***M.Sc. Students in Health Systems, this event can count towards one of the six mandatory Research Seminars Series needed to attend (MHS6991).***
Dr. Philip Awadalla, PhD and Professor Charles Cantor, PhD
Cancer survival rates are significantly improved when detected at early stages, particularly when the tumour is still localised to the original tissue. However, effective screening tools for early cancer detection is currently limited to a subset of cancers. The development of an efficient and cost-effective approach for early detection could significantly improve patient survival. Liquid biopsies have emerged as a proposed solution for the above described clinical problem. The ability to examine cell-free DNA in the blood provides an opportunity for non-invasive liquid biopsies that enable repeated access, and provide a convenient window into the tumor DNA and its genetic features. Here, using Canada’s national population cohort, CanPath, we identify early markers indicative of early cancer development using blood plasma collected from participants that have developed a cancer following recruitment to the study. The national cohort has followed the health of over 1% of Canadians longitudinally over the past decade and has pan-Canadian representation which provides a near globally unprecedented opportunity to test our technology in the blood profiles of individuals years prior to diagnosis for a variety of cancers broadly as well as across a range of stages and subtypes. Specifically, our preliminary studies detect cancer profiles from blood samples collected as early as 10 years prior to a breast, pancreatic, blood or prostate cancer diagnosis.
This seminar will start with Dr. Philip Awadalla presenting how they use the Canadian cohort to develop early cancer detection systems. Then Professor Awadalla and Professor Charles Cantor will discuss how to accelerate the public-private partnership of cancer early detection in Canada.
About the Speaker
Dr. Philip Awadalla, PhD, is National Scientific Director of CanPath (Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health), Director of Computational Biology and the Executive Scientific Director of Ontario Health Study at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, and Professor of Population and Medical Genomics at the University of Toronto. He is Director of the Genome Canada, Canadian Data Integration Centre. He obtained his doctorate in population and statistical genetics from the University of Edinburgh and was awarded NSERC, Killam, and Wellcome Trust Fellowships to pursue his postdoctoral work before taking faculty positions at North Carolina and the University of Montreal. He was the Scientific Director of CARTaGENE, and was part of the analysis groups of the 1000 Genomes Program and PCAWG. Major projects include genomics of aging, hematological diseases and cancers. Other projects include developing new liquid biopsy tools for early cancer and disease detection, estimating mutation and recombination rates; model-based approaches to identify genetic; and environmental control points for infectious diseases in Africa.
After becoming full professor from Columbia University at the age of 29, Professor Charles Cantor focused his attention on developing rational and cost-effective approaches to preventive and personalized medicine. Professor Charles Cantor was the principal scientist for the Human Genome Project, for which scientists sequenced the entirety of the human genome in 2003. Afterwards, he became the chief scientific officer for Sequenom Inc, the leading provider of non-invasive prenatal testing. He now consults for a number of biotech companies including Simcere/Bioscikin (China), Star-Array (Singapore), Edico Genomics (USA), Innovative Biosciences (China), Agena Biosciences (USA), Strand Life Sciences (India), Trovagene (USA), Ana Jema (China), ProdermIQ (USA), Armonica (USA), Anchor DX (China), My Genome Box, a subsidiary of EOne (Korea), Genetic Intelligence (USA) and In Silico Biology (Russia, USA), and he is co-founder and executive director of Retrotope (USA), a clinical stage pharmaceutical company.
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