The Terry Fox Foundation (TFF) has given New Investigator Awards to three members of UBC’s Faculty of Medicine to further their quest to unravel the complexities of cancer.
Ryan Brinkman, an associate professor in the Dept. of Medical Genetics and a senior scientist with the BC Cancer Agency (BCCA)’s Terry Fox Laboratory, will receive $435,252 over the next three years to examine flow informatics approaches for the identification of normal and malignant breast cancer stem cells. His work will aid in speeding up the diagnosis and prognosis of blood cancers. Mentoring Brinkman will be principal investigator Keith Humphries, professor in the Dept. of Medicine and a senior scientist at the BCCA, whose project “Cell fate and control of normal and malignant stem cells” has received a $5.1 million grant from TFF.
Cathie Garnis, an assistant professor with the Division of Otolaryngology in UBC Faculty of Medicine and a senior scientist with the BC Cancer Agency, will receive $450,000 over three years to identify and evaluate lung cancer markers that can be detected in the bloodstream and may be useful in early detection of lung cancer. The project is designed to develop simple, cost-effective blood tests for early diagnosis of lung cancer. Garnis’ project supports co-principal investigator and mentor Stephen Lam’s study “Early Detection of Lung Cancer: A Pan-Canadian Study,” which will receive almost $7 million in funding over five years from Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI) and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer. Lam is a professor in the Dept. of Medicine and Chair, Provincial Lung Tumor Group in the BCCA.
Amina Zoubeidi, an assistant professor at the Dept. of Urologic Sciences at UBC and research scientist with the Vancouver Prostate Centre, will be awarded $449,964 over the next three years for her project designed to determine if the expression of a protein – Lyn kinase – promotes prostate cancer progression. Mentoring Zoubeidi will be principal investigator Paul Rennie, a professor of urologic sciences at UBC and director of laboratory research, Vancouver Prostate Centre, whose prostate cancer progression project has received a TFF New Frontiers Program Grant for nearly $6.8 million.
For more information about the awards, visit http://www.med.ubc.ca/media/201012/Three_faculty_members_win_Terry_Fox_Foundation_grants.htm
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