Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation's Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer, fuelled by Longo's, raises $3.2 million
More than 1,500 road hockey players and over 140 teams came together at the 14th annual edition of The Princess Margaret Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer, fuelled by Longo's, raising over $3.2 million in support of UHN's Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.
Teaming up with NHL alumni, Professional Women's Hockey League stars, and TV personalities, road hockey players battled it out in spirited games at SmartCentres in Vaughan with a shared goal in mind: to raise funds for research that enables treatment breakthroughs and help create a world free from the fear of cancer.
Thanks to thousands of dedicated players, friends, family, and other supporters, Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer has raised over $36 million in its 14-year history and is the world's largest road hockey fundraising event.
"By 2050, new cancer cases are projected to increase by 77%, with millennials experiencing the fastest rise in cancer rates," said Dr. Miyo Yamashita, President and CEO, The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation.
"The Princess Margaret is Canada's leading cancer research centre, where an all-star team of scientists and doctors are working together to score the next goal against cancer."
Top fundraising teams had the opportunity to draft a celebrity to their team for game day. NHL legends, including Darcy Tucker, Jeremy Roenick, Wendel Clark, and Toronto Sceptres stars Blayre Turnbull and Renata Fast, and many more, heard their name called, grabbed their stick, hopped the boards and faced off for cancer research.
This All-Star showdown was an amazing opportunity to share a road hockey experience with legends of the game and celebrate the incredible fundraising achievement of the Road Hockey community.
Uniting leaders in cancer research at the first-ever C8 Symposium
The Allan Slaight Breakthrough Forum, hosted by UHN's Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, marked the first-ever C8 Symposium, a gathering of top cancer researchers from eight premier global cancer research institutes to share the latest advances in cancer therapies and research.
Held on Sept. 15 and 16, 2025, at the MaRS Auditorium in Toronto, the C8 Symposium brought together leading scientists from cancer research institutions across Canada, Australia, France, Israel, Japan, the UK and the USA.
"We are excited about the potential of collaborating at the institutional level to tackle the biggest problems and biggest opportunities in cancer," said Dr. Brad Wouters, PM Senior Scientist and Executive Vice President of Science and Research at UHN. "By aligning our institutional strengths, we can create environments that foster innovation, streamline discovery, and deliver impact at scale."
The event was made possible by the generous support of La Fondation Emmanuelle Gattuso and The Slaight Family Foundation through the Allan Slaight Breakthrough Fund.
The two-day symposium featured over 30 expert talks, moderated discussions, poster presentations, and networking sessions focused on cutting-edge topics such as chemotherapy resistance, synthetic lethality — a treatment approach that targets specific lethal mutations in cancer cells, novel therapeutic targets, and tumour microenvironment dynamics.
Throughout the event, speakers shared insights into newly discovered cancer-driving mechanisms, innovative therapeutic strategies, emerging technologies, and translational research platforms aimed at improving patient outcomes.
The symposium also featured a poster session designed to spotlight the work of postdoctoral and emerging researchers, providing a valuable platform for the next generation of cancer scientists to showcase their research to an international audience.
The symposium concluded with a Leadership Summit focused on strategic planning for future C8 initiatives, including mentorship, capacity-building, and global alignment of comprehensive cancer centres. Discussions led by institutional leaders explored ways to support the cancer research workforce and foster international team science.
Malnutrition Awareness Week shines spotlight on hospital nutrition at UHN
From Oct. 6–10, Malnutrition Awareness Week took center stage across UHN. Under the theme "Malnutrition Matters to All," a working group hosted a dynamic lineup of events including educational webinars, a travelling awareness cart and a lively contest, all aimed at sparking reflection and action around the critical issue of how UHN can improve care for patients who develop malnutrition during their hospital stay.
According to a national study led by UHN's Dr. Johane Allard, malnutrition affects nearly one in two hospitalized patients in Canada. In clinical settings, malnutrition is defined by unintentional weight loss, reduced food intake and loss of muscle and fat — factors that can lead to longer hospital stays, increased risk of falls and delayed recovery.
To tackle this challenge, UHN formed the Malnutrition Taskforce, an interprofessional initiative aimed at improving nutrition care across its hospital sites. The "Malnutrition Matters to All" working group, a subgroup of the taskforce, took the lead in organizing the week's events and coordinating efforts across all six UHN hospitals.
Throughout the week, staff were engaged with meaningful content and practical strategies to identify, prevent and treat malnutrition. Highlights included enhanced nutrition risk screening, new pathways to address food insecurity and the launch of UHN's new incident reporting category focused on nutrition and diet — a first-of-its-kind system in a hospital setting.
Early results from these initiatives are promising. Since piloting nutrition risk screening in January, Unit 5A at Toronto Western Hospital boosted its screening rates from 20 per cent to 80 per cent, maintaining that success for eight consecutive months. Across UHN, inpatient units have collectively improved screening scores from 49 per cent to 70 per cent, helping ensure that patients at risk of malnutrition are promptly identified and assessed.
Meanwhile, the new nutrition and diet incident reporting category, launched in May, has seen strong uptake. This innovative tool is helping teams track, analyze and address safety issues related to nutrition, reinforcing the importance of proactive care.
As Malnutrition Awareness Week concluded, UHN reaffirmed its commitment to advancing nutrition care, recognizing it as a critical component of patient safety, recovery, and overall health outcomes.
