Special Issue: UHN Research Day

More than 400 UHN researchers gathered in the MaRS Auditorium to honour UHN’s achievements in discovery at UHN Research Day.

Organized by the Centre for Research Education and Training (CREdiT), the event was driven by trainees and packed with science, showcasing 25 talks and more than 130 poster presentations on topics such as diabetes, stroke, breast cancer, and arthritis, among others.

“UHN Research is at the forefront of Canadian research institutes with $189M in funds and 1284 publications in the last year,” says Dr. Christopher J. Paige, VP Research. “Our 478 principal investigators and nearly 800 trainees are making research discoveries that will have an impact on the health of Canadians and beyond.”

Kenote Address: Challenging 'ChIP' to Scale Up

Research Day began with the keynote address from Dr. Peggy Farnham, Professor of Pharmacology and Associate Director of Genomics at the University of California Davis.

She spoke about a method called 'ChIP-chip technology' that was pioneered in her lab. It combines chromatin immunoprecipitation or ‘chIP’, which is used to determine how DNA interacts with other molecules, with microarray or 'chip' technology.

By using microarrays to scale up this technique, her research group is identifying thousands of genes that are targets of molecules involved in cancer.

Dr. Andres Lozano was presented with this award by the UHN Office of Technology Development and Commercialization (TDC) for his ingenuity in using neurostimulation—a technology that modifies nerve activity—to treat depression, anxiety, cognitive disorders and Parkinson's disease.

“Dr. Lozano has been an author on more than 200 scientific publications and is listed as an inventor on 29 patent applications,” says Dr. Brian Barber, Director of TDC. “He has also extended the reach of his inventions by founding a UHN spin-off company—called Functional Neuroscience—through which he is actively commercializing his inventions with different industry partners.”

This award recognizes the UHN inventor or team that has made the greatest contribution to the advancement of human health by means of a patentable invention. Previous Inventor of the Year award winners include Drs. Joe Fisher (2005), Dan Drucker (2004) and Kevin Kain (2003).

Bill Ayach, Peter Stogios, and Dr. Cindy Zadikoff were the inaugural recipients of the Trainee of the Year award presented yesterday by CREdiT and made possible with support from Research Day sponsor VWR.

“These trainees have shown scientific excellence in their fields of cardiology, movement disorders and structural biology through publications in high impact journals, as well as contributed to their community over the past year,” says Dr. Frances Skinner, Krembil Site Leader, CREdiT.

Bill Ayach, a graduate student supervised by Dr. Peter Liu (TGRI), Peter Stogios, a graduate student supervised by Dr. Gil Prive (OCI), and Dr. Cindy Zadikoff, a clinical research fellow supervised by Drs. Anthony Lang and Susan Fox (Krembil) were chosen from a dozen applicants.

Honourable mentions also went to the following trainees: Jillian Couto (Supervisor: Dr. Cathy Barr, Krembil), Ryan Doherty (Supervisor: Dr. Cheryl Arrowsmith, OCI), Christopher Kim (Supervisor: Dr. Terrence Yau, TGRI) and David Seminowicz (Supervisor: Dr. Karen Davis, Krembil).

UHN Congratulates Research Day Presentation Winners

Oral Presentations
Dr. Paula Barata, Paul Boutros, Ian Corbin, Tim Corson, Christopher Kim, Ji Hyun Ko, Mehrdad Hariri, Darrell Haufler, Jeffrey Liu, Christina Loh, Dr. Georges Maire, Marek Pacal, Catherine Schentag, Stephanie Sue, Dr. Jiefei Tong and Amy Wong.

Poster Presentations
Translational Research
Dr. Stuart Bisland, Miriam Mossoba and Craig Simpson.

Fundamental Research
Karla Badger, Dr. Emma Dempster, Leila Neshatian, Peter Sabatini and Dr. Peixiang Wang.

Clinical Research
Lynn Gauthier, Fawnda Pellett and Dr. Patricia Rose.

Thanks to the Research Day Team

UHN acknowledges the following individuals for their contributions to the event:

Organizers
The CREdiT team: Dr. David Rose, Dr. Frances Skinner, Dr. Mingyao Liu and Minnie Kim.

Registration Team
Teresa DeCicco, Ava Lucero, Olga Manuk, Alicja Podgorski, Kathryn Tzimika and Janet Wong.

Speakers
Principal Investigators
Drs. Elizabeth Badley, Susan Done, Tony Lam, Mike Tymianski, David Urbach, Terrence Yau and Gang Zheng.

Trainees
Drs. Paula Barata, Paul Boutros, Ian Corbin, Tim Corson Mehrdad Hariri, Darrell Haufler, Ji Hyun Ko, Christopher Kim, Jeffrey Liu, Christina Loh, Georges Maire, Marek Pacal, Stephanie Sue, Jiefei Tong, Cathy Schentag and Amy Wong.

Abstract Reviewers
Drs. Elizabeth Badley, David Cassidy, Peter Carlen, Karen Davis, Eleanor Fish, Mitsu Ikura, Jan Jongstra, Jenny Heathcote, Fei-Fei Liu, Mingyao Liu, Linda Penn, David Rose, Robert Rottapel, Frances Skinner, Martin Steinbach and Brian Wilson.

Poster Judges
Drs. Joan Forder, Benjamin Jung, Bing Han and Jeya Nadesanlingam. Trainee speakers also acted as poster judges.

Institute Leadership
Drs. Christopher Paige, Richard Weisel and Peter St George-Hyslop.

Technical Support/Other
Greg Clarke, Dianne Dixon, Tony Goncalves, Manu Gupta, Jacqueline Jordan, Doug Kuntz, Natalie Meyer, Nick Shah, Muhammad Sulaman and Anu Warikoo.

New Research Breakthrough at UHN

Colon Cancer: Rooted in Stem Cells

A study by Dr. John Dick, postdoctoral fellow Catherine O'Brien and their colleagues—featured this week in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, www.cbc.ca and many other news media across Canada—shows that only a small subset of cells, called colon cancer stem cells, are capable of sustaining tumours in the colon.

“Colon cancer stem cells are the driving force initiating and sustaining these tumours,” says Dr. Dick. “Since these are at the root of the tumour, you have to find and kill each of these colon cancer stem cells to truly cure the disease.”

When transplanted into an animal model, human colon cancer stem cells—which represent only 1/57 000 of the cells in a tumour—renewed themselves and differentiated into other tumour-forming cell types to give rise to new tumours.

Dr. Dick's team—best known for their work in hematopoietic and leukemic stem cells—may help design new therapeutic tools for colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of death from cancer in Canada.

Nature. 2007 Jan 4;445(7123):106-10. Epub 2006 Nov 19 [Pubmed abstract] Research supported by Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Genome Canada, Ontario Cancer Research Network (now a program of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research), Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, National Cancer Institute of Canada, Canadian Cancer Society, Terry Fox Foundation and Canada Research Chair program.