Genomics

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...

In this final week of May, I’d like to shift away from endometrial cancer and share some ovarian cancer team discoveries from OVCARE.

Thanks to the work of my colleagues Drs. Blake Gilks, Martin Kobel, David Huntsman and others—work that was done before I joined the BC Cancer Agency—we learned...

At Pancreas Cancer BC, we are very interested in understanding what cellular and molecular changes initially lead to cancerous changes, and also how the environment surrounding the cancer cell interacts to cause the cancer to evade our bodies’ defence systems.

As I mentioned...

In my last several posts I discussed some of the new treatments being developed for pancreatic cancer. As more options become available it is becoming increasingly important to improve our ability to individualize treatment strategies. 

Our group at the BC Cancer Agency and Pancreas Centre BC is very interested in studying ways to better sub-classify pancreatic cancer in the hopes of...

Thanks to the generosity of BC Cancer Foundation donors, lymphoid cancer researchers like Dr. Randy Gascoyne are expanding their knowledge of the disease so the best treatment solutions can be offered to patients in B.C. and beyond.

In the past ten years, the BC Cancer Agency has become a world leader in lymphoid cancer research. But while newly-discovered therapies are improving the...

December is off to an exciting start, with yesterday’s publication of a paper by BC Cancer Agency scientists in the prestigious journal Nature.

In the paper,...

Many friends and family ask “how can you be an oncologist? Isn’t it sad? How can you speak to people about death and not lose hope?”

The answer to this is, of course, different for everyone. For me, it is a privilege to become involved in people’s lives at a critical juncture and to try to help in whatever ways I can.

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The BC Cancer Foundation’s partnership with the BC Cancer Agency is made possible by the generosity of more than 115,000 donors. This partnership is yielding incredible results, expanding the global understanding of cancer and dramatically improving the lives of cancer patients in B.C., who now have some of the best outcomes in the world.

The BC Cancer Agency is leading the world in new...

The Dalai Lama once said “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” I love this quote; it speaks to me on so many levels, especially when I go camping! And it reminds me that we are all capable of creating change and affecting the world around us.

Some people seem more adept at this; they cause a stir wherever they go. I met such a man...