Gynecologic Cancer

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...

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,...

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 my last two blog posts, I wrote about progress we’ve been making to improve outcomes for women facing endometrial cancer. Today, I’d like to tell you about the impact one family has had in supporting this research.

After losing their mother to endometrial cancer, the Gill family wanted to make a difference. They approached the BC Cancer Foundation and talked about supporting research...

We know that around 15% of endometrial cancers occur in women less than 50 years of age, and 5% in women less than 40. These women may not yet have had a family and likely have not entered menopause. Thus they may not be ready to have their uterus and ovaries removed, which is the usual surgical step when endometrial cancer is diagnosed. 

It is very challenging to advise these women as...

Hello again and thanks for tuning in! Today I am going to share some recent work we have been doing in endometrial cancer or cancer of the ‘womb.’ This is the most common cancer in women in the developed world yet it is surprisingly understudied.  More than any other cancer I treat there is profound inconsistency in how pathologists, surgeons, medical and radiation oncologists manage this...

A nice thing about being junior in your career is that sometimes if you work hard, think a bit, and play well with others, people can give you the benefit of the doubt in believing you might be able to achieve something. My first years at the BC Cancer Agency were like this; I came here with relatively rudimentary research experience, no protected research time in my new position per say, but...

Thanks for the invitation to be part of this blog and to share research discoveries from the Ovarian Cancer Research Program (OVCARE).

I am a local girl: I was born in Vancouver (at Vancouver General Hospital) and both my parents and both sets of grandparents have lived in Vancouver for most of their lives. I did my undergraduate...

Warm thanks to Dr. Dan Renouf, for blogging in April and sharing the work he and his colleagues are doing to improve the treatment and care of pancreatic cancer for patients across the province.

It is my pleasure to introduce our guest blogger for May, Dr. Jessica McAlpine. Dr. McAlpine is a gynaecologic oncologist and translational researcher at the BC Cancer Agency and Director of the...

This is my last post for the month.  I hope you have enjoyed my posts!

I am currently working on a presentation for the radiation therapists and nurses in radiation oncology.  The presentation will be an update on our brachytherapy programs for gynaecological cancers.  We have been developing several new techniques and want to ensure everyone is up to speed.

The last slide of my...