Title of presentation: Precision viro-immunotherapy for hard-to-treat cancers

Brief description of the presentation: I will introduce the foundational concepts of oncolytic virotherapy, a promising cancer treatment that leverages beneficial viruses to selectively infect and destroy tumor cells. We will explore the various mechanisms through which oncolytic viruses exert their therapeutic effects, including direct oncolysis, immune activation, and their potential as delivery vehicles for anti-cancer agents. The presentation will also touch on the future directions of this innovative approach, as well as the current limitations that need to be addressed to unlock its full potential."

Short biography: Lee-Hwa Tai is Director of the Cancer Axis at the Centre de Recherche du CHUS and an Associate Professor at the Department of Immunology and Cellular Biology of Université de Sherbrooke. She obtained her doctorate in molecular immunology from McGill University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cancer immunology at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. She heads a translational research lab, where she and her team focus on better understanding the immunological pathways that regulate metastatic cancer and on developing new viro-immunotherapies.

Learning objectives:

• Understand the basic principles of using natural or engineered viruses to target cancer cells.

• Understand the multimodal way oncolytic viruses initiate cancer cell killing.

• Appreciate the role of oncolytic viruses in combination with or as primers of other cancer treatments.

• Discuss the future of oncolytic viruses and other intralesional immunotherapies to target solid tumors.

Title of presentation: "Lighting the Way: Innovative Biosensors in the Fight Against Cancer"

Brief description of the presentation: This presentation will explore groundbreaking techniques in cancer research, focusing on the development of luciferase-based biosensors. These innovative tools allow scientists to monitor cancer progression in real-time, providing valuable insights that can lead to more effective treatments.

Short Biography: Taha Azad is a researcher dedicated to developing novel cancer therapeutics. His work focuses on creating luciferase-based biosensors to study cancer progression, aiming to pave the way for more precise and effective treatments.

Learning Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

• Understand the basic principles of luciferase-based biosensors.

• Recognize how these biosensors can be applied to study cancer progression.

• Appreciate the role of innovative technologies in advancing cancer research.

• Discuss the potential impact of these technologies on future cancer treatments.

Title of presentation: Characterizing the tumor immune microenvironment using cyclic immunofluorescence

Research subject: Development of targeted therapies against ovarian cancer

Short biography: Pre Labrie has been an assistant professor in the department of immunology and cellular biology at the University of Sherbrooke since 2021. Her work focuses on the study of the therapeutic vulnerabilities of ovarian cancer. His laboratory studies in particular the adaptive responses to cyclical therapies and immunotherapy in order to develop more effective combinations of therapies. Their approach includes multi-omics analyzes on longitudinal samples from patients with ovarian cancer and the development of new syngeneic mouse models that make it possible to study the mechanisms involved in tumor progression and treatment resistance.

Presentation Title: MRI, Cancer, and You

Short Biography: Martin Lepage is the head of the Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences Department at the University of Sherbrooke and co-director of the Quebec Bioimaging Network. Since 2004, he has been developing imaging agents for MRI and optical imaging in Sherbrooke, mainly for cancer research.

Learnings Objectives: To understand how imaging, particularly MRI, fits into cancer research and patient care. To envision how the role of imaging might evolve in the coming decades.

Research Topic: Cancer Diagnosis and Detection, Head and Neck Cancer, Lung Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Radiotherapy

Research Disciplines:

Biology and Related Sciences, Oncology

Research Interests: Professor Oweida's work aims to improve understanding of the effect of radiation on the tumor microenvironment and to develop strategies to mitigate the negative effects of radiation on tumor progression and the appearance of metastases. In particular, his work focuses on the study of head and neck cancers through the use of techniques in radiation biology, cancer biology, immunology and medical imaging. In parallel with his work on the over-expression of Tim-3 in T cells as a mechanism of resistance to radiotherapy, and the use of anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy, Professor Oweida focuses on the characterization of the mechanisms of radio-resistance and immune evasion in the context of cancer and the identification of biomarkers of resistance and response to radiation treatments.

Research Topic: Chemical synthesis and catalysis, Organic molecules and biomolecules, Cancer diagnosis and detection, Breast cancer, Prostate cancer

Research Disciplines: Nuclear medicine, Chemistry

Research Interests: New diagnostic tools can improve the clinical monitoring of patients with cancer. Positron emission tomography (PET) is a powerful imaging technique that tracks the distribution of tiny concentrations of labeled compounds used to detect cancers. My research interests focus on the design, synthesis and preclinical validation of peptide radiotracers targeting biomarkers overexpressed in various cancers for PET imaging. More specifically, I am interested in the development of ultra-rapid radiosynthesis methods allowing the efficient incorporation of 18F or other positron-emitting radiometals such as 64Cu, 89Zr and 68Ga into peptide derivatives. The latter approach involves the development of chelators that could accelerate peptide labeling under very mild conditions and provide high complexation stability in vivo.

Research Topic: Bioinformatics, Genes, Genomics, Neurodegenerative diseases, Proteins, Proteomics

Research Disciplines: Biochemistry, Cellular biology, Molecular biology, Genetics, Veterinary medicine, Pharmacology, Statistics

Research Interests: Development of analytical methods and models to better explore and understand genotype-phenotype relationships, particularly in the context of rare diseases and pediatric cancers.

Biography; As part of his Ph.D. in pharmacy at Université Laval, Dr. Audet-Walsh focused on the link between steroid hormones and endometrial and prostate cancers. During his work, he has demonstrated that the regulation of steroid metabolism is altered in tumor cells, notably via alterations of specific metabolic pathways. In addition, several pharmacogenomic analyses have been able to establish the link between genetic markers in steroidogenesis genes in relationship with prostate cancer progression. He then undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University, where he studied transcriptional regulation mechanisms by members of the nuclear receptor family using transcriptomic, cistromic (functional genomic) and metabolomic tools in different in vitro and in vivo models, with a particular interest in the regulation of energy metabolism. Dr. Audet-Walsh has notably demonstrated the interaction between several nuclear receptors and different cell signaling pathways in the transcriptional control of cell metabolism following various stresses. In addition, he was interested in characterizing the different waves of transcriptional regulation that involve the functional interaction between different families of transcription factors, especially in hormone-sensitive cancers.

Recently recruited at the Centre de recherche du CHU de Québec - Laval University, Dr. Audet-Walsh specializes in the study of metabolic reprogramming in hormone-sensitive cancers, by nuclear receptors. By their actions, these receptors act as master regulators of the cellular bioenergetic pathways, necessary for both the synthesis of ATP and the biosynthesis of macromolecules that are essential to cell proliferation. By using transcriptomic, cistromic and metabolomic analyzes, he wants to understand how these receptors contribute to the transcriptional regulation of different cellular metabolic pathways in physiology and disease. In addition, he also wants to understand how metabolism in turn influences hormonal signaling, since several metabolic intermediates are essential for the regulation of the epigenome. Finally, a translational research approach targeting the key elements of metabolism in pathological conditions will be used to validate its results in a context of in vitro (cells in culture) and in vivo (rodent models, human samples) models. Understanding the metabolic reprogramming associated with pathological conditions, as well as the factors that control such reprogramming, will allow the identification of new therapeutic targets in different hormone-sensitive cancers.

Titre de la présentation : La transcriptomique pour la classification et le traitement du cancer

Objectifs de la présentation : Comprendre le type de questions auxquelles les données de transcriptomique peuvent répondre

Courte Biographie : Mathieu a effectué une maîtrise en travaillant sur l'évolution de virus à ARN dans le laboratoire du Dr Hugo Soudeyns au CHU Sainte-Justine, puis un doctorat en régulation de l'épissage alternatif de l'ARN dans les laboratoires des Drs Benjamin Blencowe et Sabine Cordes à l'Université de Toronto. Pendant son stage postdoctoral, il a utilisé de larges banques de données de séquençage de l'ARN pour développer des outils bioinformatiques pouvant identifier des cibles d'immunothérapie dans le cancer sous le mentorat de Drs Kristen Lynch et Yoseph Barash à l'Université de Pennsylvanie. Son laboratoire poursuit sur cette voie pour perfectionner l'identification de cibles thérapeutiques du cancer par analyses transcriptomiques et valider le potentiel de candidats en laboratoire.