Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins recently announced government support of a future satellite dialysis centre at Etobicoke General Hospital.

Etobicoke resident Robert Johnstone is one of a “significant number of patients” served by Etobicoke General who will soon access dialysis closer to home rather than traveling three times a week to Brampton Civic Hospital for treatment, hospital officials said.

“This new satellite dialysis centre will help to ease a significant burden for patients suffering with kidney disease who will soon be able to access services closer to home,” Hoskins, an MD and PhD, said in a statement.

“Today’s announcement demonstrates our government’s commitment to putting patients first, connecting them with quality services in the community.”

William Osler Health System, which operates Etobicoke General and Brampton Civic hospitals, is one of 26 Chronic Kidney Disease Programs across Ontario. Last year, it saw more than 72,000 patient visits at Brampton Civic Hospital.

As need grows for dialysis services in Etobicoke, hospital officials said the new satellite dialysis centre will help improve patient experience and support “Osler’s vision of providing patient-centred health care without boundaries.”

“The satellite dialysis centre aligns with Ontario’s Action Plan for Health Care — “Patient’s First” by providing local residents with care closer to home,” Maria Britto, chair of the Central West LHIN board of directors, said in a statement.

The future dialysis centre will include 36 stations and provide vital pre-dialysis treatment and haemodialysis for patients, along with home dialysis training, hospital officials said.

It will be located in the soon-to-be-constructed ancillary services building at Etobicoke General. That 200,000-square-foot medical building will house a number of outpatient programs and services, including seniors’ wellness, mental health and addiction, COPD and cardiac.

“Osler’s new satellite dialysis centre will offer treatment closer to home for our renal patients and greater access to the services this community needs most,” Osler president and CEO Matthew Anderson said in a statement.

“This investment is vital to Osler and serves to create fundamental stepping stones that allow us to press forward with our exciting transformation.”

The ancillary services building, which will house the dialysis centre, will be built first, followed by Etobicoke General’s new patient tower, Ann Ford, Osler’s vice-president of development and information technology, told the Guardian last month.

Last month, Osler named the three short-listed proponent teams to bid on the build of its new four-storey patient tower at Etobicoke General.

EllisDon Infrastructure Healthcare, Etobicoke Healthcare Partnership and Plenary Health were chosen in a competitive process to respond to a Request for Proposals (RFP) to be issued later this month to design, build, finance and maintain the tower.

A larger, state-of-the-art emergency department, four times larger Intensive Care and Critical Care Units and larger, natural light-filled patient rooms to accommodate family, medical teams and equipment will be features of the 250,000-square-feet space tower.

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The FDA granted fast track status to cabozantinib for the treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma who have received one prior therapy, according to a press release from the drug’s manufacturer.

Cabozantinib (Cometriq, Exelixis) inhibits the activity of MET, VEGF receptors and RETtyrosine kinases, which are involved in normal cellular function and in pathologic processes such as oncogenesis, metastasis, tumor angiogenesis and tumor microenvironment maintenance.

The drug is currently being evaluated in METEOR — an ongoing phase 3 pivotal trial — which includes patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma who have experienced disease progression following treatment with at least one VEGF receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor. Patients in this trial are randomized 1:1 to receive 60 mg daily cabozantinib or 10 mg daily everolimus (Afinitor, Novartis).

The primary endpoint of the METEOR trial is PFS. Secondary endpoints include OS and objective response rate.

Exelixis plans to release top-line results from the METEOR trial during the second half of 2015.

Cabozantinib — which is currently FDA approved for progressive, metastatic medullary thyroid cancer — also is being evaluated in the phase 3 CELESTIAL trial for patients with second-line hepatocellular carcinoma.

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