Cancer researchers from across the University of Guelph campus and surrounding area came together for updates on a wide-range of translational studies at the May 17 Institute for Comparative Cancer Investigation (ICCI) Symposium.
The ICCI symposium, held at the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC), has seen steady growth over its nine years, registering more than 135 people for this year’s edition.
“We always highlight translational research with this symposium, which includes everything from basic science investigating how cells behave to what’s going on with patients. Those could be patients with two legs or four legs,” says Dr. Brenda Coomber, in OVC’s Biomedical Sciences, who co-organized the symposium with Dr. Tony Mutsaers, also in Biomedical Sciences. Coomber and Dr. Paul Woods, OVC’s Clinical Studies, is also co-director of the ICCI.
The number of abstracts submitted also hit an all-time high with 47 entries. This translated into 12 short talks and 35 poster presentations
“The focus of this meeting from the start has always been an opportunity for our local researchers to meet each other, talk about their work, give their trainees an chance to present their work in an informal, friendly environment, and discuss possible collaborations,” adds Coomber. “The Symposium is close to its optimal size for this. The bigger it gets, the more that flavor goes away.”
Organizers aim for a diversified program. “Our guest speakers commented on the diversity of research presented which is reflective of the research going on at Guelph and with our surrounding collaborations, for example at the University of Waterloo,” she adds.
Guest speaker Dr. Urban Emmenegger, from the Department of Medicine, Odette Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, does both research and clinical care and spoke about “an exciting new way to treat prostate cancer in men using a different approach with radiation which allows patients to delay the start of much more debilitating therapy,” says Coomber.
Dr. Rebecca Gladdy’s group is working on sarcomas. Sarcomas are more common in dogs and cats and very rare in people, adds Coomber. “It’s not that common to find people outside the veterinary world working on them.” Dr. Gladdy, Assistant Professor of surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, was unable to attend and her post-doctoral fellow Timothy McKinnon, presented the talk, on modeling muscle derived sarcomas in experimental transgenic mice.
Sarcomas were also the theme of keynote speaker Dr. Jaime Modiano’s talk. Modiano, a Perlman Professor of Oncology and Comparative Medicine at the University of Minnesota, emphasized the importance of understanding a disease in order to treat it. Modiano outlined his work on hemangiosarcoma in dogs, work which has revealed unexpected and surprising findings, resulting in new opportunities for therapy.
“The response to the symposium is a testament to the innovative translational cancer research happening at OVC and across the UofG campus,” says OVC Dean Jeff Wichtel. “It also reinforces the value of face-to-face interactions as we build collaborations with this important work.”
“We know that there are several collaborations that have developed over the years from people meeting at this event – they could be from across campus or from different cities,” says Coomber.
The Symposium helps to build the cancer research community and to increase our profile at Guelph, adds Coomber. “The whole point of science is to tell people what you find.”
