I was always interested in working in an area that had real-world applications and would improve human health. My first full-time job was in research studying how a substance called surfactant could help treat premature babies with respiratory issues. From there, my research work has been on the molecular basis of memory, diabetes, and medical […]

When I was 15, I was diagnosed with high-grade aggressive osteosarcoma. Being in grade 11 and having come to Canada as a refugee, we were just blown away by this diagnosis, and so shocked. Thanks to the many people that were caring for me, I was able to get treatment and surgeries. I was able

I started my career in computer science. With a PhD in computer science, I had many career options.  I decided to get into bioinformatics because it was taking off shortly after I finished my PhD. It was very exciting — lots of opportunities, lots of great work being done.  It was good, but it was

Cancer research has had an influence on my life for the past decade or so. It really started when I was 15, and I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I had a relatively short course of treatment and I was cancer free within a few months. It was wonderful to be cancer free, but the

Cancer research changed my life because it defined the trajectory of my training and my career.  Right now, I’m at the end of my MD/PhD training. I’m going through clinical rotations and I’m in the leukemia clinic seeing patients. Something I appreciate is how profoundly things like genomics have an impact on cancer care. Some

Cancer research changed my life because without it, I wouldn’t be here today. And without research, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to watch my daughter grow up. In January of 2020, I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. I was sent to a cancer centre and did a month of chemotherapy. Unfortunately, that chemotherapy didn’t

Cancer research has changed my life in very fundamental ways over the last 30-plus years. It started, as it does for many people, with a personal experience. In my case, it was my wife in her early 30s being diagnosed with a rare cancer.  At first, we struggled to find the right diagnosis and the

Cancer changed my life, but cancer research saved it.  Following a two-year suspicion-to-decision interval, I was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer and not given very good odds to even see a fifth anniversary.  I got surgery with two different regimes of chemotherapy. I also had a month of daily radiation at the end of all

The survival rate for acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) in the 1990s was about 10 per cent. By the 2010s it was about 90 per cent. These numbers tell you why, when I was diagnosed with APL in 2017, I was told that I had won the lottery. Right place. Right time. But it wasn’t luck

It started with back pain. It was during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. I went to the doctor and wanted to make sure everything was okay. I had some tests done, and it turned out I had stage 2 adenocarcinoma. It was extremely shocking for me because I was a nonsmoker. I never