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Monday, May 14, 2012, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Shaun R. Coughlin, M.D., Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Cardiovascular Biology and Medicine
Director, Cardiovascular Research Institute
University of California, San Francisco
Protease-Activated Receptors: A Bench to Bedside Story? {pdf}
Dr. Coughlin received his undergraduate and graduate training from M.I.T. and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. After internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, he moved to the University of California, San Francisco for Cardiology and postdoctoral research fellowships. He joined the UCSF faculty in 1986 and is currently Distinguished Professor of Cardiovascular Biology and Medicine and Director of UCSF’s Cardiovascular Research Institute. In 1991, the Coughlin laboratory’s discovery of a thrombin receptor, now known as protease-activated receptor-1 (PAR1) revealed the molecular mechanism by which thrombin, a protease, can regulate the behavior of platelets and other cells like hormones do. The laboratory’s characterization of PAR1 and other members of the PAR family led to a greater understanding of how cells sense and respond to tissue injury to orchestrate hemostasis, thrombosis and infl ammation, and pointed to PAR1 antagonism as a possible strategy for antithrombotic therapy. A PAR1 antagonist is in Phase 3 trials for secondary prevention of MI. The laboratory currently explores the roles of PARs and other G protein-coupled receptors in cardiovascular biology and disease and in embryonic development.
Dr. Coughlin is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
(Conférence en anglais seulement)
Host: Dr. Stéphanie Lehoux, Ext: 5915, stephanie.lehoux@mcgill.ca
Location: BLOOMFIELD LECTURE HALL
3999, Chemin de la Côte-Ste-Catherine (corner of Legaré), Montréal, Québec
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Tuesday, May 1, 2012, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Lothar Hennighausen, Ph.D.
Laboratory of Genetics & Physiology
NIDDK, National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD
Cytokine signaling through STAT5 - lessons from mouse genetics and
genome explorations {pdf}
Lothar Hennighausen is a geneticist who continues to explore gene networks controlling mammary gland development and function during pregnancy and lactation. He uses the tools of molecular biology and mouse genetics to unlock secrets surrounding peptide hormones in determining the biology of mammary cell lineages. His research covers the original cloning of prolactin-induced milk protein genes to the wide-reaching explorations of cytokine signaling through the transcription factor STAT5. The tools he developed continue to contribute to
research efforts of laboratories worldwide. More recently his laboratory has explored the role of micro RNAs and histone modifi cations in programmed mammary cell differentiation.
A native of Germany, Lothar Hennighausen immigrated to the United States in 1983 to conduct research with Dr. Philip Leder at Harvard, and he has been at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland since 1985. He has received scientifi c awards, including the Senior Humboldt Research Award, a Mercator Professorship
by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and a World Class Scholarship by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation. Former members of his laboratory hold positions in academia, industry and government on three continents.
Lothar Hennighausen takes the same enthusiastic approach to activities outside the lab as he does inside. He is an avid ultra long distance cyclist and finisher of 1200km events, including Paris-Brest-Paris. He is the founding member of the “Korea Randonneurs” the ultra long-distance cycling club of Korea.
(Conférence en anglais seulement)
Host: Dr. Antonis Koromilas, Ext: 3697, antonis.koromilas@mcgill.ca
Location: BLOOMFIELD LECTURE HALL
3999, Chemin de la Côte-Ste-Catherine (corner of Legaré), Montréal, Québec
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PAST LECTURES
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Monday, April 23, 2012, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Stefanie Dimmeler, Ph.D.
Professor of Experimental Medicine
Director, Institute of Cardiovascular Regeneration
Center for Molecular Medicine, University of Frankfurt
MICRORNAS: NEW THERAPEUTIC TARGETS IN CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE
Stefanie Dimmeler received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Konstanz (Germany). She then completed a fellowship in Experimental Surgery at the University of Cologne and in Molecular Cardiology at the University of Frankfurt. She is Professor of Experimental Medicine and Director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Regeneration, Center for Molecular Medicine at the University of Frankfurt.
She is author of more than 200 papers, published in high impact journals. She received several awards including the Award of the German Heart Foundation in 1998, the Frankel-Preis of the German Cardiac Society in 2000, the Alfried Krupp Award 2002, the Leibniz Award 2005, the Award of the Jung Foundation 2007 and the FEBS award 2006. She presented the prestigious George E. Brown Memorial Lecture at the Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association in 2005 and the Basic Science Lecture of the European Society of Cardiology in 2006. She serves presently on the editorial boards of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Circulation, Basic Research in Cardiology, and she is associate editor of Circulation Research and European Heart Journal. She is co-director of the Transatlantic Network of Cardiac Regeneration and member of the Steering Committee of the “Excellence Cluster Cardio-Pulmonary System”.
Her research is predominantly focused on endothelial cell biology, including signal transduction, apoptosis, and renewal by circulation endothelial progenitor cells in health and disease. She identified novel signalling pathways mediating the synthesis and release of the endothelial protective factor NO. Together with Dr. Zeiher, she is responsible for the scientific discoveries culminating in current clinical trials of human progenitor cells for cardiovascular repair.
Host: Dr. Stéphanie Lehoux, Ext: 5915, stephanie.lehoux@mcgill.ca
Location: JGH Block Amphitheatre (B-106), 3755, Chemin de la Côte-Ste-Catherine, Montréal, Québec
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Tuesday, April 3, 2012, 4:00pm
The Lady Davis Institute & The McGill University-Génome Québec Innovation Centre present the McGill Distinguished Lectureship in Human Genetics
David Altshuler MD, PhD
Professor of Genetics and of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital;
Deputy Director and Chief Academic Officer, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
Human Genomic Variation and the Inherited Basis of Common Disease {pdf}
Despite great progress in medical science, we have limited knowledge of the molecular causes of disease in human populations; this ignorance is one of the gating factors in efforts to design rationale approaches to prevent and treat disease. Genetic mapping offers an approach to study disease that is unbiased by prior hypotheses about disease mechanisms, and that provides in vivo human validation of relevance. We have worked to make possible genetic mapping of common diseases by developing maps of human sequence variation (the SNP Consortium HapMap, and 1000 Genomes Projects), and by developing technologies and analytical methods to enable genome-wide association studies. We have contributed to the localization of over 50 genomic loci contributing to risk of type 2 diabetes, and others associated with hyperlipidemia, myocardial infarction and other diseases. Going forward we are pursuing two main approaches: (a) next-generation sequencing studies of >15,000 people with diabetes and related clinical traits, systematically testing the role of rare mutations, and (b) developing methods to elucidate the functions of genes and mutations in the context of human physiology and pathophysiology.
Location: Charles Martin Amphitheatre, McIntyre Medical Sciences Building
3655 Promenade Sir William Osler, Montreal, Quebec
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Wednesday, February 1, 2012 4:00 P.M.
The Lady Davis Institute & The McGill University-Génome Québec Innovation Centre present the Inaugural Distinguished Lectureship in Human Genetics
Thomas Hudson MD
President and Scientific Director,
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR)
The Genetic Basis for Cancer Treatment Decisions (pdf)
Personalized cancer medicine is based on a rapidly emerging knowledge of the cancer mutation repertoire, the unique patterns of mutations in human tumours that are continually evolving, and the increased availability of anti-cancer agents that target altered genes or pathways. Transforming actionable mutations into
actionable cancer gene panels is an important step toward using comprehensive molecular analysis of tumours in the clinical setting to help guide physicians in selecting therapies. In my presentation, I will present concepts and experiences gained from a pilot study involving patients with advanced metastatic cancers
from five cancer centres in Ontario, who are potential candidates for early phase clinical trials of targeted agents. The study includes rapid mutation detection in a set of genes deemed to be actionable, validation in a clinical molecular diagnostics laboratory and reporting of actionable mutations to clinicians and
patients.
• Rajan S, Djambazian H, Chu Pham Dang H, Sladek R, Hudson TJ. The Living
Microarray: a High-Throughput Platform for Measuring Transcription
Dynamics in Single Cells. BMC Genomics. 2011; 12; 115.
• Fortier I, Burton PR, Robson PJ, Ferretti V, Little J, L’heureux F, Deschênes
M, Knoppers BM, Doiron D, Keers JC, Linksted P, Harris JR, Lachance
G, Boileau C, Pedersen NL, Hamilton CM, Hveem K, Borugian MJ,
Gallagher RP, McLaughlin J, Parker L, Potter JD, Gallacher J, Kaaks R,
Liu B, Sprosen T, Vilain A, Atkinson SA, Rengifo A, Morton R, Metspalu A,
Wichmann HE, Tremblay M, Chisholm RL, Garcia-Montero A, Hillege H,
Litton JE, Palmer LJ, Perola M, Wolffenbuttel BH, Peltonen L, Hudson TJ.
Quality, quantity and harmony: the DataSHaPER approach to integrating
data across bioclinical studies. Int J Epidemiol. 2010; 39; 1383-93.
• International Cancer Genome Consortium (Hudson TJ is lead and
corresponding author). International network of cancer genome projects.
Nature. 2010; 464; 993-8.
Host: Dr. Roderick McInnes (Director, Lady Davis Institute, Jewish General Hospital) and Dr. Mark Lathrop (Scientific Director, McGill University-Genome Québec Innovation Centre)
Location: Charles Martin Amphitheatre, McIntyre Medical Sciences Building
3655 Promenade Sir William Osler, Montreal, Quebec
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Tuesday, February 7, 2012 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Riccardo Dalla-Favera, MD
Professor and Director,
Institute for Cancer Genetics, New York
Molecular Genetics of B-Cell Lymphoma
Dr. Dalla-Favera received his medical degree and completed his residency at the University of Milan. During a fellowship at the National Cancer Institute, he initiated pioneering studies on the cloning of human oncogenes and their role in initiating cancer. After serving seven years on the New York University School of Medicine faculty, he joined Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in the Department of Pathology in 1989. For the past 20 years, Dr. Dalla-Favera has provided key
leadership to the cancer research community at Columbia University Medical Center, particularly in his roles as founding Director of the Institute for Cancer Genetics, and from 2005-2011, Director of Columbia’s Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Dalla-Favera’s research continues to yield new insights into the origins of human malignancy and novel strategies for the treatment of cancer patients. In particular, his discoveries represent much of the current knowledge on the genetic lesions and biological mechanisms responsible for human B cell lymphoma, a major group of cancers that develop in white blood cells. Indeed, the molecular lesions identified by Dr. Dalla-Favera have led to the development of diagnostic tests and are being tested as targets in clinical trials with lymphoma patients. His work is widely quoted in scientific publications and in medicine and oncology textbooks.
Dr. Dalla-Favera has been recognized with several national awards, including the Stohlman Award from The Leukemia Society of America, two NIH MERIT Awards (1989, 2005), the “Outstanding Achievement Award from the American-Italian Cancer Foundation, 2005 and the 2006 William Dameshek Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Hematology from The American Society of Hematology. In 2011 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.
Host: Dr. Koren Mann ext: 2760 koren.mann@mcgill.ca
Location: BLOOMFIELD LECTURE HALL
3999, Chemin de la Côte-Ste-Catherine (corner of Légaré), Montréal, Québec
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012 12:00 P.M. - 1:00 P.M.
Monsef Benkirane
Laboratoire de Virologie Moléculaire
Institut de Génétique Humaine
Montpellier, France
How Samhd1 may change our view of viral restriction
The primate lentivirus auxiliary protein Vpx counteracts an unknown restriction factor that renders human dendritic and myeloid cells largely refractory to HIV-1 infection. We recently identified Samhd1 as this restriction factor. Samhd1 is a protein involved in Aicardi-Goutière Syndrome (AGS), a genetic encephalopathy with symptoms mimicking congenital viral infection that has been proposed to act as a negative regulator of the interferon-stimulated DNA response. We will summarizes the similarities and discrepancies between SAMHD1 and other HIV-1 restriction factors
while highlighting the new questions that are emerging about the crosstalk between restriction factors and innate immune responses.
Monsef Benkirane obtained his PhD in immunology from the University of Marseille Luminy (CIML) to understand the role of T-cell activation in HIV replication. Later, he did his postdoctoral training at the NIH (Bethesda, MD, USA) with Kuan-Teh Jeang where he focused on HIV gene expression. In 1998, he became principal investigator at the “Institut de Génétique Humaine CNRS” and head of the molecular virology laboratory. His main interest is to understand the interaction between HIV and its host with particular emphasis on viral persistence and restriction. He is associate editor of Retrovirology, president of the French National Agency for AIDS Research (ANRS) study section committee and member of the International AIDS Society working group on viral persistence. He is the recipient of an award from the French Medical Research Foundation for his contribution to virology, and was recently awarded an ERC advanced grant.
Host: Dr. Chen Liang ext: 4826 chen.liang@mcgill.ca
Location: Salle Bernard M. Bloomfield
3999, chemin de la Cote-Saint-Catherine (coin rue Legare), Montreal, QC, H3T 1E2 Canada |
Tuesday, December 6, 2011, 12:00PM - 1:00PM
Jerome C. Wakefield, PhD, DSW
University Professor,
Professor of Social Work
and Professor of Psychiatry New York University
"DSM-5 and the Concept of Disorder: Is Psychiatry Pathologizing Normal Grief?"
Jerome C. Wakefield, PhD, DSW is University Professor, Professor of Social Work, and Professor of Psychiatry, New York University. Previous positions were at University of Chicago, Columbia University, and Rutgers University. He has published about 200 articles on the conceptual foundations of the mental health professions and the intersection of philosophy and psychiatry. His recent work has focused on the concept of mental disorder, the validity of DSM diagnostic criteria, and the problem of false positive diagnoses. He is the co-author, with Allan Horwitz, of The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder (2007, Oxford University Press), named the best psychology book of the year by the Association of American Publishers. He is currently completing with Allan Horwitz a book on anxiety and its disorders (All We Have to Fear, Oxford 2012), and a book on Freud’s case of Little Hans to be published by Routledge.
Host: Dr. Brett Thombs, ext: 5112 brett.thombs@mcgill.ca
Location: Salle Bernard M. Bloomfield
3999, chemin de la Cote-Saint-Catherine (coin rue Legare), Montreal, QC, H3T 1E2 Canada |
Wednesday, November 30, 2011 From: 2:00 P.M. - 3:00 P.M.
Hugues de Thé, MD, PhD
Professor
Molecular Biology
Hospital St. Louis/University of Paris VII Head of an INSERM/CNRS Research Unit
"Elucidating APL Pathogenesis through therapy Response" (pdf)
Dr. Hugues de Thé obtained his MD in Necker Hospital (University of Paris VI) and his PhD from the Pasteur Institute in 1990. Since then he has gone on to become a Professor of Molecular Biology in Hospital St.Louis/University of Paris VII and head of an INSERM/CNRS Research Unit. He is also a distinguished member of several French and European scientific advisory boards.
Dr. de Thé’s main research interest has been to link defined genetic abnormalities in cancers to their response to treatment. Most notably, he has made significant contributions towards dissecting the molecular basis of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) response to retinoic acid and arsenic. These studies have provided the molecular and cellular basis underlying the effective treatment of this malignancy. Dr. de Thé’s accomplishments have led to his recent nomination as a member of the French Academy of Science in 2011 amongst many other awards and distinctions.
Host: Dr. Wilson Miller, ext: 4365 wmiller@jgh.mcgill.ca
Location: Salle Bernard M. Bloomfield
3999, chemin de la Cote-Saint-Catherine (coin rue Legare), Montreal, QC, H3T 1E2 Canada |
Friday, October 28, 2011 From: Noon - 1:00PM
Yitzhak Pilpel, PhD
Professor
Molecular Genetics Weizmann Institute of Science
"CHROMOSOMAL ANEUPLOIDY - A RAPID TRANSIENT STEP TOWARDS ADAPTATION TO STRESS." (pdf)
Prof. Yitzhak Pilpel received his Ph.D. with distinction from the Weizmann Institute of Science (1999), followed by a post-doc in the Dept. of Genetics at Harvard. His research specializes in computer- based studies of genes and their products, to analyze complex cellular networks. He develops computational tools, backed-up by lab experiments, to analyze the structure and underlying logic of genetic regulatory networks. In parallel, he applies systems biology strategies to study genetic circuits that process information in cells, to define the entire pathways through which proteins affect changes in gene expression. His research activities have many potential clinical applications. For example, he has developed algorithms that enable scientists to rank mutations according to the likelihood that they cause disease. This could lead to more “personalized” medicine and help advance preventative health measures based on individual profiles.
Host: Dr. Stephane Richard, ext: 4470 stephane.richard@mcgill.ca
Location: Salle Bernard M. Bloomfield
3999, chemin de la Cote-Saint-Catherine (coin rue Legare), Montreal, QC, H3T 1E2 Canada |
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