Projects

Active Projects

	Colorectal Cancer Screening This program's focus is to develop novel easy-to-administer tests that identify individuals at the earliest, most curable stages of the disease		Development of Technologies for the Derivation, Propagation and Differentiation of hESC To lay the groundwork for developing human embryonic stem cell-based therapies and facilitate the broader use of these cells to identify new drugs that stimulate or repress particular regenerative events in vivo.
	Genetic Analyses of Lymphoid Neoplasms We are applying our Illumina sequencing and bioinformatics pipelines to the genome-wide analysis of lymphomas. This will allow the identification of all of the genes being expressed by the lymphoid cells, the presence of mutated genes and chromosome rearrangements, as well as enabling the recognition of proteins which could be targetted by anti-cancer treatments.		Genetics of Aortic Valve Stenosis Aortic valve stenosis is the third leading cause of adult heart disease and the most common form of acquired heart valve disease in developed countries. Although some risk factors are known, the true interactions are complex and involve age, lifestyle factors, and genetics.
	Genetics of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma The focus of this research is to discover the inherited genetic factors that influence susceptibility to Non-Hodkin Lymphoma and other related Lymphoid Cancers within families.		Healthy Aging The G3 team studies genetic factors that underlie healthy aging and resistance to common age-related diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular and pulmonary disease.
	High Resolution Analysis of Follicular Lymphoma Genomes High resolution analysis follicular lymphoma genomes to discover the genomic rearrangements contributing to development of follicular lymphoma and the additional rearrangements contributing to the progression from follicular lymphoma to diffuse large B cell lymphoma.		Lymphoma Transcriptome Sequencing and Analysis This project involves identifying and characterizing the range of mutations found in lymphoma tumours. Once identified, specific mutations may be shown to effect or be associated with response to treatment, patient outcome and survival, or be useful as a target for anti-cancer drug development.
	Mammalian Organogenesis (MORGEN) Using the mouse as our model organism, we are identifying transcriptional networks of genes necessary for the development of the heart, lung, and pancreas.		Massively Parallel Sequencing of the human T-cell Receptor Repertoire This is a comparative approach to understanding the individual variation in the human T-cell repertoires at the sequence level.
	Molecular Characterization of Autophagic Cell Death Exploring the molecular mechanisms essential to autophagy and cell death with genetic, genomic, molecular and proteomic approaches using Drosophila and mammalian cell lines.		Mutation Specific Inhibitors in Breast Cancer Cell Lines To use next generation sequencing technology to derive the complete genomic sequence of breast cancer cell lines.
	Pleiades Promoter Project To generate fully characterized, human DNA promoters of less than 4 kb (MiniPromoters) to drive gene expression in defined brain regions of therapeutic interest for diseases such as Alzheimer, Parkinson, Huntington, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Multiple Sclerosis, Spinocerebellar Ataxia, Depression, Autism, and Cancer.		Potential Therapy for Prostate Cancer Our aim is to design targeted therapies which will recognize and disable the androgen receptor when it is activated in the absence androgen.
	Single Cell Genomics Integration of multilayer soft lithography with next-generation sequencing in order to achieve transcriptome analysis of single cells.		The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Cancer transcriptome characterization using massively parallel DNA sequencing
	Tumor infiltrating T cells in Ovarian Cancer How does the immune system evolve during initial stages of ovarian cancer versus later recurrence of the disease? Our aim is to identify tumor antigens as unique targets for immuno-therapy in advanced ovarian cancer.