Deeley Research Centre

I am delighted to introduce Dr. Lindsay DeVorkin, as this month’s guest blogger. Lindsay is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the BC Cancer Agency’s Deeley Research Centre, in Victoria. Building on her graduate studies work in molecular biology and biochemistry, she is now investigating the role of autophagy in the tumour microenvironment, and how it can be modulated to enhance the immune...

My path to a career in science and medicine was convoluted, but not without direction. I grew up in east Africa on an island in the Indian Ocean. Both my maternal grandparents died at very young ages of undiagnosed conditions. While the setting was idyllic, the reason for my grandparents’ deaths, or rather the lack of a reason bothered me.

This great gap in understanding—the causes of...

Cancer is a complex disease, and so cancer research is by necessity multifaceted and involves lots of collaboration. We are fortunate in B.C. to have strong research programs.

We do need to pay attention to research and programs in health promotion, cancer prevention, and early detection through screening as these can have profound effects on our overall goal of reducing the burden and...

Hi, my name is Daniel Woodsworth and I work on cell-based immunotherapies at the BC Cancer Agency Research Centre.

Near the end of my undergraduate degree, I started to become very interested in building nanoscale devices and machines. I was captivated by the notion of recreating all of the incredible machinery that surrounds us in our everyday life, at very small scales.

As I...

Hello! My name is Eric Yung and I am the staff scientist and lab manager in the Holt Lab, which basically makes me responsible for all of the day-to-day activities of the lab. 

I’ve been involved in cancer research for almost a decade now and immunogenomics for the last two years. I got started due to scientific curiosity, really. I began my PhD studying viruses, HIV specifically. When...

Hello everyone, my name is Miruna Bala and I am very happy for the opportunity to blog this month.

I am the Quality Systems group leader for the Holt Lab at the Genome Sciences Centre and the immunotherapy program at the BC Cancer Agency, which means I am responsible for the design, implementation, monitoring and improvement of the Quality Management System (QMS). QMS ensures accurate,...

Thank you to our October guest bloggers, the scientists and clinicians from the Deeley Research Centre. Thanks to the talent of this team and the tremendous generosity of BC Cancer Foundation donors, immunotherapy clinical trials will be getting underway soon, for the benefit of...

Hello, my name is Kwame Twumasi-Boateng and it is my pleasure to wrap up a month of blogging with my immunotherapy colleagues at the BC Cancer Agency!

Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow working at the Deeley Research Centre (DRC) – a position I started in January 2013.

During graduate school, I studied molecular details of aging and immunity in tiny worms. At the conclusion of...

Hello, I’m Dr. Julie Nielsen and I am happy to share an inside look at my work in immunotherapy on the BC Cancer Foundation blog.

I started working at the Deeley Research Centre (DRC) in October 2007. I had previously conducted research in cancer and medical genetics and joined the DRC because I wanted to help develop innovative strategies for treating cancer. The power and specificity...

Hello, my name is David Kroeger and I’m a postdoctoral fellow at the Deeley Research Centre (DRC). My PhD research at the University of Saskatchewan focused on understanding basic aspects of how T cells function. I came to the DRC hoping to use my expertise in T cell biology to help cancer patients.

Decades of research have proven that the immune system has the capacity to recognize and...