Dr. Sandra Turcotte
2020 Canadian VHL Alliance $120,000 Grant with Partner
Cancer Research Society
Winner of the $120,000 Grant, in partnership with the CRS was Dr. Sandra Turcotte, University of Moncton.
Harnessing autophagy and lysosomes as a potential therapeutic approach in hereditary renal cell carcinoma with von Hippel-Lindau disease.
Summary: Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) is an inherited neoplasia syndrome caused by mutations on the VHL gene and resulting in the development of tumours in different organs such as the eye, ear, adrenal gland, brain, pancreas and kidney. About 70% of VHL patients will develop Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) which occurs earlier in their lifetime than other people developing RCC. No curative treatment is available for ccRCC. This project is based on our previous work in kidney cancer and aims to exploit lysosomal vulnerabilities in VHL-mutated cells to develop novel therapeutic strategy for patients with ccRCC associated with VHL disease.
Dr. Hamed Najafabadi
2018 Canadian VHL Alliance $120,000 Grant with Partner
Cancer Research Society
In 2018 the winner of the $120,000 Grant, in partnership with the CRS was is Dr. Hamed Najafabadi from McGill University in Montreal.
Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most common form of kidney cancer. In the majority of ccRCC tumours, the von Hippel Lindau (VHL) gene is inactivated, which leads to the constitutive activity of the hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) and downstream activation of hypoxia signaling genes. The activation of hypoxia signaling, in turn, triggers a cascade of molecular events that are integral to tumour maintenance and progression. This project aims to systematically identify the genes and pathways involved in the regulation of hypoxia signaling in ccRCC.
