Dr. Alvaro Morales is the Founding Director of the Centre of Applied Urological Research in the Department of Urology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada and has been a practicing urologist for 40 years.
During the 1970s, Dr. Morales hypothesized that infecting the bladder with live BCG (bacillus Calmette-Guérin, a live vaccine developed in the 1920s to prevent Tuberculosis in humans) would provoke an immune system response that would be sufficiently robust to eliminate some bladder tumours. His pioneering work formed the basis for registration of BCG as a bladder cancer therapy. Since its registration, Dr. Morales has been anticipating a new generation of therapy that would have fewer side effects, better tolerability, and be safer for clinicians to handle.
Dr. Morales has been the Principal Investigator for the Bioniche Phase I and II clinical trials with the Company’s technology for bladder cancer , as well as for the first Phase III clinical trial, in which patients with bladder cancer that was refractory (unresponsive) to BCG were treated with the Company’s product.
In these video clips, Dr. Morales talks about bladder cancer incidence, treatment options, drawbacks to current therapies, and opportunities for new therapies.