The 1st Annual Ontario Translational Research Network Forum
Friday, October 3RD, 2008
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
Ms. Deborah Collyar has been a leader in cancer patient advocacy since 1991, utilizing her successful business experience to bridge many research gaps between science and patients. Her advocacy work spans across a broad spectrum of diseases and experiences: from grassroots efforts with local groups, to regional programs, to national consortiums and policies, to international guidance. Deborah has also worked in depth with collaborators from many government agencies, academic and private institutions, companies, professional societies, non-profits, advocacy organizations, and cancer patients.
Ms. Collyar founded the PAIR: Patient Advocates In Research international network; started patient advocacy in CALGB, serves as Co-Chair of their Committee on Advocacy, Research Communications, Ethics, and Underserved Populations (CARE); and helped develop advocate programs for other cooperative groups. Deborah served as Program Director for the SPORE Patient Advocate Research Team (PART) Program grant, expanding the UCSF pilot she helped to create, which fully integrated cancer patient advocates into translational research programs. Results included a clinical trial workshop for communities that is being considered by the Intercultural Cancer Council (she is an Advisory Board member) and others. Deborah also participates in NCI’s cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid’s (caBIG) Clinical Trials, and Data Sharing and Intellectual Capital workspaces. She has served on many NCI/NIH committees (e.g. Board of Scientific Counselors, Investigations Drug Steering Committee, Consensus Panels); as faculty in AACR workshops and ASCO workshops and committees; on ethical and executive advisory boards for companies, cancer centers, and advocacy organizations; and on DOD/DOE panels. Ms. Collyar has survived two cancers prior to age 40, and lives with her husband (a lung cancer survivor) and son in California. Contact information: Tel: 925.736.8155
Dr. Carolyn Compton is the Director of the Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research as well as the Acting Director of the Office of Technology and Industrial relations at the National Cancer Institute of the United States. She came to the NCI from McGill University where she had been the Strathcona Professor and Chair of Pathology and the Pathologist-in-Chief of McGill University Health Center from 2000-2005. Prior to this, she had been a Professor of Pathology Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was the Director of Gastrointestinal Pathology for 15 years. She received her MD and PhD in degrees simultaneously from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She trained in both Anatomic Pathology and Clinical Pathology at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her current research involves translational studies in colon cancer and human biospecimen science.
Dr. Compton currently holds several national and international leadership positions in professional organizations such as the College of American Pathologists, the Cancer and Leukemia Group B, the American Joint Committee on Cancer, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. She is an Associate Editor of Cancer and Cell Preservation Technology. She has published more than 350 original scientific papers, reports, review articles, books and abstracts.
Dr. Janet Dancey is Program Leader, High Impact Clinical Trials, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and Director, Translational Research (Clinical) at NCIC CTG. Previously, she was Associate Chief in the Investigational Drug Branch of the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI-US). She completed medical school at the University of Ottawa in 1988 and trained in internal medicine and medical oncology at the University of Toronto. She received certifications in internal medicine and medical oncology from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 1992 and 1993 respectively. She has completed research fellowships at the Investigational New Drugs Division of NCIC CTG and at the Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France. Prior to her appointment at NCI-US, she was a Staff Medical Oncologist at The Toronto Hospital and Princess Margaret Hospital and Assistant Professor, Division of Medical Oncology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.
Dr. Dancey has extensive experience in cancer therapeutic and biomarker development. At the NCI she was responsible for identifying areas of therapeutic potential for the agents, initiating and monitoring clinical trials and providing expert advice to NCI senior staff, extramural investigators and pharmaceutical collaborators on scientific and regulatory issues. In addition, she was co-chair of the Bioimarkers Task Force of the Investigational Drugs Steering Committee. She was a member of the Lung Cancer Concept Evaluation Panel, responsible for reviewing, and approving proposals for cooperative group phase 3 studies in lung cancer. She served on the joint ASCO-FDA committee assessing traditional and non-traditional endpoints in lung cancer studies. She was a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Program Committee 2001-2002, and 2007-8, and served as Chair of the Clinical Pharmacology Subcommittee for the 2002, Track Leader for the Developmental Therapeutics – Molecular Therapeutics subcommittee in of the 2007-8 ASCO Program Committee. She was a member of the Scientific Committee of the AACR-NCI-EORTC Molecular Targets 2003 and 2005 Meetings and the co-chair of the Scientific Committee for the 2004 meeting. Dr. Dancey has presented at national and international oncology meetings and has been an invited speaker at other cancer centers and CME events. She is a member of the Editorial Board of PDQ. She is the author or co-author of over 85 peer-reviewed publications, 80 abstracts presented at international meetings in oncology and 15 book chapters in the areas of oncology therapeutics development, clinical trial methodology patient reported outcomes research, and treatments for lung and gastrointestinal malignancies.
Ronald J. Heslegrave, Ph.D., is currently an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Public Health, School of Graduate Studies and the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Toronto. Over the last 25 years he has served as a working scientist in a number of areas including the effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance and the impact of medication on quality of life. However, for the last 17 years, he has been the Chair of various Research Ethics Boards in academic hospitals connected to the University of Toronto. These Boards which review all medical research involving humans carried out at the Insitution. Dr. Heslegrave currently Chairs a number of hospital REBs including the University Health Network (including the Toronto General, Toronto Western, Princess Margaret (Cancer) Hospitals), Mount Sinai Hospital and the Ontario Cancer Research Ethics Board. Together these hospitals conduct over 1400 new medical research protocols each year. Dr. Heslegrave has led the Harmonization Task Force for the Toronto Academic Health Science Committee for the University of Toronto to standardize research ethics board procedures and practices across the 9 University of Toronto fully-affiliated hospitals.
From a research perspective, however, he has been working in the area of fatigue and shiftwork for the last 25 years. In this regard, he has recently been involved in projects on fatigue-related performance changes in shiftworkers who are nuclear power plant workers, air traffic controllers, coast guard personnel, Hydro workers, Canada Post workers, underground mine workers, and truck drivers and is actively involved in educating shiftworkers and assessing workplaces in terms of shiftwork demands. Dr. Heslegrave has assisted Transport Canada, Coast Guard, the Canadian Trucking Alliance, air traffic controllers, airline pilots, and Correctional Services with their efforts to investigate fatigue and shiftwork in occupational settings and the utility of fatigue countermeasures. In terms of policy making, Dr. Heslegrave is part of the advisory panel to Transport Canada with regard to their new policy on the Hours of Service regulations for the trucking industry, to the US Federal Administration Association (FAA) on their project on fatigue management of air traffic controllers, to NavCanada, Transport Canada, and the Canadian Association of Air Traffic Controllers on policies associated with fatigue management of air traffic controllers in Canada, and to the American Association of Railroads on their fatigue management of railraod personnel, particularly engineers. He is currently involved in the implementation of a fatigue management strategy for shiftworking commercial motor vehicle drivers in Canada and the U.S. Dr. Heslegrave has over 200 scientific publications and presentations in a variety of areas and maintains international collaboration in the area of fatigue and shiftwork. Dr. Heslegrave has coauthored 3 references guides in the last 4 years on shiftwork issues: Making the ShiftWork, Working the Shift: A Self-Health Guide, and Fatigue Management: A Guide for Canadian Coast Guard Managers, Officers, and Crew.
Dr. Malcolm Moore is Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology in the Division of Medical Oncology and Hematology at the Princess Margaret Hospital, University of Toronto, and a Senior Scientist in the Division of Experimental Therapeutics at the Ontario Cancer Institute. He is the Director of the Bras Family New Drug Development Program at Princess Margaret Hospital, and Head of the Division of Hematology/Oncology in the Department of Medicine, University Health Network and Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
Dr Moore received his MD from the University of Western Ontario in London and carried out his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology at the University of Toronto. His major interest over the past 10 years has been innovative drug development for cancer therapy, and he has been a principal investigator for many phase I, II and III studies in gastrointestinal and genitourinary cancer. He has been instrumental in the development of several agents that have subsequently been approved for clinical usage, including both gemcitabine and erlotinib in pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Moore has authored over 150 peer reviewed publications and has given over 100 invited lectures worldwide
Dr. Amit Oza is a Senior Staff Physician and Professor of Medicine at Princess Margaret Hospital, University of Toronto. He is a Scientist with the Ontario Cancer Institute and cross appointed to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Toronto. He graduated from St. Bartholomew's Hospital, University of London (UK), in 1983 and completed his internal medicine and medical oncology training in UK. He completed Clinical Research Fellowships at St. Bartholomew's Hospital/Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London (UK), Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto and at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam. His postgraduate research thesis was on Molecular Epidemiology of Hodgkin's Disease. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London and Canada.
Dr. Oza has been the principal investigator and co-investigator in phase I, II, and III trials for gynecological cancer and advanced colorectal malignancies. His research interests are focused towards the development, assessment and validation of novel therapeutic strategies for cancer including molecular targeted therapies. Many of these studies also incorporate novel endpoints and translational research which is developed in close relationship with scientists and pathologists from the OCI/PMH.
Dr. Oza has been the recipient of various awards such as the University of Toronto Award for Teaching Excellence for the Medical Oncology Training Program, the Hasselback Award for Teaching Excellence from Princess Margaret Hospital and many others. He has also been principal and co-author of numerous publications in major peer reviewed journals such as Cancer Research, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Annals of Oncology, Investigational New Drugs and Clinical Cancer Research.
He is currently Co-Director of the Robert and Maggie Bras and Family Drug Development Program at Princess Margaret Hospital. This is the largest new drug development program in Canada and the only center outside the US to have a contract with the NIH for Early Phase Therapeutic studies. He is also Co-Chair of the Gynecology Site Committee of the NCIC Clinical Trials Group and represents NCIC CTG at the Gynecologic Cancer Inter Group.
Dr. Bob Phillips is currently the Deputy Director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, a new institute dedicated to enhancing translation of basic research through the creation of novel multi-disciplinary teams from various Ontario cancer centres. In January 2002, he was appointed the founding President and CEO of the Ontario Cancer Research Network, a program of the Ontario government to speed up the development of new cancer therapies. In December 2005, when the Ontario Government asked the OCRN to evolve into the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Dr. Phillips served as interim CEO and assisted in the recruitment of the new President. Prior to these appointments, Dr. Phillips worked as a scientist at the Ontario Cancer Institute/Princess Margaret Hospital (1965-1986) and the Hospital for Sick Children (1986-1996) and was Executive Director of the National Cancer Institute of Canada (1996-2001). His research interests focused on cancer with special emphasis on hematopoietic stem cells and retinoblastoma, an inherited eye tumour in children.
Dr. Patricia Shaw is Director of the PMH/UHN Biobank, which includes the Cancer Biobank Core laboratory, and has over 12 years experience developing and directing biorepositories. She developed Canada’s largest and most comprehensive ovarian tissue bank and clinical database in 1996, and developed a pilot for a national ovarian bank. Dr. Shaw is an Associate Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, and is a well-known gynecological pathologist, with a strong interest in quality control issues in the pathology laboratory. Her research program is focused on discovery of the early molecular/genetic events of serous oncogenesis and improved molecular characterization of ovarian carcinoma, none of which can be achieved without a well-characterized high quality biorepository..
Dr. Terrence Sills is Vice-Prsident Ontario Cancer Biomarker Network. He received his Ph.D. from University of Toronto in 1994, and was a Fogarty Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, MD until 1996. Following his tenure at the NIMH, Dr. Sills returned to Toronto where he was a NARSAD-funded Research Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
Dr. Sills moved to industry in the spring of 1999, taking the position of clinical research scientist at Boehringer Ingelheim, where Dr. Sills worked on a number of international drug-development programmes (depression, stroke, female sexual dysfunction, and HIV/Aids). In 2003, Dr. Sills left Boehringer Ingelheim to co-found AXON Clinical Research, which provided clinical research consulting services to the biotech sector. At AXON, Dr. Sills worked on a number of development programs for small and mid-sized biotech companies.
Following the successful launch and growth of AXON Clinical Research, Dr. Sills joined the Ontario Cancer Biomarker Network as Vice President to develop and grow the organization into a profitable business, and to work towards applying biomarkers and diagnostics to the development of personalized therapeutics, the medical model that will become prevalent in the 21st century. Title of Presentation: Medicine in the 21st Century: Biomarkers and Personalized Therapeutics
Dr. Ming Tsao is a Consultant Oncologic Pathologist and Senior Scientist, University Health Network. He is also the Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology and Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto. Dr. Tsao also holds the M. Qasim Choksi Chair in Lung Cancer Translational Research, Princess Margaret Hospital and University of Toronto. Dr.Tsao oversees multiple translational research programs as well. He is the Director of Lung cancer translational research program, Princess Margaret Hospital, Director of Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) Training Program in Molecular Pathology of Cancer, Director of Applied Molecular Profiling Laboratory, Ontario Cancer Institute and Co-chair, Correlative Science and Tumor Biology Committee, National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group.
Aside from being a surgical pathologist specializing in thoracic diseases, Dr. Tsao also maintains a very active laboratory research programs funded by the CIHR, Canadian Cancer Society and Ontario Institute of Cancer Research. His research interests are in the molecular profiling of lung cancers at gene expression, sequence and copy number variation levels. Special areas include prognostic gene expression signatures, tumor stroma and stroma-tumor cell interaction, predictive biomarkers of response for chemo and targeted therapies, and molecular basis of lung and pancreatic carcinogenesis. Dr. Tsao is often invited to grant review panels in the US and Canada, and is frequently invited to speak at international meetings on molecular pathology of lung cancer. He has served on the Medical Advisory Boards around the world for oncology and targeted cancer therapies
Dr. Brent Zanke is Vice-President, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and Director, Ontario Tumour Bank Program He is also a Research Scientist at the Cancer Care Ontario as well as Chairman and Chief Medical Officer, ArcticDx, Inc. he is a Medical Oncologist at University of Ottawa General Hospital. He was previously Director of the Cross Cancer Institute, Edmonton, Canada as well as Vice President and Provincial Head of Systemic Therapy, Cancer Care Ontario.
Dr. Zanke received his MD from University of Manitoba and his PhD in molecular genetics from University of Toronto. Dr. Zanke has over 34 peer reviewed publications. His current research projects are Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Canadian Tumour Repository Network (CTRNet); Genome Canada- Assessment of Risk for Colon Tumors in Canada; CIHR Team Grant: Interdisciplinary Research on the Determinants and Impact of Colorectal Cancer: Molecular-Genetic Factors, Risk Modifiers and Population Health (CIHR Team in Interdisciplinary Research; NCIC Program Project Grant: Cancer Risk Evaluation (CaRE) Project. His research grants are approx. $17M.
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