ottawa Hospital’s research
The Ottawa Hospital currently ranks as the fourth hospital in Canada for research, with its research institute generating approximately $130 million in annual research funding, and nearly 10,000 patients participating in clinical trials and more than a dozen spinoff companies. The hospital’s growing leadership in research has played a critical role in attracting top talent and funding, in addition to fueling world-class patient care. And, it’s contributed more than $2.3 billion to Ottawa’s economy since 2001.
Thanks to cutting-edge research at the hospital, local patients with serious conditions often get unique opportunities to participate in clinical trials or groundbreaking procedures that aren’t yet available to every hospital. “Sometimes research is the best and only care a patient has available to them,” says Dr. Auer.
Without research, the medical profession can’t advance the effectiveness and scope of its clinical treatments. With Dr. Auer’s leadership, TOH will continue to expand its reputation as a national and international leading biomedical and health-science research institute. “We will do this by challenging the status quo, entertaining disruptive ideas, and innovative solutions. We will be successful, not because of what we do but because we will never lose sight of why we are doing it,” she says.
The impact of The Ottawa Hospital’s new Campus
Research activities at the hospital are set to increase thanks to TOH’s planned new campus. Our new campus will better integrate research and clinical spaces to further the hospital’s longstanding collaboration between researchers and clinicians.
The new campus will feature a world-class biomanufacturing facility. TOH has manufactured biotherapeutic products for years thanks to the General Campus’s Biotherapeutics Manufacturing Centre (BMC), a specialized facility that develops and manufactures new therapeutics using cells, genes, viruses, and other biological materials to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases and life-threatening lung and heart conditions.
But Dr. Auer says the new facility could be a game-changer for engineering and manufacturing biotherapies and cell-based therapies for any number of diseases. “The possibilities are endless. We are limited by our own imagination.”
With all the exciting plans that lie ahead, Dr. Auer adds it’s difficult to overstate the importance of philanthropy in enabling TOH’s research activities: Without our donors, research at TOH would be impossible. “Our research is fueled by philanthropy and research brings new hope to our patients today and patients around the world tomorrow.”
