Month: March 2023

Webinar: Using the Canadian Parternship for Tomorrow’s Health to Identify the Earliest Determinants of Disease Evolution and Aging

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Join us on Thursday, March 30th at 9am EST (10amAST) to learn about using the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health to identify the earliest determinants of disease evolution and aging. Registration details: https://ihccglobal.org/ihcc-educational-webinar-series/. Properly consented population cohorts are incredibly valuable for studying the factors associated with aging and disease before the first diseases are diagnosed. In the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrows Health (CanPath) we have recruited over 350,000 participants who have consented to provide biologics, physical measures and health information longitudinally, while also consenting to follow-ups through health records over the next 30-50 years. Our studies genomic and molecular phenotyping studies have identified a number of critical factors associated with the development of cancers pre-diagnosis. Utilizing single-cell approaches we have identified alternative factors associated with healthy blood aging. Together, CanPath demonstrates the power of population cohorts to support early disease and prevention studies that are impacting health policy. Dr. Philip Awadalla is the National Scientific Director of the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrows Health (CanPath) and is the Executive Director of the Ontario Health Study (OHS). He is a Professor the Department of Molecular Genetics, and School of Public Health, at the University of Toronto. He is the Director of Computational Biology at the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research where he leads a research program studying the genomic and environmental determinants of early cancer evolution, aging, and studies fundamental processes shaping genomic variation. He is on the Steering Committee of International Hundred Thousand + Cohort Consortium.

The Ontario Public Health Convention (TOPHC)

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Dr. Ellen Sweeney (Research Director, Atlantic PATH) and Dr. Victoria Kirsh (Scientific Associate, Ontario Health Study) were pleased to attend the Ontario Public Health Convention (TOPHC) on behalf of CanPath. Dr. Sweeney presented on CanPath’s resources for research on chronic disease and cancer and Dr. Kirsh presented on risk factors for COVID-19 infection among CanPath participants. TOPHC is created by and for public health professionals and delivers workshops, presentations, and keynote presentations focused on the unique experiences, challenges and opportunities in public health today. TOPHC events offer a chance for public health professionals to learn from each other, get inspired, provoke thought and move forward to make a difference in their careers and communities (https://www.tophc.ca/).

Webinar: Building the Canadian Cancer Society within CanPath

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Join us on March 30th (1-2pm AST/12-1pm EST) for the CanPath webinar, “Building the Canadian Cancer Society within CanPath.” Registration: http://bit.ly/3JdYhCR About the webinar: Streams of big data are finally coming together to help us understand cancer and predict it earlier. CanPath is building the Canadian Cancer Study to advance research and discovery for cancer, the leading cause of death in Canada. As the first program to bring together national population health cohort resources with administrative-level data and provincial cancer registry data in one central location, CanPath is reducing barriers and increasing data accessibility to advance Canadian cancer research. Researchers will be able to access a ready-made dataset that would otherwise take them a year or more to bring together since they would have to compile it themselves by contacting each provincial data holder for the same information. The Canadian Cancer Study is ultimately paving the path to understanding the needs of people with cancer by leveraging the full potential of large data sources. Join the webinar to learn about progress towards building the Canadian Cancer Study, and how CanPath data and biologics, coupled with linked clinical outcomes can be used to identify biological signatures associated with increased cancer risk and, subsequently, develop novel early diagnostic tools able to identify cancer years prior to clinical onset. About the presenter: Our colleague, Kimberly Skead is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research where she is developing tools to identify patients at risk of cancer and heart disease. She completed a BSc at Trinity College in the University of Toronto where she studied Global Health and Genome Biology. Kimberly is the National Scientific Coordinator of the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health, the Program Coordinator for the Canadian Data Integration Centre and the co-founder and co-leader of the Ontario Rising Stars in Cancer Research Network. She is the recipient of the Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Masters and Doctoral Scholarships from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, and the Cecil Yip Doctoral Research Award.