Early Career GCI Researchers Receive FRQ Research Scholars Awards

Simon Roy, M.D. M.H.S, and Hannah Garner, PhD, two researchers at the Rosalind & Morris Goodman Cancer Institute (GCI), were respectively awarded clinical-research scholar and research scholar awards from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec (FRQ) – Santé.

This recognition supports early and mid-career researchers so they can expand their research and establish themselves in their respective fields. Both Profs. Roy and Garner share a research goal: change outcomes for cancer patients who need it the most.

Simon Roy: Mapping resistance in Melanoma

Immune checkpoint blockade has transformed melanoma treatment, yet many patients fail to respond to this form of therapy. Outcomes are worst for rare subtypes such as acral melanoma, which arises on the palms, soles, and under the nails of affected patients. It remains an overrepresented form of melanoma among Black, Asian and Hispanic patients.

Dr. Roy’s lab asks how chemical switches that turn genes up or down without altering DNA itself, called epigenetic regulation, shapes the surrounding of these tumours. His team maps where different cells sit within a tumour to find the pockets where cancer hides from the immune system. Dr. Roy’s team is working with research teams across Canada and worldwide to turn their new findings into biomarkers that can be used in the clinic. The second research axis of the Roy laboratory is the investigation of BRD4, a gene regulator that helps tumours escape detection, using thin slices of patient tumours that allow preserving cells in their natural organization. Dr. Roy’s research will tell sooner who will benefit from immunotherapy.

Hannah Garner: How tumours rewire the immune system

Metastasis, not the original tumour, claims most cancer patient’s lives, including about 8000 women in Canada each year who die of breast and ovarian cancer. Prof. Garner is investigating a key reason why: tumours turn the body’s own defenses, the immune system, against it.

Every circulating immune cell in the body traces back to rare stem cells in the bone marrow. Tumours appear to send chemical messages that disrupt this production line, so that myeloid cells, normally the body’s defenders, instead help cancer cells survive and travel. Persistent inflammation fuels this takeover, and it may also explain why many tumours resist immunotherapy. Yet exactly how tumours pull it off remains largely unknown.

To find out, Prof. Garner’s research team studies mouse models of breast and ovarian cancer alongside blood samples from patients. By looking at individual cells using cutting-edge technologies, they follow how tumours alter the development and behaviour of myeloid cells. By understanding these changes, the team hopes to design treatments that reverse them and restore the immune system’s ability to fight back.

Together, these awards reflect the Institute’s commitment to early-career investigators, and the promise their research programs show to change patient outcomes. Congratulations to both!