INVESTING IN DISCOVERY

Every breakthrough begins with a question; and with someone willing to believe the answer can be found.

Researchers pursue bold ideas. Patients participate in clinical trials. Communities rally behind the Terry Fox Run. But none of this progress happens without people willing to invest in possibility long before the outcome is known.

A monthly donation, a transformational commitment, a corporate partnership, a community fundraiser, or a gift in a will may take a different form, but each helps create the conditions discovery requires: time, talent, technology, collaboration, flexibility, and scale.

Together, this generosity enables exceptional researchers to ask ambitious questions, strengthen national research networks, make cancer research more representative, and help move promising discoveries closer to the patients and families who need them most.

That is the power of investing in discovery: turning belief into possibility, and possibility into progress.

INVESTING IN PEOPLE

Exceptional research begins with exceptional people, working together.

Scientific progress depends on researchers prepared to ask difficult questions, challenge accepted thinking, and follow promising evidence wherever it leads.

Donor investment supports researchers across their careers. Terry Fox New Investigator Awards help emerging scientists establish independent research programs, build teams, and pursue bold ideas at defining moments in their careers. The awards currently provide up to $525,000 over three years to researchers within the first five years of their first faculty-level appointment in Canada.

More than 30 years ago, Terry Fox support helped launch Dr. Linda Penn’s career through a New Investigator Award. Today, she is one of Canada’s leading cancer researchers, demonstrating the long-term impact of investing in exceptional people at the right moment.

That investment continues through the Terry Fox New Frontiers Program Project Grants. This long-standing program brings together Canadian researchers with complementary expertise to explore transformative biomedical, clinical, and translational research. These multidisciplinary teams tackle complex questions no single scientist, discipline, or institution could answer alone.

In 2025, four teams received a combined $14.5 million through the program to advance research in sarcomas, bladder cancer, and high-risk brain cancers.

Together, these programs create a continuum of support. Emerging researchers gain the opportunity to establish their careers. Established leaders assemble collaborative teams, apply advanced technologies, and pursue discoveries at greater scale.

RIVER PHILIP FOUNDATION: INVESTING IN THE NEXT GENERATION

With support from the River Philip Foundation, Dr. Hannah Garner received a Terry Fox New Investigator Award at McGill University. Her research into BRCA1-deficient breast and ovarian cancers is exploring how interactions between tumours and the immune system could reveal new opportunities for more precise treatment.

INVESTING IN INNOVATION

Closing the distance between discovery and patient impact.

Promising discoveries do not automatically become treatments, diagnostics, or technologies. Moving an idea from the laboratory toward real-world use requires a strong team, investments, strategic partnerships and a clear pathway through development and commercialization.

The Cancer Breakthrough Fund introduces a new model for advancing best-in-class cancer innovation. By bringing together the scientific networks of the Terry Fox Foundation and the Canadian Cancer Society with Lumira Ventures’ venture capital and company-building expertise, the Fund is designed to support innovative companies and products with the potential to meaningfully impact the lives of cancer patients. Already demonstrating the power of this approach, one of the Cancer Breakthrough Funds first investments is Halifax-based Sound Blade Medical, where our investment is helping advance an investigational handheld histotripsy platform from development toward patient trials. It is an early example of how strategic investment can help translate promising Canadian innovation into technologies with the potential to improve patient outcomes.

Transformational investments are helping make this work possible

In 2025, the Northpine Foundation committed $5 million to the Cancer Breakthrough Fund, demonstrating how bold investments can help move Canada’s most promising cancer discoveries beyond the laboratory and closer to the patients who need them. Their leadership, alongside other visionary anchor investors, is helping build a fund designed to accelerate the next generation of Canadian cancer innovation.

INVESTING IN EQUITY

The future of precision medicine must reflect the people it is intended to serve.

Precision medicine depends on high-quality clinical and genomic data. For its benefits to reach people across Canada, the research behind it must better reflect the country’s geographic, cultural, and genetic diversity.

The Northern BC BioBank Initiative, led by Dr. Nadine Caron, is expanding opportunities for people in northern, rural, and Indigenous communities to participate in and benefit from cancer research.

By improving representation in clinical and genomic studies, the initiative can help researchers build a more complete understanding of cancer and generate evidence relevant to more patients.

NICOLA WEALTH: HELPING RESEARCH REPRESENT MORE OF CANADA

Through a $125,000 corporate gift, Nicola Wealth in one of many generous donors supporting the Northern BC BioBank Initiative and helping strengthen participation in cancer research across northern British Columbia.

This is an investment in more than data. It is an investment in inclusion, access, trust, and scientific relevance.

Research becomes stronger when the evidence reflects the people who will ultimately depend on it. By supporting this work, Nicola Wealth is helping create a future where advances in precision medicine are informed by and available to a broader range of communities.

INVESTING IN THE NEXT GENERATION

The future of cancer research depends on today’s scientists, but also on the young people who will become tomorrow’s researchers, clinicians, volunteers, fundraisers, advocates, and donors.

During the 45th anniversary year, local Giant Tiger stores partnered with more than 260 schools across Canada, offering each participating school up to $500 in matching support for its Terry Fox School Run.

The partnership helped student fundraising go further while reinforcing an important message: their actions matter.

Every lap completed, challenge accepted, and donation collected became part of a national community investing in discovery. By standing behind students and schools, Giant Tiger helped introduce a new generation to Terry’s belief in research and showed young people they can help create change now.

The long-term impact reaches beyond the dollars matched. It helps build a culture in which science, generosity, and collective responsibility are shared across generations.

PARTNERS IN DISCOVERY

Corporate partnerships help generosity reach further.

Corporate partners bring scale, visibility, employee engagement, matching gifts, local trust, and community participation to Terry’s mission.

Their support can amplify individual donations, introduce Terry’s story to new audiences, mobilize employees and customers, and build greater momentum for cancer research.

These partnerships are not separate from the research story. They expand the community behind discovery and help create the sustained investment ambitious science requires.

PHARMACHOICE CANADA:
TURNING NATIONAL REACH INTO RESEARCH MOMENTUM

Through its network of community pharmacies, PharmaChoice Canada brought Terry’s mission into neighbourhoods across the country during the 45th anniversary year.

Two national matching campaigns inspired Canadians to act at pivotal moments. The April match encouraging registrations and sign-ups for the Terry Fox Run was met in less than seven hours, while the September match designed to increase fundraising was met in less than three. The campaigns helped drive increases in donations, Run registrations, Team registrations, and overall funds raised.

Pharmacy participation also grew significantly. Participating locations increased by 59 per cent, while funds raised by pharmacy teams grew by 65 per cent, from $29,584 in 2024 to $83,458 in 2025.

PharmaChoice’s partnership shows how national scale and local trust can work together. Its pharmacies created more opportunities for people to encounter Terry’s story, join the Run, and contribute to the long-term support cancer research depends on.

EDWARD JONES:
A MILESTONE BUILT THROUGH COMMUNITY

Edward Jones has supported Terry’s mission through workplace participation, third-party fundraising, community events, and engagement with the Terry Fox Run.

Its story reflects a different model of partnership. Progress was built not through one campaign, but through repeated participation, local leadership, and people choosing to bring Terry’s mission into their workplaces and communities.

By activating employees, clients, and local networks, Edward Jones has helped broaden the community investing in cancer research and strengthen the sustained support discovery requires.

INVESTING IN TOMORROW

Some gifts are designed to create impact far beyond a lifetime.

Cancer research requires patience, continuity, and the freedom to pursue questions whose answers may take years to emerge.

A gift in a will gives research one of its most valuable resources: time.

Legacy gifts help sustain researchers, infrastructure, technologies, and national collaborations over the long term. They allow today’s generosity to support discoveries that may shape the lives of patients and families for generations.

BEVERLEY’S GIFT FOR THE FUTURE

Beverley discovered a love of running later in life and brought meaning and purpose to every step, including those she took through the Terry Fox Run.

After facing multiple cancer diagnoses with remarkable resilience, she chose to leave a gift in her will to the Terry Fox Foundation.

Inspired by Terry’s courage and determination, Beverley’s legacy is helping support research through the Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network’s Atlantic Consortium. Her gift contributes to work connecting researchers, clinicians, institutions, and patient information across Atlantic Canada in pursuit of more personalized cancer care.

Beverley may never know every question her gift helps researchers ask or every discovery it helps move forward, but this is the extraordinary promise of legacy giving: investing today in possibilities future generations may one day experience.

THE OPPORTUNITY AHEAD

The next breakthroughs will depend on the choices we make now.

Cancer research has entered a remarkable period of possibility.

Across Canada, researchers are using precision medicine to understand why cancers behave differently from one person to another. They are harnessing data and artificial intelligence to identify patterns at unprecedented scale. They are expanding cancer prevention, building new clinical trial pathways, and developing better systems for moving discoveries toward patients.

The science is advancing. National networks are taking shape. New technologies and funding models are creating opportunities that would not have been possible a decade ago.

The opportunity now is to build on Canada’s research leadership by strengthening national collaborations like the Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network. By connecting expertise, institutions, technologies, and patient data across the country, these collaborations are accelerating discovery and bringing more personalized cancer care closer to patients.

Philanthropy and partnership can provide the flexibility to pursue an unexpected finding, the scale to connect researchers across Canada, the continuity to sustain work over time, and the early confidence a bold idea needs before other support becomes available.

With continued investment: