"Overcoming Therapy Resistance in del(5q) Myelodysplastic Syndromes"
Aly Karsan, M.D.
Dr. Karsan is a clinician-scientist at BC Cancer and Professor of Pathology at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He completed undergraduate training and medical school at Queen’s University, and hematopathology residency at UBC in Vancouver. Following a research fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle, he accepted a faculty position at UBC. His current research aims to understand the post-transcriptional mechanisms of resistance and relapse in the myeloid cancers using various omics approaches including single cell sequencing and functional assays. His clinical interest centres around developing and validating clinical genomic methodologies, and improving automation and quality assurance in clinical genomics. In 2010 he established the Centre for Clinical Genomics (CCG) at BC Cancer, which was the first accredited lab in Canada to use next-generation sequencing techniques to deliver clinical testing.
"A Novel Mechanism Converts Microsatellites into Cancer-Specific Gene Regulatory Elements in B-Lymphoblastic Leukemia"
Russell Ryan, M.D.
Dr. Ryan is an Assistant Professor of Pathology at the University of Michigan Medical School, where he directs a research lab focused on the biology of lymphoid malignancies, and practices clinically as a member of the Hematopathology Service. He earned a B.A. from Amherst College and M.D. from the Yale University School of Medicine, followed by clinical training in Anatomic Pathology and Hematopathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He then completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the laboratory of Bradley Bernstein at MGH & the Broad Institute. Dr. Ryan’s research focuses on mechanisms that sustain oncogenic gene regulatory programs in B-cell leukemias and lymphomas, with a goal of identifying cancer-specific dependencies that could be exploited for improved patient care. Dr. Ryan has received research funding from the National Cancer Institute, the Leukemia Research Foundation, the V Foundation for Cancer Research, and the American Society of Hematology.
