Genomics

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 and thank you for taking a look at our Immunogenomics blog posts. My name is Scott Brown, and I am a PhD Student in Dr. Robert Holt’s lab at the BC Cancer Agency.

I began working with Dr. Holt as an undergraduate in May 2011; this was my first introduction to cancer research. Within a short period of...

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...

Thanks for taking time to read our immunogenomics blogs and for supporting our research at the BC Cancer Agency.

I have always been fascinated with infectious agents and, in particular, viruses. This led to my focus on infectious agents that cause cancer and a strong interest in the human immune response. I pursued this interest during my...

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,...

I’m motivated by the success of new cancer treatments that activate a patient’s natural anti-cancer immunity. These positive results are hard won, following more than two decades of intensive research around the world, and unfortunately we don’t see the positive results in all patients. 

It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that when we do research we do not know what will work...

Growing up in the lower mainland, I developed the need to figure out how things worked and, if they were broken, how to fix them. The complexities of living systems that derive from the inner workings of cells were the most fascinating and incomprehensible for me, so they were the ultimate challenge. 

Cellular properties are programmed in DNA, so to understand cells, and to understand...

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...

Back when I was a student, Dr. Wan Lam had a new group that was pioneering a cutting-edge technology to enable the first comprehensive assessment of the genetic alterations that drive cancer development. Soon, I was spending my nights and weekends at the lab and after finishing my undergraduate degree, I started my PhD with Wan as my supervisor.

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Today, I’d like to share three major things that B.C.’s OVCARE team has contributed in the last decade:

1) TAKING STEPS TOWARD PERSONALIZED MEDICINE: A woman diagnosed with ovarian cancer today will be managed according to the SPECIFIC type of cancer she has. This may mean she can be spared toxic therapies that may not help her, or receive better therapies with higher success. (Message...