Dr. Lindsay DeVorkin

Over the past few weeks I have tried to provide some insight into the exciting immunotherapy research going on at the Deeley Research Centre, as well as the fundraising progress of the Cell Cyclists . For my final post, I thought that I would provide some insight into the future of immunotherapy at the Deeley Research Centre. Currently, the major focus in cancer care and research is how to develop better, targeted treatments that can improve patient survival rates. You can think of cancer as a cluster of different but related cells that have evolved over time. This evolution and diversity of...

August seems to be flying by! As you may have heard, the BC Cancer Agency’s Deeley Research Centre is initiating an immunotherapy clinical trial next year. This type of therapy involves isolating tumour-specific white blood cells called T cells from a patient’s own tumour. These T cells are then expanded into the billions and then infused back into the patient where they can identify and eliminate their cancer. This type of therapy is called “adoptive T cell therapy”, and will initially focus on ovarian and cervical cancers. As I previously mentioned, myself and a group of researchers from...

Hello again! As I mentioned last week, I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Deeley Research Centre with Dr. Julian Lum. I thought I’d share a bit about the research that I do with you this week. As many of you may be aware, researchers at the Deeley Research Centre are interested in a powerful new kind of treatment for cancer called immunotherapy. While immunotherapy has seen unprecedented success in different cancer types, there is still room for improvement. The need for a greater understanding of immunotherapy and the necessity for improving current therapies are what motivate me. It might...

I am a postdoctoral research fellow at the Deeley Research Centre located in Victoria, BC, and I am honored to be the guest blogger this month. I grew up on the Island, in Nanaimo, but decided to cross the pond to complete my undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia. By that time I had lost several family members to cancer and felt the need to contribute to cancer research in the province. While volunteering at the BC Cancer Research Centre in Vancouver in 2007, I realized that research was the field for me. For the next five years I studied how a cell survival process...

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 response against cancer. Autophagy allows the orderly degradation and recycling of cellular components. Over the next month, Lindsay will share more about her innovative research and also how she is...