Congratulations Poster Winners at the third Saskatchewan Cancer Research Conference

The third Saskatchewan Cancer Research Conference was held June 22 in Saskatoon, with 125 registered participants from a wide range of disciplines in attendance.

This conference recognizes and promotes the excellent cancer research within the province and provides valuable learning and networking opportunities for the participants. 

Conference Speakers

The conference featured Keynote Speakers.

  • Dr. Shoukat Dedhar, Distinguished Scientist from the BC Cancer Research Centre.  The title of his seminar was “The Tumor Microenvironment and Cancer Metastasis”. 

Additional presentations were made by local investigators, including Dr. K. Wasan (Pharmacy), Dr. F. Vizeacoumar (SCA, Research), Dr. T. Harkness (Anatomy & Cell Biology), Dr. VJ Kundapur (SCA, Radiation Oncology), Dr. C. Phenix (Chemistry), Dr. C. Carvalho (Biology), Dr. J. Yang (Pharmacy), Dr. S. Ritchie (Phemomenome, Saskatoon) and Dr. D. Mousseau (Psychiatry).


Poster Presentation Winners
The conference also included poster presentations, and recognized several poster winners:

•    Graduate Student, First Place ($300):
Tanu Talwar (Supervisor: Dr. Yuliang Wu, Dept. of Biochemistry)
DDX43 (HAGE) is an ATP-dependent RNA and DNA helicase that is involved in DNA repair

•    Graduate Student, Second Place ($200):
Prateek Kundapur (Supervisor: Dr. Anil Bedi, Dept. of Medicine)
Quality Assessment of Colonoscopy Procedure – A practice evaluation study at Royal University Hospital

•    Graduate Student, Third Place ($100):
Chelsea Cunningham (Supervisor: Dr. F. Vizeacoumar, Cancer Cluster)
Therapeutic relevance of protein phosphatase 2A in cancer

•    Post-Doctoral Fellow ($300):
Dr. Shari Smith (Supervisor: Dr. D. Anderson, Dept. of Oncology and Cancer Cluster)
Synthetic Lethal Approaches to Metastatic Breast Cancer Therapy


The success of the conference was in large part due to excellent job of organizers: Drs. Keith Bonham, Franco Vizeacoumar, and Erique Lukong. Invaluable assistance was provided by Sheila Ash and Lori Amson, as well as Frederick Vizeacoumar (website/technical) and Mark Boyd (logistics).  This conference was supported by funds from the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency, the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation, the College of Medicine – University of Saskatchewan and ThermoFisher Scientific.