Oncology researchers at the Lady Davis Institute are looking at different chemical and biological approaches to the discovery and development of cancer therapies. Chemical agents are synthetic molecules, small peptides or natural products, while biological therapies directly or indirectly use the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer or to lessen side effects of some treatments. This team uses genomic and proteomic technologies and bioinformatics to develop “smart” drugs which are aimed at targets for therapeutic intervention. It also focuses on understanding and tackling cancer drug resistance mechanisms that are often seen with chemotherapeutic agents and mechanisms of DNA damage response and repair pathways in cancer cells.
Members of this team are a diverse group of synthetic organic chemists, chemical biologists, cancer biologists, pharmacologists, computational chemists, and radiochemists that interact closely to create a collaborative research environment in both pre-clinical models and early clinical trials..
Project Directors
Moulay Alaoui-Jamali - Professor, Departments of Medicine, Pharmacology & Therapeutics and Oncology, McGill University
Understanding and targeting cellular signaling pathways regulating cancer cell invasion, in preclinical and clinical settings.
Raquel Aloyz - Assistant Professor, Department of Oncology, McGill University
Disruption of DNA repair complexes in human cancer cells: Therapeutic implications.
Gerald Batist - Chair, Department of Oncology; Professor, Departments of Medicine and Oncology, McGill University
Environmental carcinogens; Preclinical studies.
Nicoletta Eliopoulos - Assistant Professor, Departments of Surgery and Oncology, McGill University
Development of gene therapy for the treatment of cancer; Regenerative medicine; Transgenic cell therapy.
Thomas Jagoe - Assistant Professor, Department of Oncology, McGill University
Mechanisms of muscle wasting; Muscle metabolism; Cancer cachexia.
Koren Mann - Project Director, Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research
Development of novel arsenical-containing chemotherapies; Combination therapies; Environmental metal toxicology.
Lawrence Panasci - Professor, Departments of Medicine and Oncology, McGill University
Restatement of cancer pharmacology: Improving anticancer drugs.
H. Uri Saragovi - Associate Professor, Departments of Medicine, Pharmacology & Therapeutics and Oncology, McGill University
Receptor-ligand interactions; Protein mimicry; Rational drug design; Receptor pharmacology.
Jian Hui Wu - Assistant Professor, Department of Oncology, McGill University
Development of methods in computational biology & chemistry, and application of molecular modeling techniques to problems in chemistry and biology. |