John Chilibeck
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Daily Gleaner
The first sign Robert Morimanno knew something was wrong was dizziness, his balance a bit off.
A lifelong athlete, Morimanno still had a bounce in his step at the age of 50. He was a fitness instructor at the Fredericton YMCA and loved outdoor activities, including coaching his two teenage sons.
“If I look back, I could see moments where he was tilting to one side,” said his wife Laura Davey, in an interview.
“I remember going on a hike with him in the Saguenay in Quebec, and Robert was always pushing into me. I joked and said, ‘are you trying to, you know, trying to push me over this cliff?’ And we laughed. But just things like putting up the tent and losing his balance. For a guy who’s super fit that isn’t normal.”
Not long after, when he was back in Fredericton, the popular soccer coach and cross-country ski instructor felt numbness and paralysis in his legs on his way to the Y.
A trip to the hospital, followed by a battery of tests, resulted in a devastating diagnosis for the family: terminal brain cancer.
Davey said the care her husband received was excellent – a doctor in Saint John quickly did surgery, helping Morimanno keep his cognitive function and his last few months be more comfortable. He died in October 2019 at age 51.
But to this day she wonders how a healthy, fit man, could get this aggressive form of cancer, glioblastoma. Adding to the mystery in the years since his death, she knows of three other men in her circle, in their 40s or 50s, also in good shape, who succumbed to the same fast-growing cancer.
Other than their love of life, the four men shared few traits, were raised in different communities and worked in different professions.
That’s why she’s pleased that a new national study, announced by the Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network last month, will look at glioblastoma and try to find better treatment options.
“I’ve always wondered why, you know, what the cause was,” Davey said. “The medical team told us it wasn’t genetic, but I think of my two kids and worry, ‘well, is it possible that it could be passed on?’ So, this research, if it can help other patients maybe extend their life or deal with the cancer better or prevent it from happening in the first place, that would be amazing.
“No other family would have to go through this.”
The glioblastoma study is one of five Canadian research efforts announced by network that will use data from thousands of patients across the country who had cancer.
The brain cancer research looks at a narrower band of patients – 120 – because the disease is so rare.
About 3,000 Canadians are diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour each year.
Dr. Tony Reiman, a professor and oncologist at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John who also has a clinical practice at the Saint John Regional Hospital, has joined forces with researchers from BC Cancer, the University of British Columbia, Memorial University in Newfoundland and the University of Calgary to try and unlock some of the mysteries of the disease.
“Glioblastoma is the commonest form of brain tumour, mostly found in adults, and it is hard to treat,” said the doctor. “The standard treatment for many years has been a combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. But with that approach, these cancers are still incurable and associated with a fairly limited life expectancy. It’s been a while since we had any breakthroughs with brain tumour treatment.”
Reiman has seen the impact of research on cancer treatment, citing figures that 80 years ago, the likelihood of surviving five years after any kind of cancer diagnosis was about 25 per cent.
Today it’s closer to 65 per cent.
But that is not true for brain cancer. Glioblastoma kills half of patients within 18 months of diagnosis, and the survival rate after five years is as low as five per cent.
The project will look at the genome of brain cancer, examining its unique mutations. The researchers hope some of the insights they glean might give them ideas on new ways to treat the disease.
“No one institution or investigator could do this on their own,” Reiman said. “It’s the type of big science done on a scale that requires a lot of co-ordination and collaboration.”
He said one of the motivations for doing the research is his experience as a doctor, having to deliver devastating news to patients and their loved ones.
“Their lives are forever changed,” Reiman said. “This is an impossibly hard thing for people to hear and a gut-wrenching thing to have to tell people. You never get used to it. But this is the kind of clinical encounter that motivates research so we can try to find ways to change the conversation.”
The executive director of the network said the collaboration between researchers was exactly the kind of teamwork Terry Fox envisioned when he set out across Canada in 1980 to run ‘a marathon of hope’ each day on one leg, amputated because of cancer.
Dr. André Veillette said the latest research tranche being spread across the country is based on $300 million in funding, half of it from cancer and other research institutions, the other half from Ottawa, to look at the genomic data of 15,000 different cancer cases.
So far, the researchers have looked at data from 12,000 patients, with the last batch of 3,000 cases expected to be completed by March 2026.
This includes the clinical data of brain tumour patients, most of whom are white men between the ages of 40 and 70.
“Glioblastoma has a bad prognosis,” said the cancer doctor, who used to practice at Montreal General Hospital. “Usually by the time it’s detected, surgery can only remove parts of it. And then people have to rely on other kinds of treatments like chemotherapy and radiation. Very often, it grows and people die. So, it’s really a type of cancer for which new treatments are needed.”
Veillette said sharing the data is just step number one.
“It’s a rare cancer, we don’t know a lot about it, and we need new treatment. I think now that the data will be shared with people of different expertise, we could discover something very interesting.”
