Over a decade ago, a quiet revolution in brain tumour care began at UHN’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Its former Head of Radiation Physics, Dr. David Jaffray (now at MD Anderson Cancer Center), together with his then PhD student Dr. Gregory Bootsma and associate scientist Dr. Mark Ruschin (now at Sunnybrook),started asking a simple yet bold question: could stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS)– a non-invasive, highly precise form of brain radiation – be made more comfortable for patients?

The question seemed obvious as they watched patient after patient move through the long preparation process for their cancer radiation treatment. SRS is a form of treatment that uses highly precise coordinates to locate and treat a specific target in the brain with radiation. Careful positioning of the head is essential to ensure the safe and accurate delivery of the radiosurgical beams.

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Celebrated as UHN trailblazers and legacy builders at the inaugural UHN Mission Excellence Awards ceremony in March of 2025, Drs. Jean Wang and John Dick, along with Dr. Jayne Danska, are the winners of this year's Inventor of the Year Award. They are being awarded for their work in cancer immunotherapy, recognized for identifying and commercializing a novel way that cancer cells evade destruction.

Their research led to development of a novel SIRPα fusion protein that specifically targets the signal receptor CD47, responsible for activating the “Don’t Eat Me” signal that cancer cells give to the immune system as they attempt to spread​, grow and avoid destruction. The novelty of the discovery at the time was unprecedented – while everyone was looking at other strategies, they began looking at signal receptors. This work partially underpinned the platform for UHN start-up Trillium Therapeutics, created in 2004.