TERM ADJUNCT APPOINTMENT

| 7 May 2025

Posted: May 7, 2025

The Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine in the Queen’s University Faculty of Health Sciences and its affiliated teaching hospitals is recruiting a Term Adjunct appointment to teach (100%) of an in-person course entitled:

Current Topics in Human Genetics (PATH425) Term: Fall 2025 (September to December) Location: On campus Course level: Upper year Format: Lectures, student presentation and student-led teaching sessions

Innovative cancer therapies

Spotlight

| 30 April 2025

Innovative cancer therapies designed to reactivate a patients own immune cells to attack their tumors has revolutionized cancer treatment and is saving many lives. Department of Pathology & Molecular Medicine MD-PhD student Dr. Brian Laight and colleagues working from the Sinclair Cancer Research Institute report in the journal Cancer Research that immune therapies which stimulate cytotoxic T lymphocytes to attack cancer could be made even more effective by stimulating another class of immune cells called dendritic cells - which are responsible for alerting the T lymphocytes to the presence of the tumor and activating them to kill cancer cells. The combined targeting of these two types of immune cells holds promise to further improve survival in multiple cancer types.

Research Mentorship Program

Spotlight

| 11 April 2025

We are very excited that our program at the Katarokwi Learning Centre has grown this year to ~24 mentees, ranging from grades 5-9.

This current year is one of the most successful for our program, since its debut in 2016!

We have a total of 7 mentors and one Head-In-person mentor, all of whom are graduate students in DPMM, DBMS, CNS or Biology.

The Research Mentorship Program consists of:

Bruce Elliott - Program Coordinator Lead* (Emeritus Professor, DPMM)

Cynthia Pruss - Program Coordinator (Assistant Professor, DPMM)

Qingling Duan, Program Coordinator (DBMS)

Jamie Would - Head In-person Mentor

Monica Garvie - Indigenous Liaison Person

Yasmine Saini, Doriana Taccardi, Marie Boddington - Assistant Coordinators

This year Monica Garvie (PhD student in Biology) is serving as our Indigenous Liaison person, who is helping us in culture sensitivity and planning for our mentorships. We also have input from Sarah Funnell, Vice-Dean of Indigenous Health, who has helped us in recruitment of mentors, and provided advice regarding our project activities.

Weekly sessions began on February 26th with three whole class activities (roller Coaster Physics, Blood types (forensics), and Microscopes: Hidden worlds! Mentees are now divided into 5 groups, according to their interests.

4th David M. Robertson Visiting Lecturer 2025

Spotlight

| 2 April 2025

Teresa Purzner, MD, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery, Queen’s University & Neurosurgeon, Kingston Health Sciences Centre

Dr. Teresa Purzner received her MD in 2009, then completed the first 4 years of her neurosurgical residency in Toronto before leaving the clinical realm to study developmental neurobiology at Stanford University. During her time at Stanford, Teresa combined novel techniques in mass spectrometry with developmental neurobiology to discover new drug targets for pediatric brain tumors. This led to her discovering a new drug target in medulloblastoma, the most common pediatric brain tumor. In collaboration with Stanford SPARK and the pediatric brain tumor consortium (PBTC), she bridged this discovery from bench to bedside in the form of a first-in-child CK2 inhibitor clinical trial for the treatment of medulloblastoma. Dr. Purzner’s work has earned her widespread recognition both in the media and through national and international awards including the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate and BioX fellowship, Annual Award of the American Academy of Neurological Surgery, the Weston Havens Foundation award, K.G. McKenzie prize for Basic Science Research, AANS Louise Eisenhardt Award and the Neurosurgery Research and Education Fellowship. She is also the founder and CSO of Cerebelly, a babyfood company designed to support early brain development which can be found in over 15,000 stores across Canada and the USA, including Loblaws, Sobey’s, Farm Boy, Whole Foods Market, Target, Kroger and Wegmans.

Articles

TERM ADJUNCT APPOINTMENT

Innovative cancer therapies

Research Mentorship Program

4th David M. Robertson Visiting Lecturer 2025

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