Anne Blouin
Describe your research in a few lines.
My research focuses on the deregulation of cholesterol in diet-induced obesity, and how this affects breast cancer initiation. Our lab focuses on epithelial architecture and the initial changes occurring in the mammary gland for breast cancer to be initiated. My angle of study is plasma membrane cholesterol, how it changes with obesity, and how it affects epithelial organization and polarity in the mammary gland.
Tell us about the organization(s) you volunteer with and the work you do with them.
I do a lot of volunteer work in different organizations, and my main involvement is with the political party Qu茅bec Solidaire. I started volunteering with them in the summer of 2022, as the Qu茅bec general election was coming up in the fall. Or work consists mainly of going door-to-door and making phone calls, mostly to know if people had made their choice regarding the election and inform them of the party鈥檚 electoral platform. I volunteer both in the ridings of Verdun and Saint-Henri-Sainte-Anne, and in both cases, we were able to elect the Qu茅bec Solidaire candidate! Our job as volunteers is to be in the field, discuss with people and inform them of the ideas put forward by the party, and first and foremost, go vote!
Why is volunteering important to you? What does it bring you?
Volunteering in general is very important to me because I think giving back to the community is crucial for our social structures to hold. Working with Qu茅bec Solidaire has provided me with tools to answer questions on the party鈥檚 political platform but has also opened my eyes to the gaps that currently exist in Qu茅bec鈥檚 political system and institutional practices. Among other Solidaires, I am given the opportunity to share ideas and put them to action; I strongly believe in social justice, environmentalism, and intersectional feminism, all ideas at the center of the party鈥檚 vision. As a graduate student involved in politics, I believe both spheres complement each other and help me become a better person.
Joan Miguel Romero
Describe your research in a few lines.
Pancreatic cancer is a highly aggressive disease and often presents as a systemic cancer early on, with less than 10% of patients living longer than five years. One of the reasons for this lethality is pancreatic cancer, as a whole, does not respond to current systemic treatments, including immunotherapy. However, we have recently shown that certain subtypes of pancreatic cancer display characteristics that would suggest they may respond to immunotherapies. Working under the direction of Dr. George Zogopoulos, an hepatopancreatobiliary surgeon-scientist, the focus of my doctoral work is to further characterize these subtypes, specifically a subset of pancreatic cancer tumours with homologous recombination repair deficiency (HRD, commonly driven by BRCA2mutations). To do this, I am combining bioinformatics with in vitro and in vivo models to better understand optimal treatment strategies using immunotherapies for these tumours.
Tell us about the organization(s) you volunteer with and the work you do with them.
After receiving a cancer diagnosis, patients and their families often enter a new world with complex terminology and nuances, which can further add to the stress they are already experiencing. This is more prevalent when there are complex topics physicians may not be able to discuss with patients, like aspects of basic science and research as they relate to their cancer treatments. This is something my parents and I faced when my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. For this reason, I joined the Toronto Chapter of the Research Information Outreach Team (RIOT) of the Canadian Cancer Society during my MSc. Here, I was able to work with the volunteer organization to help explain complex cancer topics to different audiences. Bridging the knowledge gap between medicine and science drove me to pursue a career as a physician-scientist, and after moving to 苹果淫院 to begin my MD-PhD studies, I wanted to continue my involvement with RIOT. Currently, I am co-Chair of the Montreal Chapter of RIOT. Working with enthusiastic volunteers from different departments and laboratories, we create activities and events to help explain cancer research to patients, their families, and the broader community.
Why is volunteering important to you? What does it bring you?
Volunteering is important for different reasons. First, it鈥檚 a chance to work with people from different areas of research and from varying backgrounds, providing avenues for learning something new and meeting new colleagues. Second, volunteering provides a moment to shift focus on something adjacent to research. When experiments do not work, or when trying to solve a problem, being able to focus on another task or activity is an opportunity to revisit the problem at a later time, often returning to the problem with new ideas to solve it. Finally, the outcome of the volunteering one does can also be meaningful. Working with RIOT is a way to help make an impact to the community by making cancer research more accessible and understandable through outreach and awareness initiatives. These reasons and others make volunteering important to me and motivates me to continue these initiatives.
Hailey Dall-Proud
Describe your research in a few lines
My research aims to use genetically engineered mouse models which recapitulate clinical subtypes of human breast cancers to better study the role of key signaling proteins in processes frequently exploited by cancer cells. Specifically, I am interested in the role of the HER2 receptor in promoting cancer cell stemness and immune evasion which allows cancers to resist therapy and recur post-treatment. By better understanding these processes in the context of breast cancer the goal is to find novel therapeutic susceptibilities to better treat patients.
Tell us about the organization(s) you volunteer with and the work you do with them
I volunteer with the STEM Fellowship whose goal is to allow students the opportunity to dive deeper into topics not explicitly taught in high school in order for them to explore different academic paths before enrolling in university. A portion of the seats in this program are reserved for students coming from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM with the hopes of developing diverse role models and leaders. I act as a Biochemistry Course Coordinator to develop a new curriculum for an 8-week course covering the basics of biochemistry and cancer research. This course is open to high school students of all levels, from a variety of schools. Currently we have 56 students enrolled in our course which runs from the beginning of March until the end of April.
Why is volunteering important to you? What does it bring you?
Volunteering is important to me, as both a way to give back to my community and to put the work we do at the GCI in perspective. As a volunteer for the STEM Fellowship, teaching and mentoring the next generation of scientists is incredibly rewarding and makes me hopeful for the future of cancer research. It鈥檚 a nice reminder of how far I鈥檝e come as a student myself, to be in such a position as to work with students to answer their questions and concerns about higher education. Many of these students are from underrepresented groups, and as a woman in STEM it feels good to empower other women to pursue a career in this field.
This holds true for all forms of volunteering, even outside the field of cancer research. I believe that most of us chose to pursue research partially from wanting to better the world. Sometimes the bench can feel far removed from this, and by volunteering I often see my time and hard work impact others first-hand through contributing to causes I鈥檓 passionate about. It motivates me to continue my own research, in hopes of contributing to the global efforts to treat cancer.
Overall, volunteering brings me a sense of joy, and hope for the future. I find it re-energizing and it makes me a better student, researcher, and leader. I believe everyone should try to volunteer for causes they are passionate about, whether that is around the GCI or outside in the local community!