APCaRI, Department of Oncology, University of Alberta
As part of the Alberta Prostate Cancer Research Initiative (APCaRI), I am working to coordinate the translational goals of the team. The APCaRI is comprised of multidisciplinary team of academic researchers, clinicians, nurses, and other personnel from universities, hospitals and bio-banking centres across Alberta. With an overall goal improving outcomes and quality of life for those living with prostate cancer, our team is integrating its efforts to develop new diagnostic tests for prostate cancer, to discover novel biomarkers for aggressive prostate cancer, and to conduct clinical trials to establish the value of our new diagnostics in the clinic. As a part of our efforts, I will be coordinating the launch of a comprehensive Prostate Cancer Registry and Biorepository initiative called the Alberta Prostate Cancer Cohort. This ambitious prospective collection effort will serve as a validation cohort for diagnostic PCa tests under development by the team.
Prior to coming to Alberta, I served as the Coordinator of the Lawson Translational Cancer Research Team and Project Manager for Investigator Initiated Trials with the Lawson Health Research Institute, London Health Sciences Centre and the Western University, where I also received my MSc. in 2011. During my masters, the focus of my research was to identify new biomarkers that could differentiate indolent vs. aggressive prostate cancer and mediators of cancer cell migration.